I installed iPodder shortly after its release and after trying once or twice to listen to podcasts, I gave up on it. The podcasts I found weren’t that interesting and the “online podcast directory was weak”:http://www.geekfun.com/archives/000402.html.

I liked the whole idea though, and so when Apple decided to make it easier to consume podcasts in the latest version of iTunes, I decided to give things a second look.

There are certainly a hell of a lot more podcasts to choose from these days, thats for sure. I lot of established media players have jumped in, driven, in part, by Apple’s entry into the space. All of which is cool, but I’m most interested in podcasting because of the opportunities it offers the unaffiliated up-and-comers.

In the early days of the iTunes podcast directory, those very people, the people who had pioneered the medium, seemed to be shoved off to the side in favor of the big media types. It took some digging to even find them. Happilly, on my latest visit, the “indies” as Apple calls them, are featured more prominently, including a section featuring a handfull of “interesting indies” near the top of the directory.

But, as you can tell from the title, I found something to gripe about. The process of subscribing to podcasts is utterly irritating. Once you’ve found an interesting looking podcast you click a subscribe button to add it to your subscription list. This is where things get bad.

As soon as you click subscribe, iTunes exits the podcast directory and jumps to your podcast subscription list. The browser buttons disappear and the only way (that I can find) back to your place in the directory to subscribe to something else is to start from the beginning again in retrace your steps. VERY LAME!

The podcasts I’ve listened to lately have been better than the early batch, but there are still a lot that are clearly not worth my time after one or two listens. It would be nice if I could easily unsubscribe from a podcast from my iPod.