Today, Apple released an update to the iPhone software that includes built-in podcast episode downloading. Why should you care?

Here’s why:

In the past, you could only watch (or listen to) podcasts on an iPhone by subscribing and downloading on your computer with iTunes, then syncing the episodes with your iPhone. While I’m sure a lot people went through the hassle, I’m pretty sure the vast majority did not.

A software programmer made a nice app called “Podcaster” that I’ve owned for several months that did built-in, on-the-fly episode downloading, but Apple kicked it off the App Store because they have a policy of not allowing competing third party apps and they forgot to tell the poor guy they were building this feature into the iPhone. Oh well. He got my sympathy $10.

Podcasting is a huge deal. Not because many people watch podcasts now. It’s because they will. A podcast is the closest thing to having your own cable or satellite channel, and in many ways, superior. Podcasts will pretty much replace cable and satellite TV in the next 10 years. Don’t believe me? Why not, I’ve been right about everything else! (We are building podcasting into DV Kitchen… soon!)

I watch podcasts on my iPhone every day, because I am a busy guy and it is super convenient. No need to go into the living room and fire up the home theater, wherever I am I can just pull out the iPhone and with a touch or two, it’s playing what I want to watch, from the beginning. It’s a poor user experience switching to a TV channel and not being able to rewind the currently playing show! How last century is that?

Anyway, by the end of next year, Great Depression II or not, there will be 25 – 30 million iPhone owners. It is the fastest growing platform, faster than OS X, Linux or even Vista!

This is a huge audience, and they want to watch TV on their nice crisp screens. This is a relatively uncluttered channel. Very few folks are putting real quality podcasts out, but this will change quickly.

This is a huge opportunity for those who, amazingly, can still get in at the beginning of this revolution.

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4. DV Gear Talk Podcast goes big
5. Video Is No Longer The Future of the Internet. It’s the Present.