The iPod is dead, but the podcast lives on

Photo: Sean O’Kane

My teenage dreams are the iPod and Pour one out for it. While Apple discontinued the last iPod model this week, the digital audio medium is still alive and well.

The iPod was the only game in town at the time that the podcasts were getting started, and it wasn't really the format where the podcasts flourished. The iPod had 60 percent of the market in 2004. If you wanted to listen to audio shows on the go, it was the default option.

The founder of This Week in Tech says it was a terrible experience.

The name of the online audio shows that were starting to emerge seemed like a good fit for the name of the gadgets. Two people claim to have merged iPod and broadcast together. The first instance was in a 2004 Guardian article by journalist and technologist Ben Hammersley where he threw around potential names for the medium. Dannie Gregoire, a digital audio pioneer, created a software program called "podcaster" and registered domain names with the help of former MTV. It's an obvious word to come up with, given the technology, and Gregoire had not been aware of Hammersley's article. Hammersley didn't reply to the request for comment.

Either way, it caught on. Despite the potential for a trademark violation, Apple allowed the word to live and embraced the medium by creating a directory in the iTunes store. George W. Bush began releasing his addresses in a form that was accessible on the internet. The New Oxford American Dictionary made a word of the year out of all the hubbub.

Not everyone was happy. For years, Laporte argued that the word tied the form too. He has been proven right and wrong. The iPod was a fleeting phase in the run of the show. The word outgrew its name to mean that Apple is just one part of the podcasting community. Apple's programming for podcasts is minimal, at best, and the most used platform for it is Spotify.

The word is inescapable. Laporte relented and changed the TWiT Netcast Network to the TWiT Podcast Network.

The story was originally published in Hot Pod. You can get more scoops here.

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