Pour one for the iPod, the lovely little device of my youthful fantasies. While Apple officially retired the last iPod model this week, the "pod" lives on in the digital audio format that we all adore.
The iPod was never truly the format where the podcast thrived (that honor goes to the smartphone), but it was pretty much the only game in town when podcasts first debuted. The iPod accounted for 60% of the global MP3 device market in 2004. It was, if inelegantly, the default option for listening to audio shows on the move.
"It was a terrible experience," says Leo Laporte, founder of the early digital audio outlet This Week in Tech (TwiT) and host of The Tech Guy radio show. "You had to download it to your computer, connect your computer to your iPod via iTunes, copy it over to your iPod, and then listen to it."
But, with the device now ubiquitous, the term "podcast" seemed like a natural fit for the fledgling online audio shows that were emerging. So natural that two people claim to have independently merged "iPod" and "broadcast." The term was first used in a 2004 Guardian article by journalist and technologist Ben Hammersley, who discussed potential names for the medium ("GuerillaMedia" did not catch on).
That same year, Dannie Gregoire, a digital audio pioneer, named one of his software programs "podcaster" and registered domain names containing the word "podcast," then popularized it with the help of former MTV VJ and early podcast host Adam Curry. Gregoire claims he was unaware of Hammersley's article when he came up with the name. "Given the technology, it's an obvious word to come up with," he said. Hammersley did not respond to a comment request.
In any case, it caught on. Despite potential trademark infringement, Apple not only let the term live, but it also embraced the medium wholeheartedly by creating a podcast directory in iTunes in 2005. That same year, George W. Bush began podcasting his presidential radio addresses. The New Oxford American Dictionary took notice of the uproar and named "podcast" the word of the year for 2005.
Not everyone was overjoyed. For years, Laporte fought – and lost – the battle to re brand "podcasting" as "net casting," claiming that the term was too closely associated with Apple. Time has proven him both correct and incorrect. Yes, the iPod was a brief fad in the history of podcasting. However, the term has outgrown its namesake to the point where Apple is no longer the dominant player in the podcasting ecosystem. Spotify has surpassed Apple as the most popular podcasting platform, and Apple's podcast programming is limited at best.
Nonetheless, the term is unavoidable. Laporte finally relented a few years ago and renamed the TWiT Netcast Network the TWiT Podcast Network. "That's how language is," he explained. "You can't go against it."
source-the verge
