Your Mac Jerks

I’ve been subscribed to Your Mac Life‘s podcast for some time now. I subscribed a long time back before I knew what to subscribe to. Basically, there was a single show, which was a rant by Shawn. It was all right.

Now, after I noticed that another show never made it self available, I did a little digging and found out that they didn’t because they made all their money on Audible, charging just about $4 a show, or $45 for a year’s subscription. Saying that he didn’t want to change their business model is a fine justification. That’s cool.

However, he couldn’t just stop there. In order to bolster his own ego (and let his listeners hear the Radio Gold voice), he proceeded to bash podcasting. I don’t want to listen to the podcast again, but I believe he characterized most podcasts, even the popular ones, as “crap”. Then he singled out Dawn and Drew as the aforementioned “crap”.

Basically, instead of recognizing that this will become another commonly accepted and used distribution medium, he wants to make sure his listeners stick with Audible. [Correction: Only old shows are charged for, the most recent is free for streaming. If you want to listen on your iPod, you have to pay or use something like Audio Hijack.] He doesn’t give any recognition to some really good podcasts (such as the Daily Source Code, the MacCast, or TWiT). Instead, he tries to dissuade the listenership from the medium all together because they may realize that paying that money week-in, week-out for something they can get elsewhere (sans Radio Gold voice) for free. In particular, the MacCast and Inside Mac Radio have fulfilled my Mac radio needs. For free.

Shawn’s already realized that he underestimated the popularity of podcasting, releasing the first “Free Podcast Friday” episode. I can only hope he realizes that bashing other shows isn’t cool. It doesn’t make you look better; it only makes you look desperate. Based on what I’ve heard, he probably should be.