Dave’s Midlife Blog

I’ve been a loyal, satisfied Apple Computer user for 20 years. I first bought a Mac Plus in late 1986 or early 1987 in order to work on a Ph.D. dissertation. I always thought they were the computer company “for the rest of us,” as they used to say.

But now it seems as though they’re just one of the big boys.

They’ve sent PodcastReady a cease and desist letter instructing them to stop using the word “podcast” in their business name.

Wha?

The word podcast entered the New Oxford American Dictionary last year. It was named the “word of the year” by Oxford University Press. It’s been around for two years. It is now accepted as the word designating an independently-produced audio made available for downloading on the internet.

Now Apple says it’s their word. I guess maybe they have their reasons, but this really looks like hubris to me.

The Apple iTunes Music Store, of course, has a whole division devoted to “podcasts,” but now, apparently, it’s only okay to call them that if you are using the iTunes Music Store to find them.

Ridiculous. I may mention something about this in the podcast–uh oh, I mean independent audio production–I do later on today.

I think Apple may be surprised at the breadth of negative response about this. My own podc…independent internet audio show has several thousand listeners who are NOT podcasting geeks. However, they all use the word “podcast” to refer to these things. I heard the word used at a high school back-to-school night earlier this week, by a non-geek French teacher who plans to use them in class. “Podcast” is what they’re called. We’ve had this discussion for the past two years, and we’ve all agreed that the train pulled out of the station in the fall of 2004.

So if we don’t call them podcasts, what do we call them?

(If you’re a blogger, please blog about this. Apple pays attention to the blogosphere.)