Apple’s decision to create a podcast repository in iTunes in 2005 was a watershed for radio broadcasters and would-be radio broadcasters. It gave us all a method for greatly expanded distribution. But, yes, there was already such a thing as Internet radio. I was already hosting an online show, the original version of The Tech Night Owl LIVE, which was streamed by a now-defunct online network.

Indeed, the key reason I left the small network I was working with was their failure to understand the need to rejigger their production scheme to deliver a version that could be posted on iTunes.

The podcast setup isn’t altogether complicated. You have to create a special RSS feed with a show description, some artwork, and listings for the available downloads. I currently use Feeder, from Reinvented Software, to maintain and submit new episode listings to iTunes.

Recording my shows is probably a tad more complicated than most, because they are, first and foremost, designed to be broadcast on terrestrial radio stations. So I actually upload each show to the network, GCN, as 12 separate files. They insert the ads and broadcast the shows via Westwood One’s satellite system.

The podcast versions I post on iTunes and YouTube come from a stitched version downloaded from the network.

The recording process begins with Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack, which grabs the audio from Skype and an external mic mixer, and combines them into a single file for further editing. Now I understand some podcasters use separate files, where the host and the guest each submit separate recordings that are combined into a single file via cut and paste. That system may provide slightly better audio quality — Skype isn’t perfect — at the expense of adding to the workload and preventing good back and forth discussions where two or more guests might slightly overlap one another.

The Audio Hijack files, saved in AIFF format, are edited in Felt Tip’s Sound Studio. Sometimes I use Amadeus Pro from HairerSoft for further processing.

It’s all less complicated than it sounds. It takes about two hours to record a radio show that consumes three hours on the network with hourly news blocks and commercials. Unless there are some special complications, the editing process takes about three-and-a-half hours, plus the time to upload the completed episodes to the network.

Now that takes us to GarageBand.

Apple’s free audio editing app is essentially a highly simplified version of Logic Pro X. It’s oriented towards musicians rather than talk radio, and thus doesn’t provide much in the way of tools for recording podcasts. The few features that were available have mostly disappeared over the years.

Now I read an article the other day suggesting that Apple ought to do something to improve podcast support in GarageBand. Perhaps, but I really think the interface would have to be rethought to consider the needs of capturing a radio show.

As you see, I’m using three apps to accommodate most of my needs. In order for GarageBand to provide a suitable replacement, it would have to be able to simultaneously record the audio from multiple external sources that include Skype and other apps. That’s before we get to sound processing and editing.

With my shows, however, most episodes are recorded with Audio Hijack’s Denoising filter. As the name implies, it reduces, but doesn’t eliminate, background noise to provide a reasonable facsimile of a silent background. I realize it’s possible to adjust individual voices via filters to provide a stronger visceral impact, but I prefer to capture the natural sound of everyone involved. What you hear is what you get. Editing is also minimal, since I want to retain the live effect as much as possible; very little is actually discarded.

Could Apple provide a compelling way to manage these chores in a single app? Sure. No doubt, there are better ways to deliver the features we broadcasters need. On the other hand, Apple would have to step on the toes of third-party developers to deliver such an upgrade.

It’s not that Apple doesn’t compete with its own developers from time to time. I suppose Apple could go shopping and acquire the source code for Audio Hijack and somehow combine or adapt it to become part of GarageBand. That assumes that Rogue Amoeba would be willing to sell the app, or that Apple sees the point of expanding GarageBand in that way.

More than likely, the present state of affairs provides the best balance by offering a good selection of audio editing tools in GarageBand and leaving the rest to the developer community.

Indeed, I would like to see Apple make it possible for, say, an app such as Audio Hijack to be released in an iOS version, with the emphasis on iPads. Whatever it takes! As I’ve said before, an iPad could serve as a very flexible medium for recording and editing audio. With the right apps, I can foresee doing all my shows on my wife’s iPad in my home studio or on the road.

First, Apple would have to allow iOS apps to talk to one another in this way, for one app to capture the audio streams from other apps. Possible? Of course. Since Apple has shown more of an inclination to offer productivity features for the iPad in iOS 11, maybe it’ll even be possible in the near future.

As to a podcaster-oriented version of GarageBand, I don’t really see the need. An all-in-one solution? Absolutely!

Let’s take a journey back through time. Not so many years ago, the best — and sometimes only — method to present video on a web site was Adobe Flash. Indeed, we still have some Flash content one site, devoted to the sci-fi novels I wrote with my son, “Attack of the Rockoids.”

But when the iPhone and the iPad came out, with desktop class browsers, Flash was nowhere to be seen. Adobe insisted that Apple add Flash to these devices because most online video used Flash.

In a widely-qu0ted blog back in 2010, “Thoughts on Flash,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs explained why Flash wasn’t part of the picture in iOS. He went on to speak of three problems, “reliability, security and performance.” With regular reports of Flash-based exploits, Adobe was forced to release regular updates to beef up security. Jobs also cited its impact on system resources, that it would reduce battery life. Flash also offered poor support for touchscreens.

At the time, beta versions of Flash were installed on some Android gear, but they didn’t work so well. Since I was persuaded by Jobs’ arguments, I publicly challenged Adobe to deliver a version of Flash that would work satisfactorily on an iPhone or iPad, a true iOS version. They never responded, and I did make sure they were aware of what I wrote.

Maybe that’s when I began to have difficulties getting media access to Adobe products, but I’m not about to engage in conspiracy theories.

That said, more and more sites moved to HTML5. Many that continued to include Flash content, such as YouTube, offered videos in both versions, so people with mobile gear would have no problems seeing the content. That even includes Android. You see, the Flash beta, such as it was, never moved beyond the beta stage.

So there is still some level of Flash support out there, and I assure you that I will soon remove it from the Rockoids site. I actually had assistance from a web developer to make it responsive, meaning it would work well on a mobile device with no reliance whatever on Flash. But he never finished the work, and is off doing other projects now.

In recent years, Adobe has deemphasized its Flash tools, so it’s clear they knew the handwriting was on the wall, and they’d eventually get with the program and leave Flash behind.

So Adobe has now announced that Flash will go away by 2020. Browsers from the major companies, such as Apple, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla, will slowly phase out Flash support. Flash games on Facebook are also going away. It’s going to be a unified wholesale move to end reliance on Flash.

Now this should come as no surprise. Standards change and standards improve.

To me Flash is largely a relic of the 90s and it’s served its purpose. But it was also supremely buggy, and Adobe was kept very busy chasing after security exploits. It’s a good thing that they finally got the memo, though I realize that web developers have had plenty of work to do to dispatch Flash.

So while the new browsers will dispense with Flash in the appropriate fashion, there will still be a measure of pain for people with older Macs and PCs, particularly those that will never receive upgrades to browsers that embrace the newer standards. There are hundreds of millions of them overall.

But that’s the way of the industry. Even if the move is slow, there comes a time when its time to embrace the future. Consider the migration from text-based operating systems to point and click systems through the 1980s and the 1990s. While millions used a Mac, it took Windows 95 for Microsoft to deliver a relatively useful version of its graphical OS.

After arriving several years late, what was referred to as Mac OS X 10.0 was released in what was essentially beta form, even though it was sold for $129 (minus the $29 for those who bought a public beta). It wasn’t so useful, didn’t support optical drives, and printing was barely functional. Jobs was even forced to face reality and admit it was a version strictly for power users and developers. In a few months, they released a version 10.1, which was free if you picked up a copy from a dealer. But it otherwise sold for $19.95 if you wanted to order a copy. You can’t imagine the protests over that move.

I just wonder if Adobe realized, after that 2010 blog from Jobs was published, that Flash would disappear completely a decade later. Did they believe even for a moment that Jobs would somehow come around, or did the inability to deliver a release version for the Android platform confirm that problems with mobile gear couldn’t be solved?

So I really won’t miss Flash, any more than I miss floppy drives, SCSI and other standards of the past. Although I can handle the command line after a fashion, I was so happy to switch to the Mac in the 1980s and give up on MS-DOS and its ilk. So when I finally remove the small amount of Flash content from the Rockoids site, I’ll have no regrets.

Last year, some people made a huge deal over Apple’s decision to ditch the old fashioned headphone jack on the iPhone 7. A feature that had been part and parcel of tech gear for decades would become history, and what was Apple’s follow-up plan?

Some speculated that the headphone jack would also be removed from iPads and Macs too. But that hasn’t happened yet.

So only the iPhone was given this treatment. One reason had it that this legacy port contributed to the difficulty in making the iPhone water resistant, and the free space could be used for other components or a larger battery. It’s also true that headphone jacks are a not uncommon source of breakage, and when it happens, replacement means a new logic board.

I actually had it happen to me once, on a PowerBook, long ago. I managed to find a repair shop that could handle a component level repair at an affordable price. But remember that the headphone jack dates back to the 1950s, so what’s wrong with getting rid of it at a time when more and more headphones are wireless?

Clearly Apple didn’t dump the headphone jack because it could, or to inconvenience customers. Even if you don’t agree with their decisions, there are always reasons behind what they do and why a feature is added or removed.

I remember when floppy drives were given the heave-ho back in 1998, beginning with the original Bondi blue iMac. That decision spread to Power Macs and PowerBooks in short order. That you could buy a cheap external floppy drive helped ease the transition more or less, although lots of people still complained. But one day, I realized I hadn’t used mine in over a year, so I took it and stored it somewhere. I’m not even sure where, though I suspect I’ll open an old box one day, and find one or two lying around.

Apple also killed SCSI, a peripheral port used for hard drives, scanners and other accessories. Those who had to endue SCSI conflicts, terminators and general voodoo to get a complicated chain to function properly, were pleased. Yes, there were adapters of one sort or another, and when all of those devices transitioned to FireWire and USB, a troublesome relic of the past was history.

To ease the transition from the headphone jack, Apple bundled an adapter plug with the iPhone 7. They even provided a pretty standard set of ear buds, with a traditional plug. If you wanted to charge the device and listen at the same time, however, you needed an adapter that supported both the headphone jack and a lightning port. Apple sells one from Belkin for $39, but you can buy similar accessories for considerably less at Amazon.

It may seem inconvenient, but I dare say only a small number of people actually need this 2-in-1 adapter. I find it awkward to charge an iPhone and listen at the same time, but maybe that’s just me.

I expect Apple sees a future where all iPhones will ship with wireless earbuds, and, no, not AirPods. The need for the wired connection will disappear over time, but it’s normal for a period of awkwardness as people cope with adapters and such when Apple does a port change. Don’t forget the switch to USB-C on the MacBook Pros.

So will there come a time where Apple will switch the iPhone over to USB-C? What about the iPad? The lightning port has been around for nearly five years, arriving with the iPhone 5 in 2012. So give it a year or two? Wouldn’t USB-C result in a larger selection of cheap adapters and charging cables?

Now Apple doesn’t usually say much about future plans, well except for a certain future Mac Pro and display, and that iMac with pro features, known as the iMac Pro. But it’s also reported that Apple surveyed MacBook Pro users last year about the need for a headphone jack. Perhaps the fact that there was no such change in the Mac upgrades this year means that most customers wanted Apple to keep them. That, however, hasn’t been confirmed.

If true, however, it may be that the iPhone will be the only Apple gadget to lack a headphone jack for now.

At the same time, other than the occasional complaint and a negative bullet point in a product review, the loss of the headphone jack on the iPhone 7 has not amounted to very much. It doesn’t appear to have had any noticeable impact on sales, but Apple certainly minimized potential blowback by shipping units with an adapter, and selling extras for $9 each if you lose one or want an extra to keep around.

You just know that Apple will continue to remove legacy ports to streamline and improve its products. You just know that people will complain, and some of those people will be genuinely inconvenienced. Other tech companies will keep these peripheral ports for a while, but, in the end, they will also get the memo and embrace the future.

I received a third generation Apple TV in 2012 as a present. Mostly identical to its predecessor, it sported an A5 chip with support for 1080p video. Since that was the state of the art for its time, I didn’t consider what might come next, but mostly because the Apple TV was not the most important tech gadget in my arsenal.

Then as now, I used it to rent movies from iTunes and to watch content from Netflix. There were other apps, but I mostly ignored them. The somewhat sluggish multilevel user interface wasn’t conducive to much exploration, and I didn’t have all that much extra time to just play around.

My day-to-day TV fare otherwise consists of the broadcast networks, and a smattering of cable channels, such as BBC America, FX, ION Television, SyFy, TNT, USA and WGN America. Call me boring, but since all or most of these channels are available via the cheapest cable or satellite packages, I can save some money.

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