Shawn Blanc:

The two ways to get a new podcast episode onto your iPhone are either: (a) tap “get more episodes”, be taken to the iTunes app and then pick a single episode to download to your iPhone, wait for it to download, return to the iPod app and play the episode; or else (b) sync your iPhone to your computer and transfer any new episodes which have downloaded to your computer onto your iPhone.

This is indeed something I’ve found very annoying. I definitely get a feeling that Apple didn’t really think about podcasts when they made iOS, which is a shame as they are something I really enjoy.

What I find most frustrating is that additional episodes downloaded to my iPhone using method (a) are not merged back into the original subscription when it is synced back to iTunes, resulting in two copies of the podcast in my library.

On Shawn’s recommendation I downloaded Instacast last week, and find it a fabulous solution which I’m using to very much enjoy Shawn’s members-only Shawn Today podcast during my afternoon coffee break.