Podcasts won’t be found through iTunes in iOS 6

When iOS 6 debuts this fall, users who search Apple’s latest iTunes app for podcasts will come up empty-handed. Not because Apple plans to complicate the discovery process, but because podcasts won’t be there. But don’t worry, they aren’t going the way of the dodo. Instead, according to All Things D, podcasts will appear exclusively in a separate app. In iOS, at least. Laptop and desktop users will still find them through iTunes.

Confused? As All Things D points out, this isn’t the first time Apple’s moved to simplify things for users.

Apple has made a similar housekeeeping move before: Last year, it broke up the iTunes player app into separate video and music apps. And when it launched iBooks in conjunction with the iPad in 2010, it made the book reader a separate app as well.

The iTunes U lecture series has also gotten its own app, though you can still access the downloads through the main iTunes player on mobile devices.

Apple also required iBook buyers to use the specialized app to buy their texts. But it has continued to lump all of its audio and video together in the iTunes store. So the move to push podcasts completely into their own space may signal an effort to put iTunes on a diet, something many Apple fans have asked for.

Source: All Things D