Nope. Not at all.
iTunes is a handy way of downloading podcasts and syncing them to your iPod or iPhone, but there are other ways of finding, subscribing to and downloading podcasts:
Finding podcasts:
- Good old Google, or one of the many Podcast Directories
Subscribing to podcasts:
- Consider using Juice, the podcast catcher, or Media Monkey (an alternative to iTunes)
- If you use a mobile phone or non-Apple MP3 player, you may find that there is a podcast app out there for you.
- Use a web-based RSS feed service to subscribe to a podcast feed. One such service is Google Reader, a free web-based feed reader. Sign up to Google Reader, press “Add a subscription” and paste in podcast’s feed address
Podcast in Google Reader
Who needs iTunes, eh?
Got an iPhone?
You may be interested to know that you don;t need to use iTunes to be able to get podcasts on your iPhone, and we’ve written a guide on the alternatives. Please see: Podcasts on the iPhone