Seems like Apple is in hot water about Podcasting with many people accusing them of making the podcasting used in the iPod, proprietary. The whole nature of XML is that is is extensible, by anyone. While I’m not in the loop about current podcasting formats, it looks like there is no standard as yet. And most of the podcasting is being made up as they goo along. As far as I can tell of Apple development, they generally try and make it usable by the general user, not the Geek or earlier adopter.
Seem like the market is wide open to XLM formats, and Apple is not wrong to develop one to suit Apple and it’s customers.