What can we do with just 85円? Can we feed ourself for a single day? Can we enjoy an afternoon out of the house? Can we completely replace the need to sync our iDevices with iTunes? Looking at past experience1, I can safely say that it's possible to do all three of these things, though only the last one is preferable.
Three weeks ago I picked up Instacast, a wonderful podcast manager for iOS, and it obviated the need to load Apple's bloated iTunes software for everything but the transfer of music from the library. No longer is there a need to carry an external hard drive everywhere in the event I want to check for updated podcasts. No longer do I need to wait for a 45 MB XML file to be read and parsed into memory just to transfer information and make a backup. Instacast and iOS 5, despite all of the operating system's bugs, has turned the iPod Touch into a truly portable device rather than a machine that needs to be tethered regularly to be enjoyable2.
There's no going back, now. Once iTunes Match comes to Japan, I'll spend both the cash and the time to get the library synchronized. From there, I may no longer need to have a local copy of iTunes or my music, videos, or pictures3 at all.
If you listen to podcasts and haven't given Instacast a try, I strongly suggest you do so. It's just 85円 and worth every Yen.
