For several years, I put off getting an iPhone. My main opposition to getting one — other than pure laziness inertia — was the increased cost to my cell phone bill. I know I can afford the cost, but that doesn’t mean I wanted a 75% increase in my mobile costs.

Now that I have an iPhone 4, I don’t see myself going back to the old school flip phone.

It’s not about the games, access to my email and internet at all times. It’s not even the camera and social networking with Instagram. I’d miss those things, but I’d be fine without them.

I’d have much more trouble giving up my favorite feature: various playback speeds for podcasts.

At first, I just listened to podcasts via iTunes, but then Sean told me about the app he uses to download and organize his podcasts: Downcast.

Downcast is officially my favorite app. I subscribe to almost 40 podcasts through Downcast. The app allows listeners to organize playlists (e.g., news, music, favorites, shorts) and listen at various speeds. While iTunes only allows one to listen to podcasts at 1.5x and 2x speed, Downcast has 9 different speeds from 0.5 to 3x speed. I usually listen to podcasts from NPR or other public radio shows at 2x speed.

I’ve been a podcast fan for years now, but I never was able to listen to everything and would build up quite the backlog on my iPod. I still have a bunch of un-listened episodes, but there are fewer on the list since I can get through the same podcast twice as fast while cleaning my apartment or doing some student tracking at work.