Apple creates RSS the Microsoft way

When Apple reinvented the photofeed, they actually were a bit sloppy. Instead of building upon standard RSS and the Media RSS extensions backed by Yahoo!, Feedburner et al., they decided to do what Microsoft has always been accused of: they made a different, non-compatible RSS format.

cf http://static2.podcatch.com/blogs/gems/snedit/rss.xml
It’s pretty bad. There are lots of errors, the date formats are wrong, there are elements that are not in RSS that aren’t in a namespace.
via scripting.wordpress.com (Dave Winer)

Apple photocast RSS
from static2.podcatch.com/blogs/gems/snedit/rss.xml

Compare this to the Flickr Photofeeds: they use standard RSS 2.0, enriched with the MediaRSS extensions.
Flickr Photocast/Photofeed RSS
from www.flickr.com

My prediction: Apple will have to comply to the RSS specification (e.g. using correct dates), but they will stick to their own RSS extensions instead of using Media RSS. So if you have a need for photocasting, wait until Feedburner have released some Apple Photocast specific options, and let Feedburner convert your photocast feed for you:

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