Marco talks about the differences between using background fetch and server-side feed polling in regards to his upcoming podcast client, Overcast. I think Marco has it right, checking tens of thousands of feeds from one server is far better than having each user’s iPhone regularly check the 10-20 podcast feeds that the user listens to.

In the end a lot less resources will be spent if the feeds are checked server-side when you consider that many of the application’s users all listen to the same podcast. Why should they all check the feed when one server could do it for thousands of users?