I listen to several podcasts and I’ll mention a few of the tech-based ones on this blog, while non-tech ones will show up on my personal blog. The one podcast that makes it to the top of my playlist every day is Ken Ray’s Apple news podcast, Mac OS Ken.

While Mac OS Ken centers around Apple products, Ken often wanders to the edge of the Apple universe, reporting on products which are are in direct competition with Apple. He usually has something snarky to say about Microsoft, but is also good about putting things in perspective; he’s up front about saying what he likes about their products, such as music subscriptions on the Zune media players. I’m sure tomorrow he’ll report about T-Mobile offering the HTC G1 phone, which runs the Google-based Android operating system.

Ken produces the show late at night to make it available first thing in the morning, but I don’t end up listening to it until I’m on my way home, by which time I’ve already read about most of the stories on the podcast. Why do I bother listening? He’s got an excellent rapport with the listener, and has a knack for correlating various stories in unique ways. I also like that he knows when to editorialize and when the listener is smart enough to draw his or her own conclusions.

I also subscribe to Mac OS Ken Day 6 which is a for-pay feed. Unlike the short and scripted daily show, Day 6 is done ad lib and also features interviews with various people. My favorite interviews are ones where he’s obviously very comfortable with the other person; you can tell he looks forward to talking with August Trometer or Tim Bajarin, and the banter shows they think as highly of Ken as he does of them. The Day 6 subscriptions are how he funds the daily show, and he recently quit his job at KRON 4 (San Francisco) to podcast full time.

You can clearly tell that Ken’s background is in radio production and he’s good at it. Before Mac OS Ken, he used to do the daily news podcast and participated on the weekend broadcast of Inside Mac Radio (I believe he also did production for the show). I was never really a big fan of host Scott Sheppard’s interviews or reporting, but it seemed that he was able to bring in interesting guests. The main reason I listened to that podcast was for Ken’s segments, as well as the roundtables in which he participated. After Ken left, not only did the quality and frequency of the daily news suffer, the weekend show seemed to wander more. Not long after decided to stop listening to Inside Mac Radio is when I saw that Ken had started his own podcast, so I happily subscribed.

When he first opened his user forums, the first message say “You rock”, and that’s become his thing. Most user feedback tells Ken “You rock”, and his response is often “No, you rock.” The funny thing is even though it’s something he’s expected to say, it still feels sincere when he says it. Mac OS Ken is the only show for which I pay (daily show is free, but Day 6 is the one which costs), and it’s easily worth it.