Apple's highly questionable and deeply unfortunate skeuomorphism kick continues unabated. Now we're treated to a radio dial which died out in 1995, and playing podcasts presents a reel-to-reel, which died out in god knows when.<p>It's completely bizarre. I guess podcasts are a form of talk radio, but tying them to some ancient radio technology that anyone under the age of 18 will have never touched is mental. They're even called podcasts: they arose because of the popularity of the iPod! Insane.<p>Apple really need to sort their designers out. I wish we could somehow have Microsoft's new Metro design aesthetics on Mac OS X and iOS, then I could have the best apps and OS design, and the best UI to use with them.
I use Downcast every day, not even as an advanced user, but just because I need to download podcasts on-the-go. This sucks in comparison.<p>* Catalog (aka Store) is very slow and clunky. Takes 5-10 seconds to flag episodes as "Downloaded" after I click on a podcast I have episodes for.<p>* Clicking download button takes 4-5 seconds to react. Progress of download is not shown in store, but only in Library.<p>* No connection between podcasts you downloaded and those in the store. So if you want to get more episodes, you need to search again. Why?<p>* No way to add podcasts by URL.<p>* Descriptions are cut-off after a line or so with [...], even if you press the "i" button.<p>* No position indicator. Oh wait, it's hidden behind the cover image and you need to tap to switch. And that's the default view every time.<p>* The position indicator has buttons at either end. They don't do anything. Or do they?? They're certainly really small.<p>* Some of the stuff hidden behind the cover image is a button. Some of it is just shiny bits of the reel-to-reel. Guess which is which from a foot away!<p>* Only fast speed is 2x which is too fast. Only slow speed is 1/2x which is too slow.<p>* The share buttons everywhere just link to the podcast in general, not the episode.<p>* Generally sluggish on an iPhone 4.<p>Honestly, this seems like the kind of stuff Apple is supposed to be better than.
I understand why Apple felt the need to create this app. The current method of managing and listening to podcasts is split between iTunes and the Music app, and holds on to old models of syncing between the computer and the iPhone / iPod. It's a mess, and that, of course, is why there are third-party apps that have been doing a better job for podcast enthusiasts.<p>Unfortunately, this is bad news for the makers of the third-party apps. My personal favorite is Pocket Casts. They put a lot of work into creating a great user experience for podcast listeners, which seems to have been replicated in some ways in Apple's "official" podcast app. (I'm not saying Apple copied them, just that some of their UX conventions also exist in the Podcasts app.)<p>As I say, Apple did need to fix the current way podcasts are handled in iOS. Overall, it's probably going to be a good thing for podcasters, as it will make it easier for the average consumer to subscribe and consume podcasts.<p>It just makes me feel bad for the app developers who have gone through so much work to create excellent products, only to see their role shoved out of the way as Apple integrates this new feature into iOS. It's an old story; Apple's been doing this sort of thing on the Mac for ages (remember Coverflow?), but it still gets to me a bit. I'll keep using and loving Pocket Casts, I just hope they and others can compete now that Apple's got their own Podcasts app.
About 80% of my walking around time is spent listening to podcasts, and I've been waiting for this for a long, long time. Namely:<p>- A podcast app that's separate from Music. They're really two entirely different tasks, and I don't like losing place in a playlist just to listen to a podcast, and vice versa.<p>- Buttons for skipping forward and ahead within a track.<p>- Never losing place in a podcast when switching tracks. This was a huge problem with the popup playback controls, where it's far too easy to hit rewind instead of pause.<p>- The ability to download and update podcast subscriptions directly from the device.<p>- Syncing listened/unlistened and playback state between devices.<p>I think they've covered all of my issues with podcasts, and it's a beautifully designed app (I have a particular fondness for reel-to-reel decks). Well done, Apple.
Cool app in a lot of ways, but its conceptual hierarchy seems weird to me so far — the main section that you're presented with upon launch (the "Library") has a tab bar at the bottom split between "Podcasts", showing podcasts you've subscribed to and/or downloaded episodes from, and "Top Stations", showing popular podcasts on the iTunes Store. So far so good.<p>But then there's also a "Catalog" button at the top-left that "flips the app over" (a la iBooks) and shows you a general store-browsing interface. The corresponding button to get back—which, I'll note, is on the opposite side in that view!—is labeled "Library".<p>tl;dr: There are Store interfaces in both the Library and the Catalog, seeming to break the conceptual hierarchy, and thus annoying me.
So,in the future, iOS will no longer have built in podcast support? iPhone users will now always have to download a separate app to get podcasts?<p>This is a huge set-back for the podcast medium. There is so much friction convincing potential blue water podcast listeners to subscribe to podcasts.<p>Haters are going to automatically say "podcasts are a niche, they have a small audience" so who cares? Well, before Apple put in built in support for smart phone apps in iOS with an app store on the home screen. The smartphone app audience was one of the smallest around. Now look at where we are.
I found the Music app painful to use for my podcasts. Not sure how much better this will make it. On the other hand I purchased Instacast and it is one of the most used apps on my phone.
Lately I have been having this thought that Apple ought to do the right thing and compensate app publishers when it chooses to, effectively, take them out with their own version of their apps. From an ethical standpoint I really don't like the idea of them watching, learning, observing and then damaging those who put lots of time and effort into understanding a problem and developing solutions for them. They've done this with e-books and other areas and now podcasts.<p>I am not saying that they should not publish their own versions of these apps. All I am suggesting is that the right thing for them to do is to financially recognize those who paved the road ahead of them.<p>To be clear, I am not and have not been affected by any of these Apple-released apps. I do fear the potential to come-up with something popular only to be taken out by the mother-ship.
I assume that Music will still support podcasts?<p>I'm miffed that videos were moved to an entirely different app; I'm subscribed to the TED talks video podcasts, but have to launch an entirely different application to listen to them (and yup, I listen to 99% of them as I'm walking around instead of watching them.)
Does the Unplayed Episodes list seem the wrong way round to anyone else? I generally want to start listening oldest first because newer things refer to older things.
Breaking the podcast functionality out into its own app is interesting, but the 50MB limit for cellular downloads means that it's still completely useless for me.
Relevant to the "Apple changes App Store search" story from the last couple of days: I am so far completely unable to find this app by searching for "podcasts", or even "podcasts apple".<p>A quick Google search, on the other hand, worked instantly.
Hopefully, Apple will _finally_ let me pay for a subscription to my beloved HyperCritical PodCast. I already Pay $5/month to 5by5 - and was considering increasing that - but I would happily pay $2-$3/month for a subscription to Hypercritical. John Siracusa puts an insane amount of effort into preparation, and even when I vehemently disagree with him (he's opposed to patents) - I still find his perspectives and intellectual rigor intriguing.
So happy there's an official way to do subscription. The app's a little underwealming though.<p>The fact they seem to have forgotten to stop the Subscription and Auto-Download cells from highlighting when you tap them is an indication of the lack of polish.<p>It's generally pretty laggy, especially trying to do things like scrub through a track and I've had it crash several times already just trying to select podcasts.
I like the radio dial, seems like a nice way to browse the different categories.<p>But this Podcasts app is missing 1 crucial feature it looks like - no ability to let you know the podcasts you are subscribed to have new episodes. I'm hoping that is expanded upon in iOS 6. Otherwise you still have to rely on syncing with iTunes.
It currently isn't showing up if you search for "podcasts" but does if you search for "podcasts apple" although it won't be obvious it's from Apple until after you tap the result.
Come on Apple. Release a decent Audiobook app for iPad and I swear I won't speak ill about you again (I've submitted quite a few foul-mouthed bug reports and feature requests about iPad's Music.app in iOS 5, 6 and continue to do so every month).<p>That lousy, disgusting 'new' Music.app on iOS 5.0 (on iPad) was the reason I bought an iPhone. I just couldn't stand that app (I listen to audiobooks quite often).
I thought this was going to happen when it was left out of the iOS 6 beta but I didn't think we'd see it until the new iPhone/iOS launch. Glad they are putting it out now.<p>I'm curious to see what, if any, impact this has on podcast creators. If Apple pushes it the way they do iBooks and other Apple iOS apps it could be huge for them.
Just gave it a shot, and I wasn't impressed in the least. These types of apps are where Apple really fails. It's like they don't use the same designers they do for any of their other products on these small apps.<p>The interface is lousy, and very similar to the Music app. Discovery doesn't seem very useful either.<p>This might be useful for a 'light-weight' user and listener of podcasts but this doesn't even come close to apps like Downcast in terms of features.