Bug in iOS 6 Causes Multiple Downloads of Podcasts, Is Fixed in 6.0.1

Hi. I've experienced another bug in Podcasts involving unnecessary downloads. I'm not sure if it has been fixed in 6.0.1 or if it applies to iOS 5.x.

When using the Podcasts app, if you start playing a list of podcasts, all of which are streamed, then download a podcast that's later on in the list, that podcast will still be streamed when its turn comes to be played, even though a copy has been downloaded to your device.

EDIT: I still have this bug in iOS 6.0.1.

got hit with this bug as well and hit with data overage, that was a nice first bill

Thanks

by the way where are the iMacs?

How about fixing the auto-brightness bug that's carried over iOS's since version 1?

Data overage

I was contacted by AT&T by day 10 of my billing cycle that I had used 5GB of data. In the past I have never even reached 3GB in a whole month.

Although I am not certain that it was due to repeated, duplicated downloads this makes sense and it is likely that is what happened.
I had the "auto update/download" box checked.
I unchecked it and monitored my data usage more closely. It seemed to do the trick.

I called AT&T when I first got the notice and told them there had to be a mistake and to reference my previous months data usage.

They did and made a notation on my account to not have my account throttled.
I have received no notification saying that it will be throttled nor have I noticed a decrease in speeds.

Besides Maps (and its lack of data), Podcasts is by far the worst Apple app to me. It has never correctly synced the podcasts for me and it is frustrating. I have mine sync up through iTunes instead. I wish they could manage these podcasts through iCloud somehow. I'm not sure how it works, or I should say doesn't work!!

The Podcasts app is still really bad.

I was notified by my carrier (Rogers) that I had doubled my monthly quota in the first three days of my billing cycle. My quota is only 500 mb, but my average monthly cell data usage is only 184 mb.

I immediately downloaded DataMan and began closely monitoring my data usage. I also scoured the web for more info. One site indicated that Apple's Podcasts App might be the culprit. I dumped it and instead used the paid app Downcast.

My data consumption immediately went back to normal.

Rogers flatly refused to wave the data overage charges... So maybe I need to have Apple send me an iTunes gift card as compensation for the additional charges plus refund the money I spend on Downcast.

In any case, I have no intention to go back to Apple's Podcasts app. In twenty years, I have had very, very few issues with Apple products. I hope this isn't a sign of what's to come.

jdegid said:

by the way where are the iMacs?

Click to expand...

Some forklift operator put all the palettes of iMacs sideways and no one's been able to find them since . . .

This bug didn't only eff the audience of streaming audio; we provide mp3 archives of our Motocross/Supercross podcasts and weekly radio shows. This bug got us locked out of our server multiple times due to more than 20 terabytes of monthly bandwidth transfer via iOS 6 devices only.

You should see out server logs, it had us thinking we were under a DDoS although it always seemed fishy that the bandwidth spike coincided with the release of iOS 6.

I've been searching for a mention of this bug for weeks and finally today the stories are popping up everywhere.

bbeagle said:

This is a page of current bugs in Android Gingerbread: http://source.android.com/source/known-issues.html

Here is just one example issue Gingerbread currently has:
* Camera, GPS and NFC don't work on Galaxy Nexus. As an example, the Camera application crashes as soon as it's launched.

So, should we avoid Android?

Click to expand...

Is that anything to do with ios 6? Or since when, Apple was chatching up googls software bugs?
If comments was reasonable and most importantly sensible, this side would be much better plase to be

This is nice to know. I spent 3 hours on a car trip with my iOS 6.0 iPad3 listening to streaming radio. I hope I didn't incure a $200 bill.

Wow....what a fiasco!!!!

That Podcast app was a mess from Day 1. I went Downcast and never looked back.

It's bad enough the thing didn't work, but to directly cause you customers to incur overage charges is an inexcusable bug.

Arzy said:

I got crushed by this bug. Racked up 6gb of data in 48 hours. Had to wipe whole phone and OS to get it to stop.

Click to expand...

A lot of people were reporting amazing data usage. Even though they'd plainly state that they weren't viewing videos or other high data usage activities more than before iOS6, many respondants would jump on them saying it was normal and LTE connections were downloading "higher bitrate" version of Car Talk or whatever. I hope they feel somewhat vindicated by this.

I never got bit by this one. OTOH, I have disabled LTE on our phones because we generally don't need it. The ATT 4G speeds in this area are plenty fast for our needs. I will turn it on during meetings when we can't use the client's network and people need to share a hotspot. Love it for that

Yep, happened to me as well.

Went over a couple of gigs from streaming when it automatically switched from wifi to 3G when leaving home after I thought I stopped the stream.

And it was Macbreak Weekly with Leo Laporte. No hard feelings, love that show.

I knew there was something dodgy about the POS podcast app. It was using up mad data before I had the good sense to delete the app.
That and random starting after calls. Was very disappointing.

bbeagle said:

This is a page of current bugs in Android Gingerbread: http://source.android.com/source/known-issues.html

Here is just one example issue Gingerbread currently has:
* Camera, GPS and NFC don't work on Galaxy Nexus. As an example, the Camera application crashes as soon as it's launched.

So, should we avoid Android?

Click to expand...

considering the Galaxy Nexus was released with ICS it is no wonder it does not play nice with Gingerbread. There could easily be a lot of driver issues and it is not something really worth fixing.

Yes it is a bug and no it is not one worth fixing.

This we should right off to FUD because you are linking to something that really unless you know how to read it is pure FUD.

As somebody who listens to a bunch of podcasts, I can honestly say that two months prior to ios6, I was travelling for about 2 weeks during the billing cycle, and used up 1.1 GB of data for the entire month, using cellular for 1/2 the time.

2 weeks after ios6 my phone generated 1.95 GB of traffic for no apparent reason. On the current bill, my phone has downloaded over 1.5 GB of data.

All of this stopped after 2 things happened, so I can't really say which was the proper fix.

1) IOS 6.0.1
2) I unistalled the horrendous Podcast app and purchased downcast.

Now, my phone has used about 50MB of data in the week or two, whenever the update came out.

I almost feel like Apple owes me $2 for the money I spent on downcast.
And, yes, I had all of the cellular data features turned off in the podcast app, and each day that the phone had large mysterious data usage, the amount of data transferred pretty much corresponded to the size of the podcasts that had been published in the past 24 hours.

We were bitten by the bug. One of our iPhone users after upgrading to iOS 6 went from a 3 month average of 3.8gb received to so for 8GB and he's still got several days left in this billing cycle!

Totally botched up the shared Data plan for the other users that are also on the plan!

I'm having him upgrade to 6.0.1 ASAP!

This happened to me, I would listen to a 14MB podcast and it would download over 300MB. I called Apple and they had me reset my network settings which appeared to fix the issue. Glad to know its probably not going to re-occur, so I can stop checking my data usage constantly now.

bbeagle said:

This is a page of current bugs in Android Gingerbread: http://source.android.com/source/known-issues.html

Here is just one example issue Gingerbread currently has:
* Camera, GPS and NFC don't work on Galaxy Nexus. As an example, the Camera application crashes as soon as it's launched.

So, should we avoid Android?

Click to expand...

The Galaxy Nexus never ran Gingerbread and this is for AOSP, which is the open source build for Android which is not optimised for any particular device.

I don't understand why this is even being reported. Surely, everyone has updated.

Shrink said:

Yeah, those patch downloads really take it out of you.

Horrible!

I have to go lie down after clicking on that "Download" button.

Jeez, life's a bitch, ain't it!?

Click to expand...

I think they were talking about podcasts.

Just get this.

Downcast - $2
http://www.downcastapp.com

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/downcast/id393858566?mt=8

Arzy said:

I got crushed by this bug. Racked up 6gb of data in 48 hours. Had to wipe whole phone and OS to get it to stop.

Click to expand...

Steve would have fixed that quicker.

iGrip said:

Steve would have fixed that quicker.

Click to expand...

Steve would not have let them release a podcast app that does not sync with iTunes!

Shrink said:

Yeah, those patch downloads really take it out of you.

Horrible!

I have to go lie down after clicking on that "Download" button.

Jeez, life's a bitch, ain't it!?

Click to expand...

Do I sense a tiny bit of sarcasm?

P.S. Your signature tells me how "you" feel about things, unfortunately Albert E. never said what you are quoting. Check my signature.