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Apple needs someone to manage/fix Podcasts...

W

Wolfpup

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Sep 7, 2006
2,929
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It's NEVER worked right or been as good as iOS 6 and earlier when it was in the Music program.

It's always broken in new and exciting ways, never syncs the same way twice. No one seems to be taking responsibility for it, or if they are, they're a joke.

This weekend I synced my iPhone at least 4 times, this morning find out it didn't actually update any of my podcasts...didn't sync them, didn't update play position, nothing, even though iTunes SAID it was.

And with some of my podcasts I'm still seeing iTunes just randomly remove the entry from display in iTunes after I've played it on my iPhone (thankfully leaving the actual file behind in the file system)-despite having it set to never auto delete anything.

Bajillions of other bugs too.

It's an absolute disaster that I use only because everyone else manages to be much worse. (Actually Windows Phone until last year was able to sync podcasts with iTunes at this point MORE reliably than iOS can, but then an iTunes update broke it, and Microsoft never fixed it since they canned the whole thing.)

I'm at the point I'd switch to an iPod nano for podcasts....were that still an option.
 
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Assuming the Podcasts app actually has the bugs you're complaining about, you don't use one of the umpteen competing apps (several of which are free) because...?
 
posguy99 said:
Assuming the Podcasts app actually has the bugs you're complaining about, you don't use one of the umpteen competing apps (several of which are free) because...?
Click to expand...

It does, and they don't do anything useful for me. They can't sync with iTunes.
 
Didn't think Podcasts in iTunes was important to anyone anymore. If it's just that you want to be able to play them on the desktop as well, you can do that with both Overcast and Downcast.
 
Thanks, but I doubt either would help me. I need to be able to manage at least dozens of GB of podcasts, save stuff to my PC if I want to keep it, I can't ever have stuff just disappear on me if it's not in a feed anymore, etc.

If iOS' podcast support gets much worse, I'll be stuck going back to the pre-2005 method of managing all this manually.
 
posguy99 said:
Didn't think Podcasts in iTunes was important to anyone anymore. If it's just that you want to be able to play them on the desktop as well, you can do that with both Overcast and Downcast.
Click to expand...

Oh, sure, it's important to some of us. It's my most used app over the course of the day on the phone. Yeah other apps can do cross-platform sync of playback position, playlists, etc., but correct me if I'm wrong, those other apps do not support downloading podcast to desktop and then syncing from there to phone/tablet? Download once use many is the important feature for me, saves bandwidth across all my network sources.

OP: you might try to uninstall an re-install the app. I did that and it seems to have cleared up many issues. Only issue I have is that the artwork for a podcast sometimes does not match what's playing: clear that by swipe-quit the app and restart. Since I only sync a month's podcasts to the phone at a time, not a big hit for me to re-install and re-sync from iTunes. Month method also preserves space on the iPhone.
 
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NoBoMac said:
Oh, sure, it's important to some of us. It's my most used app over the course of the day on the phone. Yeah other apps can do cross-platform sync of playback position, playlists, etc., but correct me if I'm wrong, those other apps do not support downloading podcast to desktop and then syncing from there to phone/tablet? Download once use many is the important feature for me, saves bandwidth across all my network sources.

OP: you might try to uninstall an re-install the app. I did that and it seems to have cleared up many issues. Only issue I have is that the artwork for a podcast sometimes does not match what's playing: clear that by swipe-quit the app and restart. Since I only sync a month's podcasts to the phone at a time, not a big hit for me to re-install and re-sync from iTunes. Month method also preserves space on the iPhone.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's by far my most used program on my iPhone too. It always uses the most battery life even though Podcasts uses a lot less battery than other programs I do run.

And yeah, I can envision some sort of service from Apple/Microsoft/Google that say downloads podcasts to iCloud/OneDrive/GoogleDrive, then syncs/plays them from there (and lets you upload/download freely from there, and you never lose them unless you explicitly delete). I'd have to upgrade my account to do that, but that could work...but of course none of those companies offers that. Everything seems to just be using RSS feeds as the "storage" for podcasts, plus local storage on your iOS device, which is just laughably worthless.

I've not tried deleting/installing Podcasts on my phone...most of the issues though seem to be on iTunes, so I'm not sure that would help. I HAVE moved my podcast library over between PCs before-not for several years-but that's a gigantic pain, so reinstalling iTunes would be an absolute last resort for me, as I know that'll screw things up (even though I can manually re-set up every single podcast feed-and I have dozens-and then manually copy like 70GB of podcast files into iTunes).

Still seeing one of them get deleted from iTunes after I sync and it's been played on iOS. Doesn't show up in the regular view nor the "podcast feed" view-whatever they're called-though thankfully they're still physically on my PC's file system, so I can save them from there (and have to manually delete them if I'm not saving them).

And yeah, I'm having Podcasts randomly show the wrong image, or no image too. Also often (always? almost always?) displays the wrong podcast after I delete or move or a podcast finishes playing off my list of playing podcasts.

I'm incredibly annoyed no one at Apple is taking responsibility for fixing this mess-I mean they clearly don't care at all nor use it to allow it to be in this state, when it all worked flawlessly in 2005. And annoyed no one else cares enough about podcasts to replicate how Apple does it (or did it circa 2005). If I was stuck paying money for this to work, I would, as I've been using podcasts non-stop since like at least 2003-2004. Obnoxious that we've gone BACKWARDS for how well this all works. Basically as soon as Apple started releasing the Podcast "app"...but at least through iOS 6 you could just delete it, and they'd sync with "Music", and it all worked okay.

Still annoyed too that iTunes randomly decides to stop download/checking individual podcasts if it (at random times that don't seem connected to anything) decides I haven't listened to one.

Like hello? *I* will decide when I don't want it to download/check. It's obnoxious having to scroll through and manage my whole list just because Apple thinks I don't know what I want now.
[doublepost=1517517309][/doublepost]My continued frustration had me searching around again. I doubt this will work, but apparently you can copy audio files to your Onedrive, and then play them individually through the iOS OneDrive program, AND apparently there's some functionality with the iOS Groove program:

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/microsoft-groove/id669515221?mt=8

There's probably a slim chance you can actually mark stuff as a podcast, and use Groove as a podcast program... (maybe use iTunes as a "podcatcher", then move them to your OneDrive, etc....though I kind of doubt it can remember playback position, as like everything, it's all about music, which I don't care about.)
 
Wolfpup said:
Still annoyed too that iTunes randomly decides to stop download/checking individual podcasts if it (at random times that don't seem connected to anything) decides I haven't listened to one.
Click to expand...

More likely the podcast moves its hosting, and doesn't do a proper forward. Marco Arment spoke at length recently about his attempt to deal with that issue in Overcast.

https://overcast.fm/+CdQLwEk8/27:26
 
iTunes is a disaster. Most annyoing app ever. I wish I would not have to use it.
 
posguy99 said:
More likely the podcast moves its hosting, and doesn't do a proper forward. Marco Arment spoke at length recently about his attempt to deal with that issue in Overcast.

https://overcast.fm/+CdQLwEk8/27:26
Click to expand...

It's a "feature" Apple added to iTunes some years back, where they decide for you that you haven't listened to a given podcast in a while, so you must not want it, and you have to click to reenable. No way to disable it, and it's not even consistent. Though that's far from the worst thing about this whole ecosystem.

For anyone interested, I did find that OneDrive + Groove gives VERY basic audio playback support. As expected it doesn't remember playback position, and doesn't mark stuff as played. Still seems to be the closest any of these services get to doing something useful. As a last ditch thing it's better than nothing.

Did create an Overcast account, and as expected it's worthless for my purposes, unfortunately.

I love how now different podcasts in iTunes aren't even broken in the same way. One as I've mentioned iTunes just deletes from iTunes when it's marked as played on my phone (though thankfully leaves the file on my PC, which I have to manually delete or keep). Another, played podcasts disappear from the main view but not from the feed view, etc.
 
Wolfpup said:
It's a "feature" Apple added to iTunes some years back, where they decide for you that you haven't listened to a given podcast in a while, so you must not want it, and you have to click to reenable. No way to disable it, and it's not even consistent.
Click to expand...

Documentation, please?
 
I switched to Tunein Pro App after the last Podcast update. What a mess it is.
 
Yeah, total disaster, but stuff like Tunein doesn't do anything I need at all from a Podcast program :-/

*sigh* I have to baby this stupid thing daily. They desperately need someone to take responsibility for it and fix it.
 
Wolfpup said:
Yeah, total disaster, but stuff like Tunein doesn't do anything I need at all from a Podcast program :-/

*sigh* I have to baby this stupid thing daily. They desperately need someone to take responsibility for it and fix it.
Click to expand...

I'm also frequently annoyed by small stupid bugs in Podcasts. I could switch to another app off course. But somehow I haven't lost hope that someone at Apple is going to fix things.
 
i hung onto the stock podcast app for a long time....thinking maybe i was "using it wrong." but finally tried out overcast and haven't look back.
 
NoBoMac said:
Oh, sure, it's important to some of us. It's my most used app over the course of the day on the phone. Yeah other apps can do cross-platform sync of playback position, playlists, etc., but correct me if I'm wrong, those other apps do not support downloading podcast to desktop and then syncing from there to phone/tablet? Download once use many is the important feature for me, saves bandwidth across all my network sources.
Click to expand...

I too use it more than any app. Podcasts are a content delivery system that Apple helped to popularize. But the constant tweaking and breaking of the app have taken a rather straightforward product and made it an awful mess. It is such a simple thing I am not sure how Apple can mess it up as bad as they do. I stick with it because of inertia. That and I hope one day they can actually fix it and then leave it alone.
 
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