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Apple Offers New Dedicated Podcast App for iOS
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Here's a crazy thought: Given Apple's current animosity towards google, could they be looking to have this "replace" the built-in YouTube app in the long term? While it would be suicide to offer a brand new service like they did with maps, podcasts have been around a long time and are still fairly popular. iOS7 could perhaps even allow users to upload their video and audio podcasts directly from their device to an iCloud based host.
If Apple did go this route it could even be a blessing in disguise for YouTube users. Since then Google would almost certainly release their own app for iOS. Replete with features absent from the current app.
If Apple did go this route it could even be a blessing in disguise for YouTube users. Since then Google would almost certainly release their own app for iOS. Replete with features absent from the current app.
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New episodes on already subscribed podcasts doesn't update automatically & there is now button to get new episodes either, unless you sync it with your Mac. Is there a work around for this issue or have I missed something?
Cheers.
Cheers.
There is no help-the program is just a disaster. Just use iTunes on your PC + the "Music" program on your iOS device. If you want to download individual podcasts from your iOS device, use "iTunes" on your iOS device, and (as of the current version of iOS 5) they'll sync back to your PC correctly and behave almost identically to if you'd downloaded them in real iTunes to begin with.
This is the worst Apple app ever made
I'm ok with a few rough edges with a brand new app, but this app is awful.
Pretty much unusable. I'm kind of surprised Apple would allow this thing to be released in the state it is in.
I'm ok with a few rough edges with a brand new app, but this app is awful.
- Freezes constantly while searching for podcasts in the "store"
- Podcast artwork showing up is random
- Crashes, stops playback randomly
- sorting from oldest to newest within podcasts shows every podcast ever, sometimes hundreds of episodes to scroll through, even if you haven't downloaded them, and are considered "played"
- No streaming
- 30 sec jumps only availble if you open the app (other apps use the next/previous buttons so you can skip back or forward without opening the app)
- Played episodes keep getting marked back to unplayed
- Episodes don't seem to delete even if you delete them
- automatically downloading new episodes doesn't seem to work
- unplayed podcast list doesn't let you sort oldest to newest. It's always newest to oldest.
- And my favorite: after the "subscribe button" is loaded in, it sometimes disappears, making it impossible to subscribe.
- App is sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooow
Pretty much unusable. I'm kind of surprised Apple would allow this thing to be released in the state it is in.
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Everything above plus the fact you can't d/l podcasts over 50mb over 3G. I know that's an Apple imposed limitation but many podcasts I listen to can easily go over that limit and I am not always in WiFi range.
I think that occurs when another podcast fails to download properly. It's probably a podcast fragment.
Needless to say, I am sticking with Instacast.
autrefois
macrumors 65816
After experiencing many of the issues and feature shortcomings quoted above, as of today my Podcasts app crashes every time I try to use it. It starts to load and then crashes after a few seconds before displaying the list of podcasts. Force-quitting the app or restarting the phone don't help.
And since podcast states don't sync between the Music app and the Podcasts app, I now have a good 20 or 30 podcast episodes that I've already listened to over the past week that are still marked as new and unread in the Music app. So I'm going to have to try to figure out which ones I did actually listen to and which ones I haven't yet.
AND when I click from the Music app to try to search for new podcast episodes, it tries to load the Podcasts app (I can tell because it shows the Podcast black and grey background in lieu of the Music Store background). This then of course proceeds to crash. I had to go into the iTunes Store, search for the podcast, and manually download it from there (that, at least, works).
I have no desire to re-download the app to see if that would solve the issues. I'm willing to switch back to using the Music app and leave bad enough alone until this app is ready to hit primetime.
For those saying this is the first version of a new app and we should cut Apple some slack, one could perhaps generously call this a beta release. Let's hope Apple did this to work out the kinks before iOS 6 comes out, although they should have at the very least given a list of "known issues" or something in the description. If Apple doesn't consider Podcasts a beta release, at least internally without admitting it publicly, then I am seriously afraid of what sorts of issues the public release of iOS 6 is going to come with initially.
(PS Added to the list above of issues, for me at least, is while the Podcasts app was still working, my iPhone getting confused when I double-clicked the home button to resume the music or podcast I was listening to. For example, it would display on the lock screen the last music track I listened to, but then when I hit play it would play the last podcast I listened to instead.)
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Seems like a Beta to me too
On the iphone 4:
The Pros
1 The unplayed podcast list is a great idea.
2 Having a dedicated app for podcasts makes some sense too.
But ...
The cons:
1 It's astonishingly slow to respond to any button presses, and yet the 'Music' app works at normal speed.
2 It doesn't sync a podcast's played / unplayed status between itself and the 'music' app.
3 It doesn't sync a podcast's played / unplayed status between itself and iTunes.
4 Every podcast a podcaster has in iTunes is listed for available download (some of the podcasts I subscribe to have over 250 episodes). This makes it hard to pick old podcasts I have kept to play again.
5 The user interface is not intuitive. You have to tap at a variety of icons to find features like 'settings'.
6 You cannot set download options globally. You have to do it individually (once you've found out how to access the settings option).
7 You cannot select the medium by which automatic downloads take place (wifi or 3G), which is important because charges are often quite different.
8 The podcasts have to be manually sorted or re-sorted every time you subscribe to a new podcast.
I'm surprised Apple released this podcast app in this state. Their standards are usually so reliably good.
On the iphone 4:
The Pros
1 The unplayed podcast list is a great idea.
2 Having a dedicated app for podcasts makes some sense too.
But ...
The cons:
1 It's astonishingly slow to respond to any button presses, and yet the 'Music' app works at normal speed.
2 It doesn't sync a podcast's played / unplayed status between itself and the 'music' app.
3 It doesn't sync a podcast's played / unplayed status between itself and iTunes.
4 Every podcast a podcaster has in iTunes is listed for available download (some of the podcasts I subscribe to have over 250 episodes). This makes it hard to pick old podcasts I have kept to play again.
5 The user interface is not intuitive. You have to tap at a variety of icons to find features like 'settings'.
6 You cannot set download options globally. You have to do it individually (once you've found out how to access the settings option).
7 You cannot select the medium by which automatic downloads take place (wifi or 3G), which is important because charges are often quite different.
8 The podcasts have to be manually sorted or re-sorted every time you subscribe to a new podcast.
I'm surprised Apple released this podcast app in this state. Their standards are usually so reliably good.
Not really a pro as you've been able to do that with a smart playlist since they introduced smart playlists.
Adding Feeds
Okay so I've tried to add a feed (search) and it does not work. Apparently if not in the iTunes store it will not match the search, even with the feed URL.
Example: I've added John Gibson via the web page using the Add to iTunes link and it does add it to my iTunes on the mac. Then I copy the url (http://feeds.foxnewsradio.com/JohnGibson) and it fails.
This really sucks.
Okay so I've tried to add a feed (search) and it does not work. Apparently if not in the iTunes store it will not match the search, even with the feed URL.
Example: I've added John Gibson via the web page using the Add to iTunes link and it does add it to my iTunes on the mac. Then I copy the url (http://feeds.foxnewsradio.com/JohnGibson) and it fails.
This really sucks.
Strange, it should work as long as it's an RSS feed (which that is). Do you need a slash at the end maybe?
Nope that didn't work either. And auto-download still fails to pickup new episodes on other subscriptions. iTunes on the mac works just fine. Sure hope Apple releases an update soon.
I've gone back to Downcasts. Podcasts.app was never showing my album artwork, not to mention it's very slow.
It's the only app ever in the history of apps that has me punching my phone out of frustration!
Podcasts app
The worst part about this app is that it doesn't support my playlists. I like to listen to certain things at certain times.
What the F?
The worst part about this app is that it doesn't support my playlists. I like to listen to certain things at certain times.
What the F?
I like iOS fairly well, but then I like Android and Windows Phone fairly well...still waiting to see if they break podcast support in iOS 6, because it is the ONE thing that iOS absolutely dominates on that I need. Take it away, and I can stay with my current carrier on Android or Windows Phone. Heck, Android at least I'd get Firefox.
I've been trying to bear with Apple's Podcast.app for a little while because I like the fact that it's supposed to auto-download new episodes, and auto-delete listened to episodes, but I have some subscriptions that just keep showing up again as new and not listened to. It would be a pretty cool feature if it worked reliably.
Problem with that is it ONLY offers those options, unlike iTunes (real iTunes I mean). I DON'T want it to autodownload, and I DON'T want it to autodelete. Both are unacceptable to me, and i could already get that to me broken behavior from Android and Windows Phone. Only iTunes/iPod/iOS to date give me really good manual control, managed from a real PC.
this new behavior is New Coke lol
I'm not sure what you are getting at here. You can turn off both autodownload and autodelete.
Mmm, the latest version still has its spazzy moments
I wondered where all my data was going, then I realised it had downloaded 2 years of a podcast I regularly listen to
It's been fine for weeks, I don't know why it just decided to download all the old stuff now
I wondered where all my data was going, then I realised it had downloaded 2 years of a podcast I regularly listen to
It's been fine for weeks, I don't know why it just decided to download all the old stuff now
Also fed up... did something about it 
I also got really fed up with the usability and quality of existing native Podcast Apps, and as i spend a lot of time commuting it was a priority for me to have something thats easy to use in the car and can remember my progress in the different podcasts i follow, and where i can just stream without having to download or sync anything.
For that reason i built www.podcaster.mobi in HTML5, so it works on all my devices, and so far i am pretty happy about it Feel free to use it if you like. It's non commercial, made just for fun and for my own entertainment during the loooong drives to and from work
I also got really fed up with the usability and quality of existing native Podcast Apps, and as i spend a lot of time commuting it was a priority for me to have something thats easy to use in the car and can remember my progress in the different podcasts i follow, and where i can just stream without having to download or sync anything.
For that reason i built www.podcaster.mobi in HTML5, so it works on all my devices, and so far i am pretty happy about it
Feel free to use it if you like. It's non commercial, made just for fun and for my own entertainment during the loooong drives to and from work