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Apple Offers New Dedicated Podcast App for iOS

Wow...tried it on my iPad 2 and my iPod 4...it's as worthless as ever, except now they've literally ruined my devices. In fact THE #1 use of BOTH devices is podcasts, and now if I may have to put another PC in place of my iPad (which I would have done if/when it died anyway).

Doesn't sync, doesn't support playlists. This is just insane. I *LITERALLY* pulled out my 4GB iPod nano 2 and am using that this weekend in place of my touch and iPad because it still works like they've worked since 2005, and is now 400,000x better than either of my newer devices.

This is insane. I use iTunes and that whole ecosystem *SOLELY BECAUSE OF AWESOME PODCAST SUPPORT*. Remove that, and I have no reason to use other stuff. I use an iPad and iPod and was *going* to get an iPhone this fall *SOLELY BECAUSE OF AWESOME PODCAST SUPPORT*.

With them gone, I have zero reason to stick with Apple. this is just mind blowing to me. It's like if Toyota came and installed spiked seats in my Camry, and went "here ya go, an upgrade!"
 
You can fix it
enupa8a8.jpg
 
I've been using downcast to listen to new podcast episodes and the music app to listen to archived stuff. I might switch back to the music app 100% although downcast us good how it auto downloads over wifi.
 
farleysmaster said:
You can fix it Image
Click to expand...

What do you mean? At any rate, I'm posting again because inexplicably suddenly the audio program on my iPad 2/iOS 6 started working again. Why now, after a couple days use? I don't know...but it's back :-O

I'm dead serious when I say this is THE make or break issue for me buying an iPhone/sticking with all this stuff because until New Coke Podcasts, Apple/iTunes Podcast support has been brilliant.

I keep wondering (and other people I know going through the same thing) would "Podcasts" have happened with Steve Jobs? Tempting to think not, though for all I know it was his idea, but geez.
 
Wolfpup said:
Doesn't sync
Click to expand...

Could you clarify what that means? Podcasts continue to sync with iTunes just fine, and since 1.1, at least in my experience, play position and read/unread status also transfer correctly during iTunes sync sessions. So.. huh?
 
farleysmaster said:
You can fix it Image
Click to expand...

That wasn't showing for me, even as an "option" in the More button's Edit thing. I actually had to "activate" the option. iTunes syncs the audiobooks (in my case, the O&A podcast) to my device. Go to the search page before the main screen, search it out, then click it to open it. I had to do this with both shows I hadn't listened to to get them to show up. Once there though, the Audiobooks button shows up, and they sync as normal.
 
Review: Podcasts 1.1

I've spent the whole weekend using Podcasts 1.1, and can report:

- Podcasts and play positions continue to transfer correctly (in both directions) when syncing with iTunes 10.7. The only instance where this did not work perfectly was when iTunes independently downloaded podcasts that I had already listened to on my iPhone via streaming (not downloading). Understandably, the phone has no way of communicating the "read" status for those streamed tracks so iTunes still picked them up as unplayed. I assume this will change with iTunes 11 and its support for "Cloud Position".

- There is no difference between streaming an episode and playing a downloaded one; the app continues to run in the background in either case. External audio controls (via lock screen, multitasking bar or external remote) work perfectly, as with the Music app.

- Videos intermixed with audio podcasts play as audio only when the app is in the background, even with the screen turned off! This was possible before in the Videos app but only with some crafty lock screen jujitsu that didn't always work right, and had to be done manually for each episode. Now it just happens automatically. Nice! Of course, if you really need to SEE a particular video podcast, you can always hit "next" and play it later.

- Playback moves on to the next episode in the feed (or Unplayed list) whether or not it's on the device, much the way iTunes Match moves to the next track whether it's been downloaded yet or not.

- In my case, at least, I have noticed that you actually have to start at the BOTTOM of the "Unplayed" list to get it to play all the way through -- it creeps up the list, rather than the other (normal) way around. I'm not quite sure why, though. This is also the case for podcasts sorted as "newest first", but I can't figure out how to change the sorting for the Unplayed list.

- There is still a bizarre tendency to randomly mark huge swaths of old podcasts feeds as "Unread" out of nowhere. Fortunately every podcast has a "Mark all as played" button, and it usually only affects one or two feeds in my list at a time, but it sure is annoying.

I still miss playlists, though not nearly as much now that the "Unplayed episodes" list works (sort of) correctly. I also miss the inclusion of show notes (I can't believe that's gone forever, though). The app seems much more stable and responsive when refreshing subscriptions than before, and with the very handy streaming and automatic refresh abilities, I'm finally able to say after three months that this can replace the Music and Videos app, at least for my purposes.

I should note that I'm still running iOS 5.1.1, so YMMV if you've upgraded to 6 already (Apple can pry my Google Maps from my cold, dead hands!!). Actually, I'd be interested to hear if all the problems still being reported are from people running iOS6 -- any more reasons not to upgrade to that disaster are welcome!
 
brianus said:
I've spent the whole weekend using Podcasts 1.1, and can report:
Click to expand...

Thanks, outstanding post and info! Yeah, you know, I started to consider using the Apple Podcast app over Downcast with this latest update. I love Downcast, but it's starting to become a little feature saturated and the UI is getting a little noisy, and with syncing/streaming looking like it's working in Podcasts (and syncing across iTunes/cloud), I'm definitely giving it another try.
 
brianus said:
Could you clarify what that means? Podcasts continue to sync with iTunes just fine, and since 1.1, at least in my experience, play position and read/unread status also transfer correctly during iTunes sync sessions. So.. huh?
Click to expand...

It doesn't sync right at all on my iPad 2 or iPod touch 4. That's never worked right.
 
davydavy said:
I'm using IOS6; I removed the podcast app, but the podcasts didn't reappear until I restarted my iPhone. Happy again :)
Click to expand...

farleysmaster said:
Yeah, wasn't sure if it was the restart that did it, or the 'reset all settings', or maybe the app just sorts itself out eventually...
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's bizarre...I know I reset the hardware and the settings and it didn't work, and then resetting the devices again later seems to have brought things back. (It only started working again on my iPad at the last possible moment, which made me late to leave this weekend, but at least let me actually use my iPad...I was literally going to use my iPod nano 2!)

This podcasts program still feels like a looming threat...like thankfully iOS 6 still works, but what if 6.1, or 7, or whatever forces you to use it? I buy an iPhone now, or even an iPad or an iPod...they're all expensive, and before my contract (or the useful life) is up, they wreck my device?

It's scary to me. The fact they'd even release this "podcasts" program at all just indicates to me there's someone super clueless at Apple that might actually force this on us.
 
What I did, in the dark days of iOS 6 beta 4, was use downcast (well worth the small price) for new podcasts, and continue to download ones I wanted to archive or listen to a second time in iTunes and use the apple podcast app for that. Downcast has good smart playlists (and you can give some podcast higher priority than others) and the big advantage of not needing to sync with iTunes. You can also backup files via iTunes.
 
farleysmaster said:
Downcast has good smart playlists (and you can give some podcast higher priority than others) and the big advantage of not needing to sync with iTunes. You can also backup files via iTunes.
Click to expand...

You don't *have* to sync with the default audio player either, but for me not doing it through iTunes is a massive *DISADVANTAGE* not advantage.

That's cool you can at least back up podcasts through iTunes? Like I assume they show up under Downcast under the applications section of iTunes and you can manually copy ones you want?

That program won't work for me though
 
Since I got my IP5 podcast doesn't auto-download my subscribed podcasts. I get the most recent episode blue-dot but it never downloads. And having to open the app from background to get the latest episodes is a drag. I thought it was supposed to download automatically?
 
Follow-up to my above post from a few days ago... it seems that there is something wrong with the "Use Cellular" setting for auto downloads as my phone went through 65% of my data plan in two days as it tried (and retried) to download a podcast over and over again. As soon as I turned off auto download, the problem went away.

As much as I didn't want to, I've gone back to Instacast at least for now. Not sure if this is a bug in the latest version of the Podcast app or iOS6, but now I've got to limit my data usage for the next 23 days or face an overage charge.
 
NightStorm said:
Follow-up to my above post from a few days ago... it seems that there is something wrong with the "Use Cellular" setting for auto downloads as my phone went through 65% of my data plan in two days as it tried (and retried) to download a podcast over and over again. As soon as I turned off auto download, the problem went away.

As much as I didn't want to, I've gone back to Instacast at least for now. Not sure if this is a bug in the latest version of the Podcast app or iOS6, but now I've got to limit my data usage for the next 23 days or face an overage charge.
Click to expand...

Make sure you report this to Apple.
 
brianus said:
- In my case, at least, I have noticed that you actually have to start at the BOTTOM of the "Unplayed" list to get it to play all the way through -- it creeps up the list, rather than the other (normal) way around. I'm not quite sure why, though. This is also the case for podcasts sorted as "newest first", but I can't figure out how to change the sorting for the Unplayed list.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that. Doesn't help much if you have a few podcasts with bad dates or that you otherwise don't want to listen to before starting the newer stuff, but it's a start. I'm holding off going to iOS 6 on my iPhone hoping for an update to this app. Sigh.
 
macleod199 said:
Thanks for that. Doesn't help much if you have a few podcasts with bad dates or that you otherwise don't want to listen to before starting the newer stuff, but it's a start. I'm holding off going to iOS 6 on my iPhone hoping for an update to this app. Sigh.
Click to expand...

To be clear, it turns out you do *NOT* need this program to do podcasts. iOS 6 on both my iPad 2 and iPod touch 4 handle podcasts the old, vastly superior way just fine. For some reason I had to reboot both several times after removing "podcasts" but now they're back to normal.

You'll want iOS 6 anyway just for the security updates, if you browse the web with it or anything, and it does have some nice tweaks all over the place, and doesn't seem slower than 5 did (unlike 5 which seemed slower on both than 4).

"Podcasts" is just a New Coke disaster, but thankfully they're not forcing it on us...I *hope* they never do, because as soon as they do, I'm leaving.
 
I've decided to stick with the Apple podcasts app for now, not that I don't like Downcast or Instacast. But to avoid any potential carrier data usage others have reported, I use iTunes sync on my Mac for my podcasts. Only takes a few minutes to sync via wifi so I can unsubscribe via the podcasts app yet still have my library on my iPhone. Lets hops Apple addresses all these issues including playlists.
 
whsbuss said:
I've decided to stick with the Apple podcasts app for now, not that I don't like Downcast or Instacast. But to avoid any potential carrier data usage others have reported, I use iTunes sync on my Mac for my podcasts. Only takes a few minutes to sync via wifi so I can unsubscribe via the podcasts app yet still have my library on my iPhone. Lets hops Apple addresses all these issues including playlists.
Click to expand...

Why not just use iTunes/music? It actually works.
 
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