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Overcast Podcast Player Update Brings Overhauled Apple Watch App, Improved Siri Support

IllinoisCorn said:
Dislike the developer enough to (1) not download the application and (2) come on to a forum and express my contempt for him.
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What is it you don’t like about Marco, if you don’t mind me asking? He seems a nice guy.

I remember when the second gen rmbp started showing screen retention he developed a test for confirming the issue and shared it with the community just to help us owners of those machines.
 
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Razorpit said:
Was this the app that was censoring certain podcasts a while back?

Also are these podcast app really that much better than the included solution from Apple? I’ve been listening to podcasts since pretty much the beginning, on my 3rd gen iPod. What makes people want to pay to use these apps?
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Overcast better than Apple Podcasts for me because:

1) Podcasts.app feels much more focused on finding new podcasts than playing your current ones. I already subscribe to enough and have other channels for finding new ones that might interest me, I don't need the player pushing stuff to me.
2) Smart speed and voice boost. I don't like listening to podcasts at a faster speed, but eliminating the silences I find useful, and voice boost is great at normalising volume which is especially useful at the moment when loads of podcasts are recorded remotely and people have different levels of equipment and sometimes shows are badly produced.
3) Just really simple, intuitive straight-forward interface. It's obvious what everything does and why, which I can't say for Podcasts.app.
 
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I tried Overcast and Pocket Casts but wasn't really a fan with the way they wanted me to listen to my podcasts. Thankfully I found iCatcher and haven't looked back. iCatcher lets you make multiple playlists, has a watch app, and is ridiculously configurable. There are settings for just about everything you could want to tweak. Playlist management is amazing with the ability to create auto filled playlists based off of podcasts and keywords. After about 30 minutes of playing with the settings I was able to make it work exactly the way I wanted.
 
Canyda said:
All I know is that a couple of weeks ago Overcast suddenly stopped downloading a password protected podcast feed to which I subscribed and I emailed Marco and explained what was happening and he immediately implemented a server-side fix and everything immediately went back to normal.

I appreciate that kind of customer service.
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I’ve had similar excellent customer service.

A while back I uploaded some ancient very low bitrate Howard Stern from the 80s. They played, but the progress bar was all over the place, it couldn’t recognise the track length. I emailed him, he responded, and it was patched within a week.

Another time I had a small subscription issue. He responded quickly and granted me a 6 month extension.

I don’t quite follow the complaint that he’s a whiner either. He loves Apple stuff, like I do, but imo is constructively critical of them - because oh my, as much as I love a number of their products, Apple has plenty of issues worthy of criticism. If you just want uncritical advertorial Apple rah-rah, go listen to Rene Richie.

I disagree with Marco on a raft of issues outside tech, but so what? /shrug
 
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boss.king said:
I wish I could get that out of him. I have one particular podcast that won't play on my watch no matter what, but works on my phone. I've emailed a few times now explaining clearly in as much detail as I can and ... radio silence.
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Marco famously is terrible with email.
 
Someone needs to build a podcast player app with crowd-sourced ad-skipping. For every episode, the time markers for the skipped parts are uploaded to a database, averaged or processed with some AI, and when there is enough confidence other listeners can have those parts auto-skipped.
 
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kevinpdoyle said:
Marco famously is terrible with email.
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Haha, I'm now aware. This was mostly before I knew who he was or listened to ATP. Unfortunately, I've tried Twitter and he appears to be terrible there too. I've since made my peace with the fact that this is just a podcast I only get on my phone.
 
oneMadRssn said:
Someone needs to build a podcast player app with crowd-sourced ad-skipping. For every episode, the time markers for the skipped parts are uploaded to a database, averaged or processed with some AI, and when there is enough confidence other listeners can have those parts auto-skipped.
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A lot of podcasts these days seem to have an ad-free paid feed. If you like the content and the ads bother you that much, support the people making the shows.
 
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oneMadRssn said:
Someone needs to build a podcast player app with crowd-sourced ad-skipping. For every episode, the time markers for the skipped parts are uploaded to a database, averaged or processed with some AI, and when there is enough confidence other listeners can have those parts auto-skipped.
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That would be interesting... though I'm fine with pressing the skip button on my car's steering wheel or double-tapping my AirPods to skip ads.

But what kills me is the looong ads that the host reads. And they usually go off-script and just start riffing.

Look... I'm fine with ads in podcasts... I realize podcasts have to make money. (since we don't pay for them)

What I don't like is 5 minute ads from a single sponsor. It gets a little monotonous. :oops:
 
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CJM said:
Marco sure has complained about doing the Watch UI for a while. Guess he finally got his head around it.
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Dude complains about everything, endlessly, repetitively. I think ATP would be at least a half hour shorter if they just cut out his redundant blah blah blah. App is okay, but not good enough to make me pay to use it.
 
boss.king said:
A lot of podcasts these days seem to have an ad-free paid feed. If you like the content and the ads bother you that much, support the people making the shows.
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None of the ones I listen to have ad-free paid feeds. If they did, and the price was reasonable, I would consider it. But they don't.
 
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Michael Scrip said:
That would be interesting... though I'm fine with pressing the skip button on my car's steering wheel or double-tapping my AirPods to skip ads.

But what kills me is the looong ads that the host reads. And they usually go off-script and just start riffing.

Look... I'm fine with ads in podcasts... I realize podcasts have to make money. (since we don't pay for them)

What I don't like is 5 minute ads from a single sponsor. It gets a little monotonous. :oops:
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Ah, a fellow Crooked Media listener?
 
Overcast is one of the only iPadOS apps that I use on my M1 MacBook Air. It acts almost completely like a macOS app and it did that before Apple added more compatibility to Big Sur in 11.2. It is the only iPad app that I use that seems to work correctly that way.
 
The arrogance of this dev is astounding. He refuses to do proper app update notes and instead people have to visit 3rd party websites in order to find out how it works.

In May 2020 he changed the Watch app to stream from the cloud. This stopped vocal boost and smart speed from working (by design) and was very, very unreliable. The app notes were simply "new watch app". After a few weeks he acknowledge the new app didn't work and threw out a half hearted fix then ignored it until yesterday.

Now this update is out and the app notes are, once again "new watch app" with no indication of what the changes are.

There's a good app somewhere in Overcast but it needs to with a different dev/team. I've moved away from Overcast now which I'm sad about because I used to like it a lot. But taking features away, no update notes and silence doesn't get my money.
 
I wish he would create a native Apple TV and mac app. I went back to the stock podcast app for a while and while I like the tighter integration with iOS, it just feels a little clunkier than Overcast.
 
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boss.king said:
Haha, I'm now aware. This was mostly before I knew who he was or listened to ATP. Unfortunately, I've tried Twitter and he appears to be terrible there too. I've since made my peace with the fact that this is just a podcast I only get on my phone.
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If only he provided Casey level of support and care for his projects. ;)
 
Overcast was my daily driver a few years back, but Castro and Pocket Casts are way ahead in terms of UI. Overcast is just too clunky... text in the list view cells is truncated prematurely, key action buttons at the top of the screen are impossible to reach one-handed, still using emojis for icons, and no widget. Time to hire a designer.
 
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