New Apple Podcasts App Still Unreliable
Apple, the de facto leader in podcast discovery, seems to have screwed up what was once its biggest asset in favor of trying to capitalize on a new feature.
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Unfortunately, when Apple started rolling out the podcast subscription feature, it came with a (presumably unintended) side effect: new podcast episodes sometimes don’t show up. Back in May, Jason speculated about some of the possible causes, the most likely culprit being Apple changing how it handles podcasts behind the scenes.
But more than two months later, this problem persists.
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I haven’t seen any direct acknowledgment from Apple about this issue over the last two months, much less any indication of what went wrong and how it plans to fix it.
Previously:
Update (2021-08-09): Marco Arment:
ATP fell out of Apple Podcasts search and API again. We’ve changed nothing recently. Haven’t even logged in.
Still seeing constant missing-episode reports from other shows, too.
In case you thought things were back to normal over at Apple Podcasts… they’re still far from it.
Update (2021-09-08): Ashley Carman (via Nilay Patel):
But in the months since Apple Podcasts’ announcement, podcasters say the platform has failed them in various ways. For a company that prides itself on functionality, design, and ease of use, the new backend’s bungled launch is a mess. Podcasters say Apple Podcasts Connect, which they’re required to use in order to take advantage of subscriptions, has a confusing interface that often leads to user error scenarios that have them pinging Apple at all hours of the day in a panic — one podcaster’s entire show was seemingly archived until Apple stepped in to help and explain what happened.
The updated app’s been buggy since launch.
Jason Snell (tweet):
I talked to Apple reps about this back in June, and basically made all the points raised in the article. The weaknesses of Apple’s initial subscription offering, most particularly the burdens placed on podcasters to use Apple’s limited back-end tools, were apparent the moment the feature was announced.
The real question is, who at Apple decided this product was good enough to be released? Especially given the related changes made to the Podcast app that managed to break podcast updates in a serious and lasting way.
Podcast app Base features:
- new episode list primary feature
- reliable syncing between devices & homepods
- clear interface without duplication
- listened to episodes removed
- easy to subscribe / remove subscriptions
- widget shows current whats playing
All of this broken
3 Comments RSS · Twitter
It's odd--Podcasts sync is actually improving for me. Looking at my library shows many podcasts from my Mojave-running iMac all arriving on the same day. It's clear they did something to fix it.
And I'd just paid for Downcast, too ...
Not sure why people still put up with Apple Podcasts. It's been buggy for years. I've been using Pocket Casts on my iPhone and web for a while and have no complaints.
Apple royally screwed up the Podcasts app. It’s so buggy and unintuitive you have to wonder if they are even user testing these new versions. For now, I’ve switched to Google Podcasts, which is pretty bare bones, but it has a trim silence feature built in.