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Posts tagged with "podcasts"

Apple Introduces Changes to Podcasting→

Alongside the introduction of a revamped Podcasts app in iOS 11, Apple is making a few tweaks at the podcast feed level that will improve the way shows can be organized and displayed inside podcasting apps. Jason Snell shares the details on Six Colors:

New extensions to Apple’s podcast feed specification will allow podcasts to define individual seasons and explain whether an episode is a teaser, a full episode, or bonus content. These extensions will be read by the Podcast app and used to present a podcast in a richer way than the current, more linear, approach. (Since podcast feeds are just text, other podcast apps will be free to follow Apple’s lead and also alter how they display podcasts based on these tags.)

Users will be able to download full seasons, and the Podcasts app will know if a podcast is intended to be listened to in chronological order—“start at the first episode!”—or if it’s more timely, where the most recent episode is the most important.

As the world of podcasting has grown, there is now a more diverse selection of shows than ever before, leading to the need for more nuanced formatting of those shows. I appreciate how Apple is implementing these changes at a feed level so that third-party apps can take advantage of them as well.

The full array of podcasting changes, including a brief walkthrough of the redesigned Podcasts app in iOS 11, were first covered in a session from WWDC.

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Castro 2.3 Brings Podcast Triage Through Rich Notifications

Today the team at Supertop announced the release of Castro 2.3, which introduces rich notification support for the podcast app.

Castro 2 launched last August with a new interface for managing podcast episodes that centers around an inbox and queue. With an increasing number of great podcasts available, the traditional model of subscribing to a show and adding all of its episodes to your feed can get overwhelming. In Castro 2 the solution to this problem is to have new episodes land in an inbox. The inbox allows users to decide which episodes make it to their queue for listening, and which don’t.

Previously, when notifications for a new episode came in, you were presented the options to play, queue, or archive the episode. But unfortunately, while the episode’s title would display in the notification, with many podcasts a title isn’t enough information to properly decide whether the show’s content is something you’d be interested in. As such, taking action on a notification often couldn’t happen in an informed way without opening the full app anyways. That changes with today’s update. Thanks to its implementation of iOS 10’s rich notification framework, a notification from Castro will now display a show’s artwork and a portion of the episode description along with the aforementioned action buttons. So now when a show’s episode title is San Frosé, you can be well informed about what the subject matter actually is.

Besides using rich notifications as a triage method, Supertop has one other interesting implementation of the feature. If you pause an episode when there are less than three minutes remaining, Castro will immediately send a silent notification that presents you with the option to archive the show and, optionally, play the next show in your queue. So if a show has a couple minutes worth of outro that you prefer to skip, rather than hitting the skip button several times you can now simply hit pause, then interact with the notification that appears in order to either move to the next show or end playback altogether.

The full list of changes in Castro 2.3 is available on Supertop’s blog. Castro can be downloaded from the App Store.

Overcast 3.0: iOS 10 Features, UI Changes, Easy Queuing, and an Interview with Marco Arment

Overcast, Marco Arment’s popular podcast app for iOS, is defined by an interesting dualism: its essence has remained remarkably consistent with the original version released three years ago; at the same time, Arment has periodically revisited Overcast’s design, features, and business model to build a superior listening environment for a larger audience.

The same judicious iteration permeates Overcast 3.0, launching today on the App Store. With improvements to episode management, visual changes aimed at modernizing the interface, and an evolution of the existing subscription-based model, Overcast 3.0 is another thoughtful combination of new ideas and old tropes, which converge in a refreshed yet instinctively familiar listening experience.

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Castro Makes Accessing Podcasts Easier Than Ever and Drops Price

Castro is designed around the philosophy of making it easy to access the podcast episodes you want to hear. The focus of Castro 2.0 when it launched in August was to make it simple to assemble a single queue of podcast episodes using an inbox to triage episodes from your podcast subscriptions.

Version 2.2 of Castro leverages its flat inbox/queue hierarchy to its advantage with new ways to get at your favorite podcasts. On the iPhone, Castro adds a new widget and 3D Touch support. By default, both display the first four podcast episodes in your queue with buttons featuring show art that can be tapped to start or resume an episode.

Castro’s widget can be expanded to reveal up to twelve episodes at the top of your queue. The use of show art makes identifying and playing an episode easy. The one downside of this approach though, is that there is no way to distinguish between different episodes if you have multiple episodes of the same show near the top of your queue.

In addition to displaying the first four episodes in your queue, 3D Touch adds shortcuts to other functionality, including the ability to kick off a search for new shows in Castro’s Discover tab using text on your clipboard, a feature that is handy if you read about a podcast somewhere that doesn’t include a ‘subscribe’ link. You can also set a sleep timer or jump directly to your inbox or queue with 3D Touch.

Finally, Castro 2.2 adds CarPlay integration, which I previewed in my CarPlay review last week. With just a queue and inbox to contend with, Castro makes navigating podcast episodes in your car a breeze. Instead of drilling through layers of playlists to find what you want to hear, you can go straight to your queue, or jump to your inbox if you’ve exhausted the queue, using the tabs at the top of Castro’s CarPlay interface.

Castro 2.2 is a free update for existing customers and $3.99 for new customers, a $1.00 price reduction from its launch price.

Kickstarting Season 3 of Welcome to Macintosh→

Mark Bramhill, the creator of Welcome to Macintosh: a Tiny Show About a Big Fruit Company, has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund Season 3 of his highly-regarded podcast about Apple and the community that surrounds it. Bramhill’s show seemingly came out of nowhere in early 2015. In a sea of Apple-themed podcasts, Welcome Macintosh set itself apart by being short and tightly edited. Each episode of seasons one and two focused on a single story or theme from Apple history like skeuomorphism and the time Song a Day Mann made Steve Jobs dance onto stage at the antenna-gate Apple event.

Bramhill previews some of what he has planned if the Kickstarter succeeds:

In one episode, I pitch an emoji for adoption in the international Unicode standard, following it all the way from a concept through the bureaucracy of the emoji-industrial complex. In another, I trace the surprisingly dramatic past of an app that was on the forefront of the MP3 revolution. And there are a whole bunch of others. Beginning next summer: eight brand new episodes for Season 3.

The kind of show that Bramhill produces is time consuming, hard work, and it takes money. So for Season 3, Bramhill has launched a Kickstarter. He is trying to raise $10,000 to cover everything from file hosting, to travel expenses. The campaign is off to a good start and includes some nice perks for backers like vinyl stickers and t-shirts. Mark is a natural storyteller. Check out the past episodes of Welcome to Macintosh and the short episodes he will be releasing during the Kickstarter campaign. I bet if you do, you’ll find yourself on his Kickstarter page backing Season 3.

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Castro 2 Review

Castro 2 from Supertop demonstrates that there is still plenty of room for innovation in podcast apps. Although every podcast app starts with the goal of helping listeners find and play podcasts, the path each app takes varies as widely as the listening habits of users.

Castro 2 eliminates much of the complexity of other podcast apps by focusing on a single podcast queue. The result is a focused listening experience that emphasizes episodes over shows, playlists, or feeds. It’s not an approach that will appeal to everyone, but if you find yourself looking for a simpler way to manage podcasts, or listening to some, but not all, episodes of shows, Castro is worth considering.

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Pocket Casts 6

When it comes to podcast apps on iOS, we are really spoiled for choice. There are many options, but I would say that there are four podcast apps in particular that rise above the rest; Apple’s own Podcasts app, Overcast, Pocket Casts, and Castro. Narrowing that field of four to determine which is objectively the best is an almost impossible task from where I stand. Instead, which one is best will depend entirely on which app’s design and feature set most closely aligns with how you want to manage and listen to podcasts.

Keeping that in mind, just over a week ago was the release of a major new version of Pocket Casts. Now on version 6 for iOS, Pocket Casts is the podcast app that has been around the longest (out of those four listed above), first launching in January 2011. It’s also the one with the most cross-platform support, running on iOS (iPhone and iPad), Android, Windows Phone, and on the web.

So, what’s new in Pocket Casts 6? The tl;dr version is that the user interface has been redesigned in various ways, most notably with the addition of a dark theme and “up next” queue improvements. There are new audio effects to trim silences and volume boost for those podcasts which sound too quiet. The iPad version now supports multitasking (Split View and Picture in Picture), and whilst it isn’t noticeable to users, almost the entire app has been re-written in Swift.

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Overcast 2.5.2 with Quicksync→

Marco Arment on the latest update to Overcast:

In the last few Overcast releases, I’ve been optimizing the sync protocol and decreasing the burden of each sync to both sides (my servers and your iPhones). In 2.5.2, we’ll reap some of the benefits with the first version of what I’ve been informally calling “quicksync”.

In short, syncing Overcast between multiple devices — say, an iPhone and an iPad — is now much faster and more accurate, making multi-device usage much more practical and compelling.

“I’ve been testing this for a few weeks…”, the saying goes, but it’s true. In my tests during the beta, quicksync made switching between podcast episodes on two devices faster and less annoying than before.

Quicksync worked well in my typical use case: I’m washing dishes and Overcast is playing through the iPad Pro’s speakers, which are louder; then, I have to go out and connect my iPhone to my car’s audio, resuming Overcast to the same episode. With quicksync, I no longer have to skip ahead to catch up with the iPad’s progress. Marco did good work here and I hope the servers hold up well.

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