Okay. It’s never been my intention to make this blog about nerdy minutiae such as iPhone apps and the like. But the coincidence here is just too much to let slide. Since writing my last post about how much I love Instacast—and how it’s so well designed for those of use who listen to podcasts regularly—it’s almost spooky that Apple seems to have hopped onboard with building apps and features that are specifically targeted towards podcast listeners.
Specifically, Apple did two things. First, on the very day (yesterday) that I wrote that post, they released their own dedicated podcast app. (Did anyone see that coming?) I haven’t used it much at all yet, but it appears to do much of what I like about Instacast. It definitely manages subscriptions, which the Music app never really did in a comprehensive way. It has both skip forward and back, although for some reason, skip back is only 10 seconds. And I’m assuming that it has the Continuity feature. I assume it does because just today (or was it yesterday?) an update for iTunes desktop software came out. I used it today for the first time to listen to a part of a Podcast I wanted to review. I paused because I needed to get up and get some coffee. I pressed play again and omigosh. It automatically started thirty seconds before where I initially paused it.
Holy crap.
So as I say I’m assuming that the podcast app has that same feature as well. I may give it a try over the next week or so. For sure, Instacast has set the bar pretty high. And already, there are things about the Apple Podcast app that I don’t like, such as this bizarre skeuomorphic interface:
Reel-to-reel? Are you kidding me?
We’ll see...