Apple’s Podcasts App 1.1.2: Much Improved
When Apple first released the Podcasts app for iOS, I was impressed. They did some interesting UI design work and seemed to handle the basic use cases pretty well. It was easy to find, subscribe to, and play podcasts. And really, that's all I want from a podcast app.
But it was horribly broken. The UI would hang, it was slow, and it would randomly mark old episodes as new. It was just frustrating to use, and I eventually abandoned it.
But every new version, they'd promise bug fixes and performance improvements, and I'd try it again, because I liked it.
And I have to say that finally, with the current version (1.1.2), the app is working well for me.
I have yet to see any delay doing anything with the app. The bugs are fixed, and the app is working well for me.
One of the reasons I like using Apple's app instead of the alternatives like Instacast or Downcast, is integration with the rest of iOS.
With Podcasts, when you bring up the media player controls on the lock screen, the fast forward and rewind buttons show -15s and +15s to show that the buttons will actually skip forward or back, and not skip podcasts. Nice.
You can ask Siri to play a particular podcast.
And being an Apple app, Podcasts can initiate background downloads whenever it wants. And they've added the option to not use cellular data to download new podcasts episodes, an omission that in and of itself would make the app unacceptable to many people.