Apple has released their own Podcasts app into the App Store. It allows you to listen or watch, stream, download, and subscribe to your favorite audio and video podcasts right from your iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Before now, you had to sync subscribed podcasts from iTunes desktop on Mac or PC, stream or download single episodes from the iTunes app and play them in the Music or Video app, or use one of the third party podcast app. We recently took a look at Instacast, Downcast, and Pocket Casts. Let's see how Podcasts stacks up against them.
Navigation and interface
Podcasts starts you off with your podcast library. Here you'll see all the podcasts you are currently subscribed. You can toggle between tile and list view with just a tap at the top. You can also tap edit and rearrange or delete subscriptions.
Along the bottom you can choose to view your podcast library or top stations. The top stations feature will allow you to tab through different categories of podcasts on a dial at the top. From there you can select podcasts, subscribe to them, or download individual episodes. To play an episode just tap on the episode title and your podcasts with being playing.
Listening to or watching podcasts and viewing show notes
Once you've started listening to or watching a podcast, you will be presented with some controls along the bottom. You can skip through different episodes, pause, rewind in 10 second increments, fast forward in 30 second increments, or adjust volume. If you want to scrub through the podcast you can do so on the timed slider. Other playback features include setting a sleep time or sharing that particular episode via e-mail, twitter, or text message.
When it comes to show notes, you'll only be able to view them from your podcasts library which is disappointing. Several other podcatcher apps allow you to view show notes directly from your now playing screen so you can follow along when show notes are provided. I've also found this to be a nice feature for skipping through sections of a podcast you aren't interested in. The Podcasts app doesn't make this an easy task.
The most infuriating thing I've found about the Podcasts app is that it marks episodes as played immediately. If you play an episode for even a few seconds the app will frequently mark the episode as completely played. This does not make much sense to me. Even the Videos app for iOS will mark episodes as partially played. I would think this is even more important for podcasts. Some episodes seem to show a partially played icon while others will not. It's just not a very consistent experience.
Streaming and downloading
You can listen to podcasts by either streaming them or downloading them directly to your iPhone or iPad. If you plan on being somewhere that has no service, you can tap the download button on any episode to physically download it to your device. If you are on Wi-Fi or have a high data plan you can save space by just streaming episodes.
When you initially subscribe to a podcast it won't actually download anything for you. All the episodes will show up in your library but if you tap on them to play them you'll be given the streaming version. So be careful about that if you've got a capped data plan. You can tap the gear on any podcast subscription to have the app download any newly added content automatically.
There's also no notification support, so you won't know when new episodes are available until you open the Podcasts app. And because Apple put Podcasts in the App Store instead of building it into iOS, it doesn't get any special background privileges, so new episodes won't download until you go to the app either.
That makes it fair for other podcast app developers, but it's not as convenient for users. Having a way for content apps to "wake up" and download fresh material, like Newsstand apps, would be a great feature for iOS 6 or future versions of iOS...
iCloud sync
The most disappointing part of the Podcasts app to me is that there is very little iCloud sync. Apple says it will sync your play state between iOS devices, but I couldn't get it to work. Also, leaving out Apple TV and iTunes desktop makes it less useful anyway.
It's also less than ideal that I can't sync subscriptions between devices. It means I have to subscribe (or unsubscribe over time) to each show, on each device, over and over again. For a lot of podcasts on a lot of devices, that's not user friendly.
Considering iCloud is Apple's own in-house cloud syncing solution, I am baffled at the fact that the Podcasts app doesn't better integrate with it. Hopefully that's near the top of the coming features list.
Conclusion
Whether you are a casual podcast listener or a hardcore subscriber that needs all the other bells and whistles, there are much better options than Apple's own Podcasts app.
If you want a good podcatcher app, Instacast is a much better solution that will actually sync all your subscriptions between your iPhone and iPad. Instacast will even send you push notifications when new episodes are available. While independent apps may not be able to compete with the free price tag, they definitely offer better functionality and are a lot more customizable than Podcasts.
Unless and until Apple updates and rounds out the feature set, when it comes to podcast apps, you really will get what you pay for.
Free - Download Now
Additional resources:
Reader comments
Podcasts for iPhone and iPad app review
Nice review, I was wondering what the Apple solution was like. Going to stick with Downcast :)
Awesome review. You hit the irritations I have with it. I'd also like to see a way to hide podcasts we've already listened to. The way it is now, if you want to play oldest to newest, you need to sort that way. If there are three episodes you need to listen to, there are seventeen you may have already listened to in front of it that you then need to scroll down to get to the new ones. Reverse the sort to go newest to oldest, and, yes, the new ones rise to the top, but you then need manual intervention to listen to them in chronological order.
It is nice love the automatic download feature but i prefer the overall feel of pocket cass so i am going to stay there for a while..
The podcast app is extremely disappointing. One semi-relevant iOS6 question -- can you still play podcasts at all from the music app, or is it gone altogether? I have built smart playlists around the latest episodes of a handful of podcasts in order to listen to them together when out and about without manual intervention, something which does not seem possible within this app at all.
3rd-party podcast app developers can rejoice at the new Apple Podcast app -- it's pretty, but not at all user-friendly. Personally, it's all about Downcast for me now -- it does everything you wish Apple's Podcast app did ;-)
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/downcast/id393858566?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4
A few other notes on the app ...
Podcasts lists shows newest first. So if you listen to a show daily, it starts playing yesterday's podcast (if you haven't deleted it yet) after you finish today's. In the music app they are sorted oldest first so this never happens. Also if you are catching up on a few days worth of shows the Music app plays them in the right order.
Podcasts you've listened to in Podcasts doesn't mark these items in the Music app as played. So if you are set to sync unplayed episodes in iTunes items will not be removed from your device. It seems once you move to this app they expect you to remove all your subscriptions from iTunes and only get your shows OTA?
I would have appreciated larger controls (for use in the car) rather than the useless reel to reel animation.
Totally nailed the review. Exactly what I was thinking. Nice job Ally! I do find Downcast a little much for my needs some of the time, but Podcasts just isn't ready for primetime yet.
A couple of other issues I've encountered are even bigger show-stoppers for me. First, it doesn't auto-resume when I reconnect to BlueTooth in my car. Instead, the iPod/Music app auto-resumes. By itself, this is pretty much a DOA issue. The second big issue is that it resets playback speed when moving to the next episode.
Fine review. I find the functionality of the Podcasts app too limited too. I also found out that the app isn't good to sort podcasts by date.
A couple things. I tested the syncing. I does work if you download the episode but does not when streaming.
Not great but I bet they get this figured out with ML and iOS6.
I actually really like the app. Podcasts in the iTunes store app seemed broken and this solves for this. I like that you can either stream or download. The interface is very clean and the best I have used. There should be an option to sync subscriptions but I can see why you might not want to. Again ML iTunes may address this.
All in all this is a good 1.0 app.
CheapCaribbean — I recently booked a trip with CC at a "4.5 star" newly opened all inclusive property. After reading numerous very bad reviews about the property AND after they removed this property from their website I called to ask for a refund. My travel date is still a month out, they refused to refund my money, tried to upsell me to an equivalent property for an additional $1000 and were extremely rude. This was my first and LAST time to ever use Cheap Caribbean.
The most infuriating thing I've found about the Podcasts app is that if you have "auto-download" enabled, scrolling freezes constantly for 10-20 seconds at a time; in fact anything you click on has several seconds lag (on Ipad 1 and Iphone 3GS).