by Apple let’s loose it’s own Podcasts app, breaking them free from being buried in the iTunes menu. Arguably it’s aimed at those who aren’t familiar with podcasts in general but it’s still not that bad even if it does lack some essential features.
Aimed perhaps more at those not familiar with the pod-casting world, podcasts suggests you start in the “top “Podcasts” directory to grab some content.
Navigation is distinctly Apple TV in feel. You navigate with left and right swiping for categories on the home screen and then up down motions for sub content.
If you want to look for more types of casts or for a particular favourite a tap on the catalogue button takes you back to the older iTunes podcast interface.
There’s no mention of push notifications but episodes can be downloaded ready for steaming later on. Episodes can be downloaded by wifi or data. Try for the life of me I couldn’t find the nice option to download via wifi only so keep an eye on that.
Playback
When listening to a cast tapping or swiping upwards the display art reveals a swish reel to reel tape deck where you an set a timer to stop a podcast after a pre determined time, speed up or slow it down. It’s a nice graphical touch that works a lot better than say contacts on the mac as a reference point.
Overall
It’s a long way to go to match up with the mighty instacast and in what seems to be an on going trend features like wifi only, push notifications are seemingly missing. Yet with all that in mind it’ll no doubt increase pod cast awareness and hopefully people will seek out and support podcast apps with the missing features.
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