In this version it’s OK if you weren’t willing to pay money for another podcast app, but I can’t find any reason to use this instead of Instacast. I’m not in love with everything that Instacast does, but the iPhone version has gotten a lot better in recent versions. Podcasts 1.0 has a few problems that are going to keep me from switching, none of which I think are power user things:
- iCloud Syncing: Instacast and Downcast both do this. I usually use my iPad to listen to podcasts when I'm at home, and my iPhone when I'm walking, so this is pretty important to me.
- Kludgy Interface: Way too much tapping around to do simple things like marking an episode as played.
- Reverse Playback Order: This one might be a little power user-ish; you can only playback automatically from newest to oldest. Either is fine as a default, but the one they chose isn't the one I use. I think anyone else who listens to 5by5 After Dark probably has the same preference.
If Apple updated the app to fix these things I might give it a shot. iCloud support seems likely, changing playback order slightly less so. I think we’re probably stuck with the kludgy interface. iBooks, however, has gotten a lot better over time, so I guess there’s no reason to think this won’t as well.
