iOS 18: Podcasts App Now Shows Chapter Segments When Scrubbing

That’s a nice little addition. Wish the chapter markers were visible before you started to scrub though.

Ever so often I try to use Apple Podcasts like I did back when I synced my iPod with iTunes… when everything worked fine. Now, trillions of dollars later, instead of my devices staying in sync with a FireWire cable,

They all wirelessly act as if they are supposed to be as out of sync as possible to torture me. iPhone, 8 unplayed episodes… Mac, 30 unplayed episodes… make all of them played and start from scratch… and BOOM! old news broadcast of an hourly update from 2022.

Difference OSes, different iPads, different phones, different Macs… not a single thing has made a difference in the last few years now. It completely baffles me how an app can be so bad for me. There has to be something going on with some server somewhere with my account being not quite right. I don’t know enough about computers to know what's going on, but I wish that the same syncing in Apple Music was used in Apple Podcasts...

Apple Music: we can tell the immediate split second you hit play on your MacBook Air and we will stop your MacBook Pro from playing another half-second of your song.

Apple Podcasts: we don’t even know what year it is, here's an old episode of a podcast you have hit "mark all as played" dozens of times on, even deleting everything in your library and resubscribing won’t fix. listen to this old show from years ago while we can somehow keep mail, and finder, and reminders, and notes, and voice memos, and photos, and basically everything else synced up.

It makes Marco's 9.99 a year for Overcast such a great deal. he saves me frustration and according to the settings has saved me 470 hours of my life using smart speed.

Worst podcast app ever.

Ever so often I try to use Apple Podcasts like I did back when I synced my iPod with iTunes… when everything worked fine. Now, trillions of dollars later, instead of my devices staying in sync with a FireWire cable,

They all wirelessly act as if they are supposed to be as out of sync as possible to torture me. iPhone, 8 unplayed episodes… Mac, 30 unplayed episodes… make all of them played and start from scratch… and BOOM! old news broadcast of an hourly update from 2022.

Difference OSes, different iPads, different phones, different Macs… not a single thing has made a difference in the last few years now. It completely baffles me how an app can be so bad for me. There has to be something going on with some server somewhere with my account being not quite right. I don’t know enough about computers to know what's going on, but I wish that the same syncing in Apple Music was used in Apple Podcasts...

Apple Music: we can tell the immediate split second you hit play on your MacBook Air and we will stop your MacBook Pro from playing another half-second of your song.

Apple Podcasts: we don’t even know what year it is, here's an old episode of a podcast you have hit "mark all as played" dozens of times on, even deleting everything in your library and resubscribing won’t fix. listen to this old show from years ago while we can somehow keep mail, and finder, and reminders, and notes, and voice memos, and photos, and basically everything else synced up.

It makes Marco's 9.99 a year for Overcast such a great deal. he saves me frustration and according to the settings has saved me 470 hours of my life using smart speed.

Apple has no business making a podcast app if all they are gonna do is half-ass it and offer a drip feed of enhancements every so often. They approach levels of not groking what a podcast player should be and what people want that is close but not quite eclipsing their institutional wonkiness with games as a medium. The fact that Marco out-Apples Apple in terms of programming prowess should concern them. If they arent gonna throw the same attention into this get out of the way and let some folks better-suited to catering to those needs step up and make some money in the space. Apple Podcasts remains a dumpster fire of inconsistency and I don’t understand why anyone would use it when so many great alternatives exist. Another example of Apple’s terrible, institutional inability to walk and chew gum.

Good. Should be useful.

A welcome improvement.