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Comment by gumberculese | Hacker News Reader

The Apple podcast app has gotten continuously worse over the past few years, I'm excited to see that 3rd parties are picking up the slack, but I'm still pretty disappointed that Apple has neglected one of the most important aspect of the phone (for me, anyway).

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Try Overcast, I’m a big fan.

I finally gave up on the Apple app years ago after it was unable to sync my place for the 1200th time.

Never had that issue with Overcast.

I like Marco Arment and I admire his convictions, but I've avoided Overcast on principle because of a) his initial willingness to burn cash in order to gain as many users as possible (at the expense of third-party apps like Castro), and b) the app's gratuitous subscription model. I hope he keeps up the good work, but I also really hope that PocketCasts continues to be a worthy opponent.

What's the principle involved here? Not liking something being a business?

I'm uncomfortable with the fact that Marco would frequently proclaim his support for indie development, but was also willing to outright lose money in order to undercut his competition and dominate the podcast market. (In his own words.) Yes, if you have a lot of money, you can acquire tons of customers by releasing your app for free and using a half-hearted "patronage" model. Most developers don't have that option. It might make good business sense, but doing it while saying you care about the indie scene strikes me as hypocritical. (I concede that this is perhaps a petty and uncharitable interpretation of events, but it really miffed me when it was happening.)

As for subscriptions, I simply hate that business model with a passion and will do almost anything to avoid it.

The question with Overcast, is whether it will be able to compete in the open market with Marco's almost quixotic desire to avoid any form of tracking whatsoever. He won't even track stop/start/listen actions, and now he's eliminating tracking pixels (https://marco.org/2018/04/27/overcast42) - all very admirable, but by foregoing all the obvious revenue opportunities, will he be able to make it up by attracting a large enough audience who will purchase/subscribe to his app so that he can continue to develop it? Is privacy an important enough attribute for the podcast listening audience?

This is the weirdest critique of an app I've ever read on HN. Overcast isn't tracking users enough?

He also runs ads in Overcast, so he’s not relying on subscriptions alone.

And a popular podcast that makes him $5500/week in sponsorship revenue (x3 ads per show but /3 hosts).

Seconding Overcast - it has traditionally traded blows with Pocket Casts as the best 3rd party podcast app on iOS, but I like it better for the smart speed and voice boosting features.

Overcast is continuing to go against the podcast industry grain by making privacy a distinguishing feature (https://marco.org/2018/04/27/overcast42). Good move. It's not useful to me as I have Android as well as iOS devices, but if I was Apple-locked, I'd be having a serious look at Overcast.

I agree overcast is miles ahead of pocketcasts.It protects privacy of the users, smart speed is awesome (removing silences and thus saving tons of time) and app is not laggy as pocketcasts was

Volume boost is part of pocketcasts as well

I've never used the Apple one, but Pocket Casts is the only app I've ever paid for on four platforms (Android, iOS, Windows Phone and the web player) and not regretted it at all. It's a gem.

I'm only on 3 (no iOS), and while I wouldn't say that I regretted the purchase on Windows Phone, it certainly wasn't because it was a solid performer there - it was a purchase to show support and encourage development.

I've always worried a bit that Shifty Jelly's model would prove unsustainable with money from new sales needed to continue paying for their servers and I've felt at times that they were strapped for resources, so this overall seems positive to me.

That's funny, I've had the exact opposite impression. The only thing I don't like about Apple Podcasts is that, by default, there's no way to play episodes chronologically, independent of podcast. But you can add this feature by creating a "station".

> The Apple podcast app has gotten continuously worse over the past few years

Can you name a few specific ways in which you think this is true? (I personally think it's come a long way from the awful skeuomorphic reel-to-reel metaphor, but I'd love to hear your thoughts.)

The past few years? iTunes and Apple's podcast app have always been terrible.

Try PocketCasts, it's amazing!

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