I’ve no problem with that, but trying regularly over many years, I can’t get pocket casts to reliably sync across my devices so I can pick up where I left off. It’s pretty buggy in places too. Automattic is often where once exciting software goes to become a cash cow: maintained and working enough to get subs but not going anywhere much. Before it ended up with Automattic, it went through several owners and was infamously bad for a while.
Castro seems to polarise people. I never got why people like it, but I know people who really do and they tend to think that Overcast’s whole approach is wrong. But, it’s undeniably the case that Castro simply disappeared not long ago and has had times when it has been much more broken that Overcast has ever been.
I definitely don’t use Overcast because Marco writes it and I have often tried to find something better, but choosing a podcast app can very easily be about jumping from the frying pan into the fire. I wish we had a wider, better and more secure podcasting ecosystem with a choice of truly great apps from excellent developers, but we don’t. I even wish I could live with Apple’s podcast app, but don’t get me started on that!
100%. I still won’t give them money after I subscribed and asked them about their Apple Watch app not working. “Oh yeah, our dev for the watch left, probably won’t be fixed for a while”. All while “sync to your watch” was an image on the app page.
I know it’s under new ownership now and they seem to be righting the ship but I’m still a little sour.
I’m thankful for the whole category, honestly. Music apps aren’t nearly as weird as podcast apps. We’re blessed to have these choices.
(I’m a Castro fan, love the new owner, also like Pocket Casts and Downcast, but I would encourage any Overcast user to bet on Marco fixing everything and continuing to develop new features after that.)
The whole, continually curate your queue thing in Castro never made sense for me. With Overcast I set up 2 playlists and only added things from Playlist Two if Playlist one was getting empty. Now with 3 priorities, I only need 1 playlist, and I barely have to look at the app, just hit play.
Thanks for that. It’s a remarkably fair and interesting review, I think, from someone who obviously used the apps himself, a lot, before commenting.
I really understood why he decided to stick with pocketcasts (his use of a single “queue” instead of playlists) and I noticed his slightly qualified approval of pocketcasts’ syncing (Whenever I’ve used pcoketcasts I find it slow and slightly unreliable compared with overcast). I prefer playlists to a single queue, so I’m happy to agree with his review points, but reach the opposite conclusion.
That’s what a good tech review should give you: specific information, a fair and comprehensive “feel” for the app or device and not attempting to persuade me. We need more like that.
With the latest update and my podcasts set to Delete after 24 hours, this is still not working, and they are not purged from the device (neither after 24 hours nor ever after). So, yes, this seems to still be broken on multiple levels.
My willingness to put up with beta-ish releases and updates largely depends on developers’ attitudes and the willingness to work through the feedback, and I’m not seeing the right attitude here with Marco (he’s stated he does not intend to go through all the feedback, there are significant feature regressions in the app, it’s apparently a mess below the surface etc.).
There are developers who value feedback and are quick to respond. I’ve only had good experiences with Readdle (Spark, PDF Expert) who were quick to fix bugs I reported and have always (!) emailed back to confirm that they have been fixed; I reported a bug on Craft’s Slack channel yesterday and they responded in seconds; I’ve done two surveys with Craft last year and have emailed back and forth with one of their product leads with additional feedback, most of which was accepted in future releases. I’ve worked with Devonthink support on a couple of occasions through bugs. I had even heard back from Apple twice when I reported bugs, as they wanted additional logs and feedback. Even Microsoft got in touch once or twice for more product feedback.
So if I see that developers care about their product, I also care enough to help; I send feedback and logs, and I’m happy to help and even to put up with a broken release or two if they care enough to provide a heads-up and not just release a major, feature-incomplete rewrite with no warning whatsoever. Which is what we have now with Overcast.
This is all so sad. The good news is that I never updated the app on my iPhone so I’m still enjoying the old app. I will do that til that is no longer an option. I loved the old Overcast. When I was in that industry, I would recommend it to anyone that would listen although I did caveat it that if you want support (which was never really something I needed), don’t hold your breath.
Maybe in 6 months I’ll look at it. I’ll see what features are new or if they are bugs.
But because I couldn’t help myself, I ended up taking a 10 min peek at PocketCasts and Downcast last night. Downcast was the first app I ever used but I won’t go back to that from what I saw. PocketCasts was intriguing especially when I found out it had bookmarks. At a different time in my life, I would’ve killed for bookmarks. However, $40/year is not something I’m willing to pay for that feature as I don’t care about any others that are considered premium.
The one thing that I would have to get used to in PocketCasts is only having one queue. I’m so used to creating multiple playlists.
Again, luckily, I don’t have to worry about anything now unless I accidentally update the app on my iPhone.
Hanlon’s razor might apply here: “never ascribe to malice what could be explained by incompetence (or accident or just stuff happening)”.
I don’t think there is any evidence that Marco wanted to upset his customers or didn’t care about them. He’s spent a lot of time recently explaining that he felt he just had to ship the radical re-write of Overcast now, knowing that it would generate a lot of negative feedback, some of which would include genuine problems and bugs. He has said in various places that he felt it was the only way he could move himself and his very long-standing app out of a kind of limbo in which there was no end in sight because the re-write was essential but vast amounts of work on it were not making anything better for his customers and his business.
Attaching that determination, almost need, to end the re-writing stage to the ten year anniversary of the app makes sense (especially as one of the long term problems with Overcast has been that it is often late the the party and has to catch up - e.g. breaking when an OS is released)
He is already doing what he has repeatedly said he wanted to do: made the big change and is now working very hard on the immediate fixes and once through those he will, for the first time in years, be able to turn his attention to making things better for customers. It’s far from ideal, for him or users, but as he has said in many places, it’s the only thing he thought that would work.
I’ve often been frustrated and disappointed by Overcast, as well as by the whole way that the software industry works these days. Could things be done better? Of course they could, but they are what they are and we are where we are. Developers develop what they want, the way they want and are driven by many pressures. We pays our money (or not) and makes our choice.
As I said, there aren’t many choices of podcast player apps and none of them is truly great IMHO, but that isn’t because someone is trying to upset me. I agree with @snelly (much earlier in the thread). I’m willing to be patient, especially when I know that changing podcast app now is likely to be like jumping out of the frying pan, into the fire.
Here’s the thing. There’s been no apology for making that choice, or for the impact it’s had on the users of Overcast. no contrition. That’s what annoys me.
I’m not expecting him to “fall on his sword”, but I expect some empathy for his customers and an expression of embarrassment (that may not be the right emotion but hopefully you see what I’m getting at) that problems on the app were so widespread, in fact he’s played everything down as if the impact was nothing.
From what he’s said, I suspect that he felt there wasn’t a choice to make, and he’s right to say that however he made the changes, there were going to be a lot of people who would not like it and would take it personally.
It’s important to keep it in perspective too. I had a couple of days when I couldn’t use my preferred playlists and I am still doing a couple of things manually that ought to be automatic. It’s not the end of the world. There are other apps available.
Except that’s not true. This has been verbosely discussed above, and it isn’t a “you’re damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t” sort of scenario.
Will some customers be upset by any rewrite? Sure. That can’t be avoided.
But there was no requirement to ship a broken product. There was no requirement to completely skip end-user testing. He has a “who’s who” of tech podcasters and professional reviewers who would have been happy to test and file bug reports. That, plus a week or two release delay, would have addressed the majority of peoples’ initial problems.
If only the ability to export your OPML weren’t completely unimplemented.
Sure. You go to McDonald’s for lunch, you order a Big Mac, and you get a fried Filet O Fish patty on a cinnamon roll with a caesar salad dumped on top. It’s not the end of the world, and you shouldn’t let it ruin your day.
But that doesn’t mean something didn’t go horribly, horribly wrong in the kitchen. And if you brought that to management’s attention, I would expect a reaction of “OMG, how did that even happen?” - not “well, you’ll never make everybody happy. Can’t be helped.”
The new Overcast has some problems, but at this point I plan to use it as is. And if I run into a show stopper I have Apple Podcasts set up with all my shows as a backup.
What I don’t understand is why some people seem to be taking these problems personally. An update was shipped, it has problems, and the solo developer is trying to fix them. At this point I’d prefer he concentrate on doing that rather than answering emails or writing apologies.
I don’t expect the same service from a single developer as I do from companies with 5, 10, or 100+ employees.
I use Apple Podcasts still after briefly testing the new Overcast. Overcast has some nice features, but am I the only one that is not seeing a sync between devices without a manual refresh? I’ve got the same sync account setup on Mac, iPad, and iPhone & Watch. If I pause on my iPhone and put the app into the background, I could wait 3-4 minutes and still not syncing to the same point in a show on the iPad. I’d write support but I know that Marco doesn’t respond. Anyone having luck?
