Tell HN: Auto-download in Apple Podcasts is so unreliable it's basically useless

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46585241

by garyfirestorm • 6 months ago

4 4 6 months ago

news.ycombinator.com

Hop on an international flight, remember you had set automatic downloads for your favorite podcast show. Open the app to find the latest (or even last few) episodes are not downloaded. Why is it so hard to auto download podcasts when the phone is charging at night and connected to a WiFi? What’s the point of auto-download button?

aristofun• 6 months ago

They still use XCode to write software in 21st century. What do you expect? Be happy they managed to ship at least some features working.

raw_anon_1111• 6 months ago

The Apple podcast app has sucked since it was released in 2011. Use Overcast. It’s written and maintained by indie dev Marco Arment. He’s a podcaster and before that best known as the cofounder of Tumblr

runjake• 6 months ago

Since the SwiftUI rewrite, I have had showstopper problems with Overcast that made me move to Apple's Podcasts app. It's meh, but it plays podcast episodes reliably.

Overcast's streaming is utterly busted. And the UI state gets confused (enabled in UI turns into disabled in functionality, etc)

And it's not just me. :-(

https://old.reddit.com/r/overcast/search?q=streaming&restric...

Marco's latest iteration of focusing on quality: https://old.reddit.com/r/overcast/comments/1o4yuvz/focusing_...

Note that, two of those items that are crossed out are still being experienced by end users.

From listening to him discussing his Overcast rewrite on podcasts, I feel for him. It feels like he's really struggling to make Apple's frameworks work reliably. Moving to SwiftUI might have been the wrong move.

al_borland• 6 months ago

when the phone is charging at night and connected to a WiFi

Worse yet is auto-update for applications. My phone will be idle, connected to power and WiFi while I’m sleeping for many hours, and it isn’t until I remove it from power in the morning that it starts installing updates automatically, so I can’t use the apps.

They track when the phone is charged at night to try to predict when you’ll remove it from power to optimize charging, but they can’t use this to also intelligently download/install things in the background when it won’t impact the user? It makes no sense, and falls right in line with the lack of logic on the podcast downloads.

Tell HN: Auto-download in Apple Podcasts is so unreliable it's basically useless

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