Building Soundcloud's iOS App; in-depth retrospective

Great write up. Any news on Chromecast support in the iOS app? Android app has had it for a while.

Ah, Soundcloud. One of the companies I should love the most given my usage of it, but hate with a strong passion due to their product and technical bungles. Let's take it from the top:

Product (applicable to iOS and web):

* Their mobile app and desktop products are, essentially, two completely different experiences. They have not evolved in sync with each other at all.

* Listening to tracks I've saved is hidden deep, deep within the app.

* Social capabilities don't exist in the app. Inexplicably, it's most of what exists on the desktop product.

* Oh look, I got a notification on the app. Who knows what it's about, though, no way to find out.

* What about something as simple as listening to a track and trying to figure out what time is? Nope. Their music player inexplicably hides the on-screen clock because some designer didn't want it messing with album artwork.

* Every aspect of the web product screams 'we just cloned every other social network out there all at once'. It's a messy hodgepodge of features, 80% of which I don't use.

Technical:

* This one is easier to explain. The web and mobile products are constantly, incredibly buggy. Music stops every 10 minutes or so, randomly. The app crashes. Display errors abound. It's a mess.

A shame because the 'magic moment' in Soundcloud is, truly, incredible. Make connections with artists and tastemakers you like. See their music and interact with moments of it with other fans. I'm frustrated because I truly believe it could be great. Unfortunately, their product and technical teams have not kept up.

I generally like the full web version, but the mobile app is atrocious. Why, why on Earth can't I see the list of last searches or at least last played songs.

The old app was significantly better IMO. It takes something like 3 extra button presses to get to your own profile to see tracks you've reposted now. 1 song visible at a time in the stream as opposed to the old 5. Unnecessary segmentation of playlists/songs from your profile. God the new app is annoying.

>> "The old app was significantly better IMO."

I think that statement goes to show how bad the new app is - because the old one was awful. I've been a pretty hardcore SC user since it first launched and was mainly full of home recordings. The first app was pretty bad, then they made it significantly worse with the new one. They also have 'pulse' for creators which is inexplicably missing features you would expect it to have.

The original website was actually pretty good although by the time it came to the release of the new one it hadn't been updated in a long long time. The new one looks better but performs much worse. On a slow internet connection it is completely unusable.