Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The audacity of Apple Podcasts

basta.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 327 posts

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#141

Post by xuki »

voytec wrote: post #28

I remember having an iMac with 3TB hard disk on which I stored all my CDs ripped in an lossless format. iTunes had an option to stream the library to local network and since this iMac was on 24/7, this was a perfect solution for me to have an audio-NAS and also kind-of remote streaming when I was connecting via VPN to my home network. Than there came Tim Cook's "upgrades": OS X was renamed to macOS, iTunes to Music,…

When I was in college, there were always some people on the network who would leave their iTunes wide open, and that was how I discovered new music to listen to.

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#142

Post by froglets »

theshrike79 wrote: post #36
howinteresting wrote: post #26

Wait -- there are podcasts you just can't listen to if you don't have an Apple device? That's beyond absurd.

There are also podcasts you can only listen to on Spotify. Also absurd.

There’s also a growing number of podcasts you can only listen to if you subscribe to Amazon Music.

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#143

Post by akerl_ »

jjcon wrote: post #77
chrisoverzero wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We weren’t able to track down a copy of the prompt ourselves to confirm when and where it appears or what it looks like — which seems important if people are getting confused […] This is speculation presented as news. The confusion certainly appears to be real, but there's no actual investigative reporting .

It’s not speculation just because they don’t have a photo of the prompt (of which I’ve received personally) - the story is in plain sight in the ratings themselves, go have a look. Here’s another article from an apple friendly source https://www.macrumors.com/2021/11/19/podcasts-rating-prompt-... EDIT: Actually - found a screenshot mid-podcast: https://i.imgur.com/dnqcAbQ.jpeg

Is that prompt confusing? It says outright that you're rating the app in the app store.

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#144

Post by mattbrewsbytes »

tomxor wrote: post #102

> That’s right: if you host your show with Apple, the only listeners you can have are folks with the Apple Podcasts app. This feels like an absolutely wild choice from a product perspective; it’s the mindset of a company who still thinks that they have dominance over the podcasting world. It’s ludicrous to assume that it’s a good thing for listeners to have to have specific hardware in order to listen to a podcast. I…

Beyond hardware integrations between their own HW, their software/services are odd and don't interoperate with conventional things. I used iphoto or whatever it was called and it had proprietary storage which was a huge turn off for me. Its never clear if a point of sale terminal accepts Apple Pay and where to hold your device so I avoid using it since chances are I have to get out a card anyway. Their podcast app has a concept of "play next" or "play last" and I went looking for a playlist thinking that was a thing where I could re-arrange a list, couldn't find that, maybe its there somewhere? Kinda same with "saved" or "downloaded" I was able to figure these out in Spotify's app. It feels like Apple's app UI always has extra clicks involved or its like key features are buried. Maybe its me and how my brain is wired from many years of Windows? The UI's are consistently odd.

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#145

Post by bastawhiz »

filoleg wrote: post #134
bastawhiz wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an example show, I'm curious if it works for you: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/test-podcast/id1667708...

Do you happen to have another example? This one doesn't work for me, but for an entirely different reason - it says that this specific podcast isn't available in the US store at the moment. So I cannot even access the episode on any device at all.

Go ahead and try it now, it looks like I hadn't fully saved the test episode.

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#146

Post by hardwaresofton »

I’m surprised there hasn’t been more public outcry by hosters about this. This is a huge affront to how the podcast ecosystem works.

Well this is going to be a problem for podcastsaver as well.

What s scummy move by Apple, the nice thing about podcasts is that it’s a very open technology — all you needed was RSS.

Syndicate with apple but don’t host your data exclusively there.

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#147

Post by jjcon »

akerl_ wrote: post #143
jjcon wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not speculation just because they don’t have a photo of the prompt (of which I’ve received personally) - the story is in plain sight in the ratings themselves, go have a look. Here’s another article from an apple friendly source https://www.macrumors.com/2021/11/19/podcasts-rating-prompt-... EDIT: Actually - found a screenshot mid-podcast: https://i.imgur.com/dnqcAbQ.jpeg

Is that prompt confusing? It says outright that you're rating the app in the app store.

It is definitely confusing when it is coming in the middle of a playing podcast. Just look at the App Store reviews - they are all for specific podcasts, not the app itself:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/apple-podcasts/id525463029?see...

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#148

Post by TylerE »

sneak wrote: post #124
tomxor wrote: post #102

> That’s right: if you host your show with Apple, the only listeners you can have are folks with the Apple Podcasts app. This feels like an absolutely wild choice from a product perspective; it’s the mindset of a company who still thinks that they have dominance over the podcasting world. It’s ludicrous to assume that it’s a good thing for listeners to have to have specific hardware in order to listen to a podcast. I…

To wit: you can't use the new hardware 2FA passkeys on iOS unless you opt in to iCloud and all of the surveillance that entails.

Why is that surprising since the keys are specifically for logging into iCloud? Do you complaine your gasoline car doesn’t have a diesel tank?

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#150

Post by jjcon »

jrmg wrote: post #110
jjcon wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not speculation just because they don’t have a photo of the prompt (of which I’ve received personally) - the story is in plain sight in the ratings themselves, go have a look. Here’s another article from an apple friendly source https://www.macrumors.com/2021/11/19/podcasts-rating-prompt-... EDIT: Actually - found a screenshot mid-podcast: https://i.imgur.com/dnqcAbQ.jpeg

This is just the standard alert from the SKStoreReviewController API that any app can use. https://developer.apple.com/app-store/ratings-and-reviews/

Right but explicitly calling it during a playing podcast is obviously confusing - just look at the review section: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/apple-podcasts/id525463029
Post reply on HN