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The audacity of Apple Podcasts

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Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#151

Post by akerl_ »

jjcon wrote: post #147
akerl_ wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

The fact that some people don't read before clicking isn't something I'm going to hold against Apple. The prompt isn't a block of legalese, and it doesn't claim in any way to be asking to rate the specific podcast.

My delivery tracking app has popped up the same screen asking me to rate it, but I've never figured it was asking me to rate my UPS driver.

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#152

Post by TylerE »

bastawhiz wrote: post #122
SllX wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re a hobbyist, you might go “oh no, this won’t work out, Overcast users can’t see my podcast” and switch hosting providers. If you’re going into podcasting as a business, don’t skimp on having a lawyer review the things you’ll be signing up and paying for, and if you skimp on that and get unlucky, expect to be doing the work required to move providers if what you signed up for isn’t satisfactory. It’s really t…

> expect only exactly what the service offers in the agreement, and if the terms are not satisfactory, go sign with someone else. You can't go somewhere else, because going somewhere else means starting over from scratch. That's the whole point of my post: you're locked in. The customer who reached out with this issue has hundreds of episodes and can't reasonably manually reupload them all to another service.

Isn’t that going to be pretty inevitable since we’re talking about subscription billing?

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#153

Post by [deleted] »

bastawhiz wrote: post #30
crazygringo wrote: post #15

> You could sign up to allow Apple to host your show and its audio (for a cool $20/year). In exchange, you could charge a subscription fee to your listeners... If you host your show with Apple, the only listeners you can have are folks with the Apple Podcasts app... The audio will be protected with DRM. The author presents this as "audacity" and bad... but doesn't it make perfect sense? If you're charging a subscript…

Author here. > If you're charging a subscription fee The DRM applies even if you charge no fee. > why would you expect Apple to make it available to competing podcast apps Because every single other podcast hosting service does, with the exception of folks that signed a contract with Spotify. > If you post something on TikTok it doesn't show up on people's Facebook feeds. It can, actually. You can post a link. If I u…

[deleted]

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#154

Post by amanj41 »

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

The screenshot you posted is the same format as review prompts for every app I've seen one on. It's literally just "Enjoying ?". Sure, they could go the extra mile to disambiguate for those that aren't familiar, but this is pretty simple stuff.

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#155

Post by jjcon »

akerl_ wrote: post #151
jjcon wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

The fact that some people don't read before clicking isn't something I'm going to hold against Apple. The prompt isn't a block of legalese, and it doesn't claim in any way to be asking to rate the specific podcast. My delivery tracking app has popped up the same screen asking me to rate it, but I've never figured it was asking me to rate my UPS driver.

Apples own design guide for requesting reviews, the guide for which they use to reject apps or app updates stipulates:

"Avoid interrupting people while they're performing a task or playing a game."

I would say mid podcast certainly qualifies as breaking that rule. They know exactly what they are doing when they ask for ratings mid-podcast and the reviews show it. The fact that it is confusing users would be enough for Apple to remove the app from the App Store for review manipulation if it were anyone but themselves. Again, take a look at the review section:

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

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#156

Post by wwweston »

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…

This is exactly why when I picked a file-sync/storage service I have never once considered iCloud (or OneDrive for that matter) and never will.

And in general I've stopped adopting Apple-originated software entirely, weaned myself off of most of that which I had adopted, and have largely rid myself of anything macOS-only even from 3rd parties. iOS is what I'm taking an inventory of next.

I may continue to buy Apple hardware. They've shown up here well enough that I can ignore minor misgivings about cost and upgradability/repairability/recovery. But the software ecosystem just seems like a gilded cage in the best case, and that's ignoring the signals that this is company that trades in digital experiences & economics rather than the old-fashioned bicycles for the mind. We're well beyond the "PCs are trucks" thing and into "we sell the experience of owning a new sedan every 2 years."

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#157

Post by m3kw9 »

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…

It ain’t 1s or 0s with vertical integration, right now and in the near future it works well and still not restrictive at all on most things. All I can say is that the quality and experience of using apple products has been worth it. You are free to hedge your bets by using both apple and google but that would be a bad experience

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#159

Post by tomxor »

wwweston wrote: post #156
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…

This is exactly why when I picked a file-sync/storage service I have never once considered iCloud (or OneDrive for that matter) and never will. And in general I've stopped adopting Apple-originated software entirely, weaned myself off of most of that which I had adopted, and have largely rid myself of anything macOS-only even from 3rd parties. iOS is what I'm taking an inventory of next. I may continue to buy Apple h…

> the signals that this is company that trades in digital experiences & economics rather than the old-fashioned bicycles for the mind

Just to screw with their old marketing: The bicycle is now trying to drive the mind - you want to go left but it keeps gradually, imperceptibly, steering you right - for some people as soon as they feel that force feedback through the handlebars it causes an autonomic response, recoiling in fear as the tool they previously trusted seems to have a mind of it's own... Some other hidden force in the machine is competing with your decisions. Yet the majority of people don't seem to have this response, perhaps it's earned, I don't know.

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#160

Post by jrochkind1 »

Spotify podcasts don't have RSS feeds either. And have massively expanded their podcast program over the past few years, such that they know serve more podcast listeners than Apple.

But this is the play several big players are involved in make to try to convert podcasts into walled gardens.

The OP is really sniping around the edges of a major thing that's going on, which Apple is actually playing catch-up on.

https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/will-spotify-ruin-podcast...

https://fair.org/home/the-new-podcast-oligopoly/

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/23/techscape...

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