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The audacity of Apple Podcasts

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Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#211

Post by gls2ro »

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…

I agree that having everything on Apple Podcasts may put more power into Apple and hurt smaller businesses/projects.

But I also totally dislike what is happening now with movie streaming I pay for a couple of platforms, and if I want to watch something, I start opening them one by one and search of that movie. Moreso when a tv series that I started watching on one platform suddenly migrates to another one so I have to follow it between platforms.

I start seeing that with podcasts: some of them launched only on other platforms and now I have to install 4-5 podcast apps on my phone and keep track of all of them when something new appears. From an Apple user perspective, I like that I have on app Podcasts where I go and can listen to the latest episode from my favorite podcasts.

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#212

Post by slenk »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #208
MBCook wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who loves Apple stuff: what kind of people are you hanging out with? I’ve never heard an adult I interact with express that. My Android using friends don’t care.

I cannot tell you the amount of times my friends mentioned Green Bubble to me as an insult.

I just call them sheeple

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#213

Post by unosama »

I'm sorry but you'd have to be a fool to host your podcast on Apple.... I'm shocked that Apple's podcast hosting ever had an option to export the data. I've never used Apple podcasting services for listening because it always seemed like a huge pain designed to lock you in. There's plenty of free Podcast apps out there. And IMHO -- if it doesn't have an RSS feed it's not a podcast. (Looking at you, Patreon Substack Spotify Rokfin etc)

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#214

Post by m463 »

howinteresting wrote: post #137
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…

I was fully in the Apple ecosystem several years ago. I came to the realization you talk about some time in 2019 or so—very glad I got myself out of it.

I think the best time was around 2007 - that was when apple switched from PPC to intel.

All of a sudden their ecosystem opened up. You could run windows on your solid apple hardware. People had more choices and agency.

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#215

Post by MBCook »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #208
MBCook wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who loves Apple stuff: what kind of people are you hanging out with? I’ve never heard an adult I interact with express that. My Android using friends don’t care.

I cannot tell you the amount of times my friends mentioned Green Bubble to me as an insult.

As a person insult? Or an insult against your phone choice?

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#216

Post by unosama »

hot_gril wrote: post #188
kemayo wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, then you'll just tap it in the same place that you'd tap your credit card. ;) I.e. less-snarkily, nothing about that complaint relates to Apple Pay, just to how contactless payments work in general, whether they're from a phone or from a card. Most cards are contactless -- even in the USA -- these days, in my experience.

Yeah, but you can also insert the card into the chip reader and not deal with the NFC stuff. Anyway, it's not an Apple-specific complaint.

This is much less confusing in Europe because all the card readers are smaller and the nfc reader is always on the screen, and the card is the same size as the screen. In the US the screens are so big and the reader spot can be on the screen, on the side, etc , never consistent

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#217

Post by b0tch7 »

MBCook wrote: post #170
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…

Apple has controlled the podcast industry through the iTunes podcast directory since day one. They’ve been benevolent and haven’t cracked down on things. They let basically any podcast in for free. They let 3rd party clients use their directory for free. They ARE the podcast industry. And they’ve been open. I see this purely as a reaction to Spotify and Google and others trying to grab and control the industry with p…

> Apple has controlled the podcast industry through the iTunes podcast directory since day one.

> They ARE the podcast industry. And they’ve been open.

Hmmm is this really true? I've been listening to podcasts since 2012ish which puts me fairly early in the adoption curve and I've never used iTunes once (always been PocketCasts on Android).

Anyway, just another f'ing reason to NOT go all-in on Apple. Apple Podcasts kinda sucks? The few times I do use it as a directory to grab a link to send to a iOS-using friend, i just hate it. Search sucks, linking to a specific episode sucks, discoverability sucks.

I love my '22 M1 MBP I get from work, but it's the only Apple device I own. I just cannot stand this type of closed-system tactics, especially when their offering is so much worse than alternatives (don't get me started on iMessage or Safari)

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#218

Post by ryanbrunner »

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…

> Also, if Apple is hosting it for nearly free ($20/year is nothing), why would you expect Apple to make it available to competing podcast apps? If you post something on TikTok it doesn't show up on people's Facebook feeds.

The reason is that podcasts are one of the few protocols that are still largely open and decentralized. Yes, I wouldn't expect my Tiktok videos to be available on Facebook or vice versa, and that's a bad thing because what was previously handled by open protocols was captured entirely by a handful of corporations.

Open protocols are a rare thing on the internet these days, particularly ones that work without much fuss like (podcast) RSS, and they're worth protecting.

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#219

Post by philliphaydon »

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…

> but people need to understand the future they are buying into with Apple

When Google or MS or someone else builds a better experience then we can move.

Google shuts things down like there’s no tomorrow. MS can’t release a product beyond 3 countries. No one makes headphones like Apple.

You can argue till you’re blue in the face that all the sound quality of every other brand is better. But I’m so tired of having to re-pair headphones on every device.

Can argue that android phones a better cos of this feature and that feature but the moment you install some apps the battery drains, there’s less consistency, apps want my credit card directly.

I’ve been spending years pushing back against Apple for being overpriced but the overall experience is just better.

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#220

Post by [deleted] »

janalsncm wrote: post #70
SllX wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re paying money, signing an agreement and uploading files, Apple isn’t tricking you: you’re not doing your due diligence OR you just don’t care if anyone outside the Podcasts app can listen (there are podcasters who for reasons—good or not—assume their reach is only about as far as iTunes/Apple Podcasts). This is crap, but it’s not because the deal Apple is offering to podcasters is crap: $20/year hosting and…

I can’t agree that signing an agreement means Apple gets to behave however they want within the confines of the law. A contract should not be something that one hides behind, but something that someone holds up as enshrining a shared, common sense understanding of an agreement. The fact that an Apple Podcasts user tried to do something that is 1) not unreasonable given other podcasting platforms and 2) not clearly un…

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