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Making Castro’s Feeds Update Faster the Lazy Way

castro.fm

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Re: Making Castro’s Feeds Update Faster the Lazy Way

#31

Post by akudha »

deergomoo wrote: post #24
akudha wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently paying for Overcast, but the recent changes (2-3 months ago?) are just annoying. They removed the ability to arrange items in a playlist (it has to be by date now), OPML export is gone, can't get to a podcast from an episode in a playlist... and so on. All of this was working fine before the update. When something is working well, what is the point in needlessly "improving" it and making it worse? I just do…

> They removed the ability to arrange items in a playlist (it has to be by date now) You can drag and drop to change the order. Or are you talking about something else? > OPML export is gone Back as of literally ~30 mins ago

If I drag/drop and change the order, it gets reset if I add another item to the playlist (this was as of yesterday, don't know if they fixed it in today's release)

Haven't checked today. Glad they put OPML back

Edit: Just checked the ordering, it seems worse now. About 2-3 months ago (forgot when these features were broken), if I added an episode to a playlist, it will add it at the end of the playlist, the episode date didn't matter. Which I what I liked, as I can reorder the playlist however I want. Now I don't even know what order it is adding - it is no longer by date, neither is it at the end of the playlist.

Re: Making Castro’s Feeds Update Faster the Lazy Way

#32

Post by samcat116 »

hangonhn wrote: post #27
leokennis wrote: post #2

I’m so happy Castro has new owners. For me it has the best interaction model of all podcast apps (inbox + queue), it had a beautiful design and now it’s also getting the backend + tech debt love it requires.

Does anyone know how well it works on the Apple Watch? I have Overcast but am very frustrated with my experience on the Apple Watch because it doesn't sync properly even though the watch supports cellular connections. Nonetheless, it was the best of the podcast apps out there for that purpose. Has Castro made some progress on this front? It would be enough to convince me to switch if it works well on both the phone a…

I think a watch app rewrite is in the cards but for now its the old one.

Re: Making Castro’s Feeds Update Faster the Lazy Way

#33

Post by lucasban »

thoroughburro wrote: post #15

Overcast lost me after months of waiting for its disastrous redesign to be fixed. Castro is, in my opinion, the best replacement for feature equivalence. However, I actually chose standard Apple Podcasts. The transcriptions are a game changer.

Does it transcribe private feeds? I pay for the ad free streams for some of the podcasts I listen to the most, so if those aren’t transcribed then the usefulness diminishes

Re: Making Castro’s Feeds Update Faster the Lazy Way

#34

Post by dabluck »

isiahl wrote: post #13

When I worked at a podcast host I was tasked to implement WebPubSub support to our podcast feeds. This introduced a “push” updates rather than requiring an indexer to constantly recheck the xml file. The idea seeems to not have caught on. At the time I think Google was the only indexer supporting the feature and I’m not sure if that has continued with the switch to YouTube for podcasts

We support WebSub. It helps on the margins, but many feeds do not use it and also it isn't 100% reliable.

Re: Making Castro’s Feeds Update Faster the Lazy Way

#35

Post by dabluck »

admn2 wrote: post #6

Do you have Castro set to stream or download? Can't figure out which is most efficient for storage purposes (I've only ever done streaming, but the cache files always become super large)

It sort of does both. The idea behind the app was you should just play it and not worry about the implementation detail. We need to get better at managing the storage space and showing the user what is in the cache.

Re: Making Castro’s Feeds Update Faster the Lazy Way

#36

Post by erulabs »

dingnuts wrote: post #26

Is there some naming of Castro that I'm unaware of or is this application named after a murderous dictator just for fun? Might as well name it Stalin.

Castro is a word that means "castle", there have been several famous Castros (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castro_(surname)), and there a famous district in San Francisco named "Castro".

Don't let dictators capture _words themselves_, you only add to their power.

Re: Making Castro’s Feeds Update Faster the Lazy Way

#37

Post by gr2020 »

thoroughburro wrote: post #15

Overcast lost me after months of waiting for its disastrous redesign to be fixed. Castro is, in my opinion, the best replacement for feature equivalence. However, I actually chose standard Apple Podcasts. The transcriptions are a game changer.

Is there any sort of dynamic range compression available with Apple Podcasts? I've looked around, but can't seem to find anything. I find it especially necessary when listening in the car, so I've been using Overcast...

Re: Making Castro’s Feeds Update Faster the Lazy Way

#38

Post by yzydserd »

leokennis wrote: post #2

I’m so happy Castro has new owners. For me it has the best interaction model of all podcast apps (inbox + queue), it had a beautiful design and now it’s also getting the backend + tech debt love it requires.

I used Castro for 5 years and loved it. But when it had the ownership meltdown I switched back to iCatcher. It’s quirky, but easy to set up an Inbox and Downloaded queue which is the Castro USP. I haven’t missed Castro and can’t say the news entices me back.

Re: Making Castro’s Feeds Update Faster the Lazy Way

#39

Post by thoroughburro »

lucasban wrote: post #33
thoroughburro wrote: post #15

Overcast lost me after months of waiting for its disastrous redesign to be fixed. Castro is, in my opinion, the best replacement for feature equivalence. However, I actually chose standard Apple Podcasts. The transcriptions are a game changer.

Does it transcribe private feeds? I pay for the ad free streams for some of the podcasts I listen to the most, so if those aren’t transcribed then the usefulness diminishes

Just checked… looks like it doesn’t.

Re: Making Castro’s Feeds Update Faster the Lazy Way

#40

Post by lucasban »

thoroughburro wrote: post #39
lucasban wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it transcribe private feeds? I pay for the ad free streams for some of the podcasts I listen to the most, so if those aren’t transcribed then the usefulness diminishes

Just checked… looks like it doesn’t.

Thanks for checking
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