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

Pocket Casts goes open source

ma.tt

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 154 posts

Re: Pocket Casts goes open source

#51

Post by turminal »

Barrin92 wrote: post #47
niklaslogren wrote: post #38

Pretty off-topic, but: > I hope that Pocket Casts can do for podcast clients what Firefox in the early days and Chromium now does for browsers — push the state of the art, be manically focused on user control, and grow a more decentralized and open web. It's pretty funny to see the claim that Chromium is "manically focused on user control" and "is growing a more decentralised and open web" :-)

it's true though isn't it? Some people keep complaining about chromium related apps, but from different browsers to electron based apps it has without a doubt pushed open source like almost nothing else, it's sort of the OS of the web.

It's an OS for the web, but the web is increasingly in control of the same entity that controls chromium. And chromium helped them a lot in getting that much power over the web. I don't think that qualifies as improving openness or user control.

Re: Pocket Casts goes open source

#52

Post by heliostatic »

neverrroot wrote: post #23

Hope someone can add a feature for recording snippets, and maybe even one for bookmarks with notes. One of the hardest things to keep track of, getting back to the interesting pieces of a podcast. Every episode I listen to has something worth remembering, right now managing that is truly cumbersome / time consuming.

I'm a happy pocketcasts user, but started also using Snipd for that very reason. https://www.snipd.com/

Re: Pocket Casts goes open source

#54

Post by scarface74 »

neverrroot wrote: post #23

Hope someone can add a feature for recording snippets, and maybe even one for bookmarks with notes. One of the hardest things to keep track of, getting back to the interesting pieces of a podcast. Every episode I listen to has something worth remembering, right now managing that is truly cumbersome / time consuming.

Overcast for iOS added that feature a couple of years ago. Marco Arment (Tumblr cofounder , Instapaper) is the author

Re: Pocket Casts goes open source

#55

Post by chiefalchemist »

niklaslogren wrote: post #38

Pretty off-topic, but: > I hope that Pocket Casts can do for podcast clients what Firefox in the early days and Chromium now does for browsers — push the state of the art, be manically focused on user control, and grow a more decentralized and open web. It's pretty funny to see the claim that Chromium is "manically focused on user control" and "is growing a more decentralised and open web" :-)

That bit caught my eye as well. I read it as a backhanded swipe at Mozilla, which given the news is unnecessary. But then he goes further and strokes his buds at Google with statements of questionable validity?

Why?

Why go so far as to distract from his news? Why not mention how being OSS should ideally mean improvements in sec and privacy?

It just seems weird.

Re: Pocket Casts goes open source

#56

Post by h3mb3 »

alias_neo wrote: post #50
h3mb3 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Spotify does some of that as far as I know. But I'd never switch to playing my podcasts there just out of principle (even though I pay the subscription too) because I don't like how they are trying to build a walled garden for podcasts and kill RSS as a thing.

Is ad-segment or sponsor-segment free podcasts a thing? I too pay for Spotify and I tried to get into some podcasts, starting with Darknet Diaries, but the ad and sponsor segments are just too jarring. I guess I'm not paying enough in my Spotify subscription to get it without that stuff, so who/what/where do I pay to get some podcasts I want to listen to without it?

I think most podcasts post the exact same episodes to all popular platforms. Some may have an ad-free version on Patreon.

With Spotify, it's sort of similar to when the paid YouTube (Red/Premium) became a thing. Yea, you'd get rid of the Google-picked ads, but the in-video sponsored ads added by the video creator would still obviously remain.

Re: Pocket Casts goes open source

#57

Post by scarface74 »

rdegges wrote: post #6
Karsteski wrote: post #5

I really like Pocket Casts. I have basically used it every day since 2014.i don't really like that I bought it years ago, then they switched to a subscription model and I lost access to the one feature I cared about, which was syncing to their webapp. Always leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and it really made me not want to support any more young companies.

Exactly... I've been using Pocket Casts since forever. I bought the full featured version and was soo happy... Until they killed it off. Now I'm on an iPhone and Apple Watch and it's ridiculous to pay to subscribe just to be able to control it from my watch. Feels ridiculous. If they brought back even an expensive, $80 one-time purchase fee I'd be more than happy to support.

Software development in the age of mobile requires continuous development. Who is going to pay for development of new features?

Re: Pocket Casts goes open source

#58

Post by chiefalchemist »

> The team has been working really hard to make those clients totally open source...

I wish he would have expanded on this, or at least link to something that did. It would be interesting to understand what a transition like that entails, what they did, why, etc.

I would have preferred this over the backhand swipe at Mozilla.

Re: Pocket Casts goes open source

#59

Post by c0wb0yc0d3r »

alias_neo wrote: post #50
h3mb3 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Spotify does some of that as far as I know. But I'd never switch to playing my podcasts there just out of principle (even though I pay the subscription too) because I don't like how they are trying to build a walled garden for podcasts and kill RSS as a thing.

Is ad-segment or sponsor-segment free podcasts a thing? I too pay for Spotify and I tried to get into some podcasts, starting with Darknet Diaries, but the ad and sponsor segments are just too jarring. I guess I'm not paying enough in my Spotify subscription to get it without that stuff, so who/what/where do I pay to get some podcasts I want to listen to without it?

Yes, but that sort of thing isn't included as part of a normal Spotify subscription. It looks like Spotify has support for podcasts subscriptions, but it's all on a one off basis as far as I can tell.

Out of the podcasts I listen to, I'm not sure a single one uses Spotify for subscriptions. Commonly it seems to be Patreon.

With all of that being said, many quality podcasts have jarring ad segments on purpose. Partly it serves as an ad for the ad-free feed but they also serve as a way to inform the listener that the following words aren't the podcasters' own and they were paid for an endorsement.

Re: Pocket Casts goes open source

#60

Post by nataz »

Karsteski wrote: post #5

I really like Pocket Casts. I have basically used it every day since 2014.i don't really like that I bought it years ago, then they switched to a subscription model and I lost access to the one feature I cared about, which was syncing to their webapp. Always leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and it really made me not want to support any more young companies.

I'm the same. Long time paid app user, then when the switch happened I got reverted back to the free tier.

I still use the app, but like you said, it does still irk me to this day.

Post reply on HN