All Articles Tagged podcasts

Instead of the iPhone’s built-in iPod app sorting podcasts chronologically up or down (newest to oldest, or oldest to newest), iPhone 3.1 users are seeing… no logical sequence that can be made sense of. Indeed, some of you let us know because the lack of order made you think your podcasts weren’t updating at all. Rest assured, it’s not you.

To be clear: You’re not out of order. Apple’s out of order! All these [redacted] podcasts are out of order!

If you’re having the same random podcast listings — or better yet, if you’ve come up with a solution or work around that’s better than just hunting for the blue “new” dot — let us know in the comments.

[Thanks to everyone who brought this to our attention]

In iPhone OS 2.x, we bemoaned the seemingly useless nature of the repeat and buttons when it came to podcast playback. They just sort of hung around, like guests who were welcome when the music was playing, but just wouldn’t leave when the party was over.

Now, in iPhone 3.0, Apple has replaced them with an email icon on the left hand side, and a speed counter on the right hand side. The email icon supposedly allows you to send an iTunes Link for the podcast (similar to how you could previously email YouTube video links).

The speed indicator on the other hand, shows x1 during regular playback, and we presume it might show x2 etc. during fast forward. (Apple has allowed you to “speed up” talk-heavy content like Audio Books for a long time).

Where the Genius button would be on music tracks, we now have a circular backwards arrow with a 30 in the middle, which we figure allows you to jump back in 30 second intervals.

Variable media scrubbing now lets you put your finger on the position indicator at the top, the buttons change to a text message reading “Slide your finger down to adjust the scrubbing rate.” Slide your finger down the screen and the speed that you scrub changes. Displayed in place of the track info, options so far include half speed, quarter speed, and a fine grain speed.

Since accurately going to a location on a podcast prior to 3.0 was difficult at best, these look to be excellent enhancements.

Anything else we’re looking for from Apple for Podcasts?

Apple has put up a special iTunes page showing off the top free and top paid apps of 2008. In addition to the overall standings, Apps are also broken out according to categories like Games, Entertainment, Music, Utilities, and Social Networks.

Koi Pond leads the paid apps while Facebook owns the free. To see the complete list, head on over to iTunes.

For more, also check out Top Music, Movies, Podcasts, and Audiobooks for iTunes 2008. (And while you’re at it, consider adding Phone different and iPhone Live! to your feeds for 2009 )

(via Macworld)

(Image via TUAW)

Hot on the heels of all the iPhone 2.2 firmware Beta 2 goodness from Google, which included Street-View, Transit and Walking Directions, and Location Sharing, comes word on a couple more features for us to rumor over. TUAW says:

A tipster shared with us some screenshots of the new firmware, including what appears to be the ability to download podcasts directly to your iPhone (and presumably your iPod touch)

TUAW says this could explain Apple’s rejection of PodCaster, but an explanation still does not a justification make. Still, this would be awesome functionality for those who don’t always have a chance to tether and sync for their podcasts. We’re guessing it will still be limited to WiFi only, however, like the iTunes store, to limit carrier data load for 50MB+ sound files — and even them will the (typically much larger) video podcasts be enabled?

MacRumors (via iPhoneHellas), meanwhile, shows off a new alert box that asks users deleting an application to rate it prior to deletion. Valuable metrics, or Just Another Annoying Pop-up?