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’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.
Me too. I switched to Overcast when Castro had its huge hiccups, but followed the new owners and the updates with great interest. The forward momentum seems great. I can see myself switching back home, when my new iPhone arrives.
My ideal podcast client would be something like Castro with additional playlist queues. I never could build a good triage model in Overcast. But sometimes you'll want some organization. (And a real Mac app)
I wonder if Marco Arment will ever reconsider designing the Overcast app himself. He seems to be the only who is convinced that he doesn't need one. As a fellow indie I get wanting to do everything yourself, but as a Apple fan I feel he should value design way more than he does now. The Castro app is so much better, it's like comparing iOS to Windows Mobile.
Do you mean create a team behind the app? What element of design do you mean? There are things with the Overcast design that I like and dislike, but they fall into multiple categories.
Marco seems like a very independent individual who wants to minimize dependencies on other people. He has mentioned in the past that he does get outside help on things, but this doesn't extend to other people taking ownership. At that point, he is managing people which doesn't seem something he wants to do.
> The Castro app is so much better, it's like comparing iOS to Windows Mobile.
lol respectfully, this is a wildly bad take. yes you’re entitled to your own opinion, but you aren’t entitled to your own window mobile comparisons.
Similarly, I switched away from Castro when it was melting down, and I tried out PocketCasts and Overcast.
PocketCasts is pretty great, but has one crucial flaw that makes it unbearable to me: at the time I was using it it was fairly slow to update feeds automatically, and you can't force an update of a specific feed. This got really annoying with subscriber-only feeds, because I'd know an episode had been released and had to wait a few hours for them to decide to actually let me see it.
Overcast is good at what it does (the audio boost features are the best of any client I've tried), but it's opinionated about a certain workflow in ways that don't play incredibly well with people who want to subscribe to a lot of podcasts and only listen to occasional episodes that catch their eye. Previous statements by Marco suggest that he likes Overcast's workflow and doesn't really want to adjust it to support inbox/queue users. In some ways the recent rewrite helped (the UI no longer locks up regularly when you have a lot of subscriptions), but in other ways it hurts (there's no way to give it a global episode-limit setting, and the default limit now actively wrecks playlists).
I'm inclined to say that if Overcast's workflow fits you, it's probably the best client to use. But if it doesn't, you have to make some choices...
For people with large numbers of podcasts as well as many paid subscriptions there is a lot that can be done to better manage the situation, including deduplication. This falls into the power user bucket so it's less valuable to these apps than the basic and mid-level users.
Same. It always had the nicest UI and interaction model, but the bugs ruined it for me over time.
There was a particularly annoying one where if I got to 31:20 on Show A on my phone, then play Show B on my Watch, the playback in B would jump to 31:20. This was brutal if you were somewhere around the 2-hour mark in Show B and have to find your place again.
Really hope the new owners can make everything work again.
I tried that one and it seems fixed. I know the new owner tackled longstanding, annoying little bugs right after buying it.
I almost left when the server outages happened, but the quality seems to have ticked up after hitting a low with Tiny.
I totally agree. I’ve always liked Castro’s inbox/quick action method of dealing with new episodes a lot better than other apps. I’m glad it’s back and am glad to subscribe again.
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 and the watch.
Thanks!
I think a watch app rewrite is in the cards but for now its the old one.
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.
Haven’t tried iCatcher myself. It has that utilitarian look that usually either means it’s a power user app that can be configured to behave exactly like you want, or it is a hobby project of a single person without UI/UX talent. Going by your comment it’s the former ;-)
I’m lucky Castro fits my workflow (or rather, my podcast workflow came to be by using Castro since forever), and as it looks pretty as well I have no reason to switch apps.