Why is the Podcasts App so buggy???

I listen to podcasts almost everyday and have been using this app ever since it was first released.
It's basically a dog's breakfast. The main problems are (1) bugs, and (2) lack of functionality.
Bugs:
1. The app will start automatically anytime an alarm goes of: someone calls you, after you hang up the last podcast you were listening to starts playing. Same thing with alarms, and even just testing ring tones. ***?
2. It frequently won't download podcasts. It is very temperamental: it will allow some podcasts to download, others not.
3. It crashes randomly in the middle of podcasts. This is what motivated me to write this review today. actually this and the fact that problem 2 took me about 2 days and 5 attempts to download the podcast that then crashed. Was this software written by children?
Lack of basic functionality:
1. No playlists or anyway to star or prioritize podcasts you want to listen to.
2. It is basically impossible to browse the titles of individual podcasts because the names are longer than the screen space.
Points 1 + 2 together are a real pain if you, like me, have a collection of one set of podcasts that is over 500 episodes you want to read over and choose from... You can't read the titles and if you take the time to read and select your favorites you can't save them.
Seriously, this app should be up there with Apple disasters like Apple Maps.

I just replaced my prior iPhone 3G by a brand new iPhone 5 and installed this new Podcast app, as podcast content dif not appear in "music" any more.
Although I enjoy having direct sync of podcasts on the iPhone over Wifi (instead of having to plug it to my iTunes), I am not fully satisfied as well:
- for some podcasts, it seems to be working fine, event though some episodes appear much later on my iPhone as on iTunes
- for some others, it used to work fine at the start, but I do not get any of the most recent episodes anymore (they do not appear at all)
- for some others, downloading seems to always fail but streaming is OK
- for some others, I can see the episodes but cannot donwload nor stream them on my iPhone.
In the meantime, all these podcasts perfectly work on a standard iTunes (on a Mac or a PC).
I tried to unscribe an subscribe again but it didi not fix anything. Perhaps shall I try to uninstall and reinstall the application.
The erratic sync feature is definitly the most critical issue to fix by Apple.
Not supporting long labels & playlists is more a kind of "nice to have", although I agree these would be very useful.
Concern iMap, I did not have any major concern up to now with it (I do not use it so often, but it worked well at each occasion).

Similar Messages

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    Dear Apple, is this a bug or a feature?
    Dear support community...please help me!

    Jennifer,
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    B-rock

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    Hi,
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    They appear to be corrupt. Delete and redownload them if doing so is free in your country.
    (115755)

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    Greetings Heather,
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    You should reset your device as a last resort and only if you can't restart it.
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  • Why are you ignoring customer complaints about the Podcasts app?

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    What I don't get is... if they don't "fix" the Podcasts app, then they must be happy with it the way it is, and think that it works correctly.  But the number of posts to the contrary goes up every day.  So why don't they put out some instructions for people, so that everyone can stop being so frustrated with it?  If it "works" the way it is, then tell people how to control the syncing with iTunes and delete podcasts and avoid the Cloud and whatever else.
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    See:
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  • Why does Apple keep breaking the podcast app?

    Why does Apple keep breaking the podcast app?

    Here are my issues, maybe you can help... And yes "breaking" and "nightmare" are accurate descriptions of this update...
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    When I sync podcasts with iTunes, they DO NOT SHOW UP in the app unless I connect my iPhone 5S to WiFi or Cellular. As soon as I connect it to something, new episodes that I manually synced finally show up and can be played.
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    I have never been this frustrated with an Apple product in my life...

  • Hi guys can someone help with a query regarding the 'podcast app' why do they not have all the episodes that relate to one show available why only half or a selected amount

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    I upgraded to iOS 6 and now you cant download podcasts through the itunes app... Now you have to download the podcast app and use that instead, but that wont work correctly for me... keeps hanging and not downloading the actual podcast. Does anyone know a way to get podcasts in iOS 6 without using this app?

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  • My podcast won't appear on the Podcast app. Why?

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    Now that you've cleared that error it's exposed another in the 'link', 'enclosure' and 'guid' tags in the same episode:
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  • Why does play stop when I close the Podcasts app - IOS 6

    Whenever I leave the Podcasts app to answer an email, text, open Safari, etc., the podcast stops playing.  This effectively stops me from using any other application on my phone, unless I want to also stop listening to the podcast.  It won't continue playing in the background like the Music app did.  Of course, this is an IOS 6 issue.
    Ridiculous!!!
    Am I missing something here?

    I had the same problem the first night and my head almost exploded as playing podcasts is what my iphone is doing 95% of the time. I was also experiencing a lack of control not being able to jump back or ahead which was maddening. However, the next morning, after syncing the phone with my iTunes (on a MacBook Pro) all of this functionality was there, including the ability to have the podcasts continue when exiting the app and the ability to control them with an inline remote on my earbuds.
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  • How can I create a playlist that syncs with my ipod touch 5 that plays both podcasts and music? Before updating to itunes 11 I was able to do it and now it seems that the power is gone. (I do not have the podcast app on my ipod touch 5)

    When apple first introduced the podcast app for my iphone I discovered that installing it took away the option to have a playlist (smart playlist or regular) that mixed music, audiobooks and podcasts. I therefore quickly uninstalled it and was happy to have my iOS devices happily mixing music and podcasts.
    With the push to itunes 11.1 and iOS 7 on my ipod Touch and ipad mini I no longer have mixed playlists. I do see (according to itunes) that the podcasts are copied to my devices but there doesn't seem any way to play them. Nor do my mixed format playlists contain them.
    When combined with the change to the podcast tab in itunes that shows all available by default and doesn't seem to offer any way to Turn it OFF so I can easily see what new unlistened to podcasts exist it seems that the way I got used to using my itunes since my ipod nano first generation has been eliminated. I haven't read why so if someone could point me to their logic on how come I would want the changes they keep trying to force on me I would at least understand their motives.
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    And what is the wording of the error message?

  • Can I use the Podcast app like the older iOS 6 Music Player?

    I've updated to iOS 7 and iTunes 11.1 and found that things seem drastically different.
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    Sync to iPhone using a cable
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    Now things have changed.  I immediately was told that none of my podcasts were playable without the Podcast app.  I downloaded it and installed it.
    What is happening now:
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    Additional information.   Can this be right?
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    She also said that I would need to manually sync listened/unlistened podcasts between my Mac and my mobile devices since podcasts were no longer being synced from iTunes.
    Can anyone verify?

  • MY podcast is not showing up in the podcast app.

    I have recently changed my web host and had some small issues with the moving process but have since solved them for the most part. This is the final problem before our show is back in full force.I have pinged my feed with feedburner and it is coming up with the corrected information so I know the RSS is still set up, but I am wondering why it hasn't shown back up on iTunes or the podcast app?
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    You have introduced a fatal error into your feed which is rendering it unreadable by iTunes - when subscribing it shows as empty, and the Store will not update and is showing a cached version.
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