Updated the podcast app, now all podcasts come up as temporarily unavailable

Dude, it's obviously figurative.... it's not like I'm either Jay and/or Silent Bob...

and for all I know, the people offering it as a choice might work for downcast's production company.

Are these forums monitored by Apple staff?

I find it hard to believe that the most basic function (syncing selected items to my device) is totally broken, so I am totally open to the idea that this is user error on my part, so any feedback is welcome from them...

Summary of the issue:

Items selected (not just podcasts anymore) to sync do not sync.

When looking at the 'On this iPhone' tab, it'll show said items with a grey dotted circle. So it knows they should be there, but doesn't put them there. Why can't I get info at that point on why they are greyed out right there?

I am not short of space on my iPhone.

In the 'summary' tab, I only have 'sync only checked songs and videos'.

Apple please either acknowledge this issue or show me the error of my ways and tell me what I'm doing wrong.

I'm guessing that they do not monitor this discussion since no one there ever comments. Of interest, I notice that on the Apple App Store, the vast majority of people are rating Apple Podcast app "1 Star" due to its current broken state. Unclear how much Apple is taking that to heart -- at least I don't see them rushing an update to fix the problem. Indeed, their most recent update seems to have made the situation worse.

Assuming that Apple tests their software before release, I wonder at times if this could be the result of a corrupted database. I'd like to delete the Podcast database and start over again to see what happens. Unfortunately, deleting the app seems only to remove the app and not the database. That is, after redownloading the app, the old data immediately reappears.

Maybe one of their Geniuses at their Genius Bar has some idea what to do. In the meantime, I've started using the Podcrucher app as it seems to work well.

I don't believe this is just about podcasts anymore as I'm having the same issues with my songs.

And I don't believe that it is a corrupted database (I could be wrong, but based on the 'On this iPhone' tab, it does know what I want, and it knows their current state. It just doesn't want to honour that)

The biggest source of "that makes no sense" related info I have is the 'On this iPhone' tab. It knows full well what I want on the phone, but it just presents them (songs and podcasts) as greyed out dotted circles. No other info as to why it didn't actually put them on the iPhone.

After waiting long for Apple to fix these problems and trying my best to develop and share possible work arounds to the problems (see my earlier posts), I find that Apple's podcast app still manages to lose track of episodes that had been on my phone, even if they had been partially played. Even the scrolling of episodes leaves unpredictable blank spaces in the list where episodes should be.

Enough. I've now given up on trying to get by with this broken app. I don't recall any other Apple software of this quality.

I investigated, obtained and compared multiple alternative apps. I found that only iCatcher! and Downcast had support like Apple's Podcast for using the forward and back buttons to jump by chapters within a podcast episode. Most other apps don't even support podcast chapters.

I found that both iCatcher! and Downcast offer additional playback speeds (including the comforable 1.25 speed). iCatcher! lets you configure the time for the forward and back time buttons. Downcast's time button jumps are fixed, but it offers two buttons each for different forward and back times.

They both add gesture support, but of the two, the gesture support of iCatcher! is far greater and is quite handy. After using it, that tips my preference toward iCatcher!

For whatever reason, after my upgrade to IOS 7.1, the Podcast app started mostly working OK. More recently, after the IOS 7.1.1 upgrade, I've not experienced any problems. My guess is that the issue is around the database on the phone getting corrupted during one or more of the various app upgrades; somehow during the IOS upgrade process the database has gotten cleaned up. Anyway, for now I am a happy camper.

Totally agree - I have been using iCatcher for a couple of months now. I had to end the frustration with the podcast app, and was just checking in today to see if there were any reports of improvement. I have not seen many indications that Apple has done anything about this. I use an iPod to listen to my podcasts, and do not have wi-fi access at work, and I have no interest in using the Cloud anyway. But, the biggest gripe I have is that if I tell iTunes what I want on my device - it means I WANT IT ON MY DEVICE, not via the f-ing Cloud.

iCatcher takes a little getting used to - and I am still learning; but, it definitely downloads what I want, and I have not seen any of my selected podcasts mysteriously unavailable.I also do not need to unearth a myriad of settings between my device, computer, and iTunes profile to try and make sense of undocumented 'features' that some developer felt were required to make the app 'work' properly. iCatcher provides some pretty heavy documentation (compared to Apple's half page marketing-speak review of Podcast) and will respond to questions from the user community regarding the app.

I agree with those that wish Apple would simply go back to offering podcasts as part of the music app - that worked flawlessly, and the podcast app has *always* been a poor alternate. The changes made starting with 2.0.1 really made the app unusable for me, and I will not even think about going back until I start to read many more positive posts regarding the app's behavior.

For information, the release notes from the new version (2.1) of the Podcasts app that Apple released yesterday say: "This update also resolves playback issues after syncing with iTunes."

Note that Apple also updated iTunes to version 11.2 yesterday, which brings the user interface for Podcasts somewhat in line with the new user interface in the Podcasts iOS app.

I haven't tested yet to see if it works, but I know that the team at Apple who develop the Podcasts app has been working on trying to resolve this issue for a while now. Hopefully this update will be a good step forward!

Oh yeah, switching to Android will REALLY be a problem solver. There are no woes in THAT world.

Just to update, in my testing the latest versions of the Podcasts app and iTunes fully resolve this problem.

I had a problem for the occasional podcast but today EVERY SINGLE PODCAST I DOWNLOADED FOR MY FLIGHT TODAY IS UNAVAILABLE

AAAAAGGGHHHH

quit app

restarted phone

tried wifi

tried LTE

no change

no difference

downloaded stitcher

now they play