It's even more disappointing since the word podcast was crated as a combination of Apple's "iPod" and "broadcast". Apple's original implementation of podcasts provided users with an agile and easy to manage way to organise automated playlists that easily let users determine the play order in as many ways as they chose. In fact it was Apple's implementation of this and the easy management between iTunes and iPods (and later iPhones and all iOS devices) that made podcasts popular in the first place.
But for some reason, Apple has decided to "improve" the user experience by:
1. Introducing the "Podcast" app which removed the functionality of podcast playlists from the music app and gave users two apps to fiddle with rather than the one simplified platform. I used to flip between music and podcasts seamlessly from the original music app, but now it's a fiddle, and iPhones with only 4 positions on the dock bar means you have to always go to a home screen to switch between podcasts and music.
2. In a later version of iTunes, Apple removed the ability to play podcast playlists as playlists - you can only play a playlist by selecting a single podcast which stops when finished. I have no idea how this improved the user experience???
3. While you can still create podcast playlists in iTunes, in a later version iTunes apple changed the keyword lists of podcast assets, but did not change the corresponding options on the playlist fields. For example, the keyword "author" has been added to the podcast metadata files, but can you find this field in the iTunes playlist sort fields? Nope. Another fail from Apple.
4. And now with iOS 11 Apple have crippled the playlist completely and expect users to create stations which do not enable users to control individual feeds by any number of parameters in any way close to the way playlists did.
I believe that this will become a classic business school case study of how Apple took a great and popular product and broke it by implementing a whole series of unpopular and indeed unnecessary fixes.
What a shame to be mourning the loss of a great platform.
p.s. Another Apple iOS fail was removing app management from iTunes. Now users who manage a whole bunch of iOS devices (like me with 10 in the household) need to fiddle with each individual device rather than a simple plug into the master iTunes to manage the apps on those devices. Talk about take simplicity and make it complicated. Steve Jobs must be spinning in his grave!
