I don't think you're challenging me. I think you're not getting what we're telling you. OK. Let's try this.
I have smart playlists for every single one of the 350 or so podcasts I subscribe to. When I subscribe to a podcast, I download all available episodes. Each of them goes into a separate smart playlist, sorted from oldest to newest, by the podcast name. I then use the checkbox to determine what does and does not get synced to the phone. Stations allow me to select the most recent 1, 2, 3...10...or ALL. There is no "allow me to select an arbitrary number of episodes, randomly," in stations. Useless.
Now, I like categories of podcasts. I put them into Fiction Audiodrama, Fiction, Fiction Audiobook, Fiction Anthology, News & Politics, Entertainment, Education, Science, Writing, True Crime/Weird, and Video. These are podcast folders, and I put the playlists of each individual podcast into those folders by topic. You can DO this with stations...but it's all you can do. Keep reading.
But that wasn't enough, because I was never hearing my CURRENT episodes because i had to make it through all the old ones first. So I created another smart playlist called "Current" that contained all the ones released within the last five days, say. Then I created playlists parallel to the ones mentioned above, but told the smart playlist to only contain the ones that were in BOTH "Science" (for example) and "Current" so I could listen to all the current ones first, then the archives.
There is so, SO much functionality in playlists that stations does not allow us to do.
I have a science podcast called Nature. It has episodes called Nature Futures which are not science-related, but are instead science-fiction flash fiction. So I want THOSE episodes in the Fiction playlist, not the Science playlist.
I have smart playlists that separate Nature into TWO playlists: one for the normal content, and one for "Futures." The normal content contains all episodes except the ones that are ALSO in "Futures." One goes in Science and the other in Fiction. Works BEAUTIFULLY in playlists. Can't do it in Stations.
But sometimes, I like to listen by length. Because I have 10 minutes to kill and I don't want to have to search through and find one that's 10 minutes. So I have playlists which separate my podcasts by time. < 5 minutes, 5-10, 10-15, 15-20, 20-30, 30-45, 45-60, and > 60 minutes. Can stations do that? No.
How about a Station that says, as I've described above, "All the contents of this other station, EXCEPT the ones that are in a third station"? Nope.
All of that works perfectly fine in playlists. And, up until I upgraded to iOS 11, it all synced to my phone and was visible to me in the app. I could select a playlist, touch the top entry, and have it play them back to back with no pauses. I did not have to spend a half hour searching through all the uploaded episodes on my phone and manually duplicating one of my playlists -- just ONE of them, mind you -- using the asinine "Up Next" queue that they so GRACIOUSLY allowed us to have. Until they decide we don't need that, too.
We're not asking for Stations. Stations are useless to me and many other people who do what I do. We want the functionality back. The functionality we relied on.
The support person I spoke to told me point blank after he routed my question to the development team that Playlists were REMOVED from the iOS 11 on purpose. These are not "glitches." These are desired functionality that worked up until we upgraded to iOS 11 and now has been unceremoniously removed without any replacement. Saying "stations replaces that functionality" is like saying "Have a cup of Brussels sprouts instead of the double-Dutch fudge ice cream; they're exactly the same thing." Although I'm suspicious now that someone else pointed out you can still search for your playlist names and, assuming it finds them, which it does about 30% of the time, if you select it, it opens the playlist app and allows you to play them like the iOS 10 version, except "invisible." The app knows about it until you back out of it, then it forgets. So it sounds to me like someone took out the REFERENCES to it in the app, but left the functionality intact.
I've TRIED to duplicate the 300 to 350 or so playlists I have in iTunes on my phone. That was the first thing I tried. God, I spent over 5 hours trying desperately. Stations are useless for me, and many, many other people.
I'm not deleting 350 playlists and starting over from scratch especially when I've been told by someone at Apple that the functionality has been removed. What we are trying to do is get them to put back the functionality. EITHER they need to put playlists back OR they need to make Stations useful in some form.
Does that help?
