Throwing in the towel on Apple’s Podcast app :-(

I have an iPhone 6+ and recently upgraded to iOS 11. Not Apple’s best work, to say the least. But, the worst of it all is the “updates” to the Podcast app. Like many, I suffered through the unintuitive UI changes and frequent crashes. But the killer issue was performance. It was so slow and unresponsible it was unusable. I scowered Google and spent weeks trying different fixes like reducing background apps, freeing up storage space, removing the app and re-installing it. I even did a “clean install” of iOS itself. While some fixes seemed to help for a while, performance of the app eventually degraded to the point of uselessness.

I live and die by podcasts and have been using Apple’s Podcast app for more years than I can remember. Definitely the most used app in my collection. But this problem has ended it for me. I’ve given up on Apple’s Podcast app.

I tried one free app, “The Podcast App” by Evolve Global, inc. But found it to be extremely bare bones and lacking fundamental functionality. I have settled on Pocket Casts by Shifty Jelly. I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks now and am happy with its performance and functionality. Though, it ****** me off to have to pay to replace an app that used to work fine.

Shame on you Apple. You may be a good hardware company, but have a long way to go with regards to software. Time to clean house in your software Product Management and Software Quality organizations.