I find this preferable, since I just choose who I want to listen to and pick an episode. Instacast still puts subscriptions front and center, with lists letting you find and organize particular play orders. The icon too has been updated for iOS 7, its silver bezel now removed revealing the candied orange squircle underneath. There’s little touches like this throughout the app that make it feel springy or bouncy. It’s a subtle effect, as is the physics-based animation when revealing the sidebar. The Now playing controls will adjust their appearance based on podcast artwork, showing up in different dark hues to complement what’s currently playing. There are some great little details in the app that shouldn’t go unnoticed. If I decide to play an episode from a playlist, I would expect the remainder of that list to be automatically added to the queue. I say “semi” above since I wish it was more automated. If you stop playing an episode and start playing another, the episode that you left is added to the Up Next queue. You can manually add episodes to Up Next by tapping and holding on them. Replacing that feature is Up Next, which works similarly to how it’s implemented in iTunes. What it meant was that you could continue playing podcasts before or after the episode in your feed or playlist, but it was confusing because that order could change depending on how your episodes were sorted. Introduced in Instacast 2.0, continuous playback was implemented as a way to work around sorting. I’m semi-happy to see the removal of the continuous playback button. (And yes, you can listen to podcasts at 3x their normal speed.) Even Apple, in iOS 7, has optimized their included apps for larger 4-inch displays. I think it’s an okay trade-off considering there’s translucency, but it’s a sign that smaller displays are now second-class citizens. Interestingly, on the 3.5-inch Retina display, the controls cover up a bottom portion of the artwork. I think it’s a big improvement, and if I had any complaints, it’s that you still have to cycle through all of the timer options. The now playing screen does away with the combined scrubber and controls, removing the need to swipe back and forth between the two. Instacast semi-hides artwork on iOS devices with smaller 3.5-inch displays. In addition, you can individually download episodes from the directory (instead of having to subscribe), with episodes ending up in an Imported Episodes playlist. Impact on battery life, despite having downloads ready to go as soon as you open the app, isn’t noticeable. It’s a huge improvement over iOS 6, as it goes beyond simple availability notifications and the ten minute background limit. What this means for Instacast is that as long as it’s open in the background, subscriptions set up for downloading will silently download the latest episodes and notify you when they’re ready. The downloads manager for example could be found previously by tapping a progress bar, but it’s now additionally available under the Downloads label.ĭownloads are much improved thanks in part to new background APIs in iOS 7. Some of these places, like the directory, have shortcuts from the Subscriptions view, but there’s no longer a question of where these things might be. Settings, a list of episodes that are up next (new in this version of Instacast), items that are currently downloading, and Instacast’s entire directory can additionally be found here. Where a tab bar above the subscriptions list once let you switch between subscriptions, playlists, and bookmarks, everything can now be found in a Spotify-like sidebar. In previous versions of Instacast on the iPhone, everything was sort of crammed into one place.
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