Is it just me or was this feature rushed through without a whole lot of thought on Apple’s part?
I understand the need to keep code duplication to a minimum and for a clear distinction of tasks and responsibilities between iPhone applications, but the current “Get More Episodes” feature is not at all what I wanted/expected.
Expected behaviour
When I heard that this was coming in the 2.2 firmware release I was looking forward to it. But it doesn’t do what I expect it to. First off, the option appears as the last item in each of your podcast lists. What I expect to happen when I tap that item is that in the context of the current podcast it will pop off a request to the RSS Feed, determine if there are any new episodes and then start downloading (oldest to newest) in the context of the playlist, perhaps with the title in grey and some kind of progress meter.
But no - most of the time it sends me off to the iTunes application and dumps me in the top level of the podcast directory. Sometimes it will properly identify the podcast and take me directly to its page, but that’s not 100% (I’m guessing due to variations in the way the feed URL is stored in the iTunes Store).
How big?
I realize that there are limitations on the iPhone’s communications and that it’s more efficient to download podcasts one at a time. So the act of tapping download means that it gets added to the download queue. But if a podcast is larger than 10Mb you can’t download it over a non wifi connection. Fine. But after telling me that an item is over 10Mb, I’d really like it to either
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automatically remove it from the queue or
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put it into a paused state and move onto the next one or
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move it to the end of the list and move onto the next one.
Currently I have to delete it from the queue in order to move on to the next one. Which also means that I have to go back to the source podcast once I’m in a wifi serviced zone. More work for me.
What I wanted to see
My expectations were considerably simpler than what was implemented and I suspect much more closely aligned with the UI of the rejected Podcatcher application. All I wanted was an implementation of the Refresh button used in the desktop iTunes application. Scan through all registered podcasts, see what new episodes are available and add them to a download queue provided they’re less than 10Mb if I’m on the road. The UI component would be fairly simple, just put the “Get New Episodes” at the bottom of the podcast list and have it open a list view showing the progress. If you keep the Get New Episodes in each of the individual podcasts, the command would be limited in scope to the current podcast.
Off to file a few bug reports now…