2 Weeks Using Apple Podcasts As My Only Podcast App – MDW402

Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, whatever the case may be. This is Mike, and this is Mike Dells World number 402. And what is the date today? 04/23/2025. And today, I got something a little bit different. I spent two weeks using Apple Podcasts as my only podcast application. I removed all the podcast apps off my phone. Well, I take that back. I did keep fountain for a very specific reason, but all the rest of them I took Overcast off, Pocketcast, all the other apps that I play with, I

just took them off. And my only daily driver podcast app was Apple Podcasts. So let me, give you a little story why I decided I was going to try this and, give you a pretty good review of Apple Podcasts. It's been a long time since I had used Apple Podcasts other than just for work, you know, checking out, you know, my episode didn't show up on Apple. So I would get on Apple and see if, indeed, their episode wasn't on Apple or my show notes look funny. And, you

know, of course, I'd go look. Yeah. Indeed. It looked funny or whatever, and we'd figure it out. But I didn't use it as my normal listening app. Now I am an Apple fanboy, I guess. I don't know. I got,

you know, the Apple computers. I got the watch. I got the phone. I got the iPad. I got the Apple TV. You know, I'm pretty well, sucked into the Apple ecosphere. So, you know, not that I was biased against Apple Podcasts, but you know, there was apps, you know my favorite daily driver is Overcast and the reason for that is its smart playlisting ability.

Which means I can pick you know say four or five podcasts that I want to see first or in my case what I would do is like I'd listen to a lot of aviation shows. So I had a smart playlist for aviation shows. I had a smart playlist for podcasts about podcasting and another smart playlist for new shows and so on. It made it really easy to keep the ones that I was following or subscribing, you know, kept them in a place where I could find them easily.

But overcast really doesn't give you a good way to discover podcasts accidentally and that's where I've found over the last couple of weeks that Apple Podcasts does a great job of that. Also gives you a great, you know, gives you a great way of discovering podcasts that you wouldn't normally listen to and kind of a cool way to preview them.

And the reason this came up, I was in Chicago for Podcast Movement Evolutions and Ted, from Apple was, hanging around, you know, with, Dave Jackson. I happened to be you know, we all happened to be at the same place and he was showing Dave all these really cool things that Apple Podcasts does that neither one of us had ever heard of. You know, one of the things is

saving an episode. So, say you're just browsing or searching through the directory and you say, Oh, I might be interested in this podcast, but I want to test an episode. So you just hold long press on this episode and it pops up a menu and one of them is Save. And that will download that one episode, does not subscribe you or have you follow the podcast.

By the way, I'm not a fan of the change of the term from subscribe to follow, but, you know, the whole industry is saying follow now instead of subscribe but I use those terms interchangeably. But anyway, without subscribing or following the show you get that show and it downloads to your phone. And that way you can listen to a sample episode or an episode that you're interested in. Also works for shows you don't really want to subscribe to but you want to hear an episode now and again. But

that's been a game changer for me. I've discovered or rediscovered episodes or podcasts that I either used to listen to, had heard of and never listened to, or whatever because, you know, in Overcast I'm pretty sure you could probably do that in Overcast. You could probably do that in a lot of other apps, but this is the first time I've ever done that. And, you know, in Apple Podcasts, it it was pretty cool, pretty easy. And then I ended up subscribing to shows. One thing it does not do well

is a Smart Playlist. It has something that is similarly close, something that I had never seen in there either. Let me make sure I have this correct. It's called channels. No. Not channels. What is it called? Hang on. Hang on. I made a couple of them. They're not channels. Channels is something completely different. I don't think it's categories either. No, categories just let you go through the directory in categories. But, so let's see, what is this called?

Stations. And it's not labeled as such. That's why I had a hard time finding it. I'm looking at it as I'm recording here. But what stations are, like in my case, I have my daily pod my daily list that I would have in Overcast. I kind of did that, in a channel called Mike. But the thing is, is it does pull in all the episodes from the selected shows, you know, just like Overcast does with their smart playlist, but it doesn't

make them into a playlist. So I can't, you know, hit play on the first episode and it'll go to the next episode in order to go to the next episode in this playlist. It's not a playlist. So you have to sort of manually queue them up, which is not terrible. I mean, you know. So I go through here and say, you know, I long press, the long press is the key by the way, and you can hit Add to Cue or Add to Play Next. So I do Play Next

and it does it backwards. So the last one you hit Play Next on is the next thing you're going to hear in your player. Then you bring up the player and you can see that it added that episode that I hit on play next. So, you know, it's a tiny bit of foreplanning on my part to get the same result as I had with, say, my news playlist or my daily playlist, in overcast. But again, it made it really easy to save an episode to play later, you know, to to, you know, just sample things.

I really did I do like that. I I I'm not sure if I'm gonna stick with this because I do really like the smart playlist. Cast o Matic also does that one with the podcast two point o apps. It does playlists almost as well as Overcast, but Marco's got it. You know, that Overcast is something else. I do love it. But again, you know, I wanted to give it a

fair shake. And some of the things it does better than Overcast or Pocket Cast or you know some of the other alternative apps, is and this must be new because when I first started listening to podcasts, iTunes, the old desktop software, and then I synced it to my iPod, didn't do anything with the audio. Nowadays, you know, we have audio processing. Overcast famously has this thing called, audio boost or something like that where, you know, on certain podcasts that you know are gonna be

low. I I listened to Scott Adams, the real coffee with Scott Adams. It's the Dilbert guy. And his was notoriously low volume because video first and doesn't care as much for the audio. I get it. But, you know, I listened to it in Overcast and I had to use Overcast because none of the other apps did the audio boosting, you know, or it boosted it up to a listenable level. I I think Apple's doing it even smarter. I don't know this to be a fact. I you know, ask Ted next time I, talk to him.

But, anyway, I had no problem with Scott Adams' show. You know, I don't have to reach for the volume control. Another thing I like about Apple since I'm in the Apple ecosystem is the sync between the desktop app, the Apple TV app, the phone, the iPad, it syncs really well and really quickly.

So say I'm sitting here in my office and I'm listening on my desktop to a podcast, I hit pause, I go to my truck, I plug in the phone, it goes to Apple CarPlay and my podcast is queued up ready to go right where I left off on the

desktop. And same thing with the Apple TV, you know, the podcast app and Apple TV. It syncs right up. And one of the other bonuses, Apple supports video podcasting via RSS. Now I'm not gonna sit and look at my little iPhone screen or even the iPad in most cases or the laptop even or the desktop even. I like it on my big screen. So I have another station of video podcasts that I watch and I only access that station via the Apple TV app.

So you know I can sit here in my La Z Boy and watch my 55 inches big screen TV and watch the video podcasts that I want to watch. And I'm not talking about podcasts on YouTube. That's not really a podcast. That's a YouTube channel that's called a podcast. That's fine. Whatever. Listeners, viewers don't care. But, you know, Truly RSS delivered video comes right to my Apple TV.

I hit play and I watch it. And that's, you know, that's one of the other advantages of, you know, Apple Podcasts. Overcast does not support video. Now you can download a video to Overcast and it'll play the audio for you and all that. But of course, videos are huge. So do you really want those on your phone? Yeah. Of course now the phones have all

the space in the world it seems. I got 256 gigs on my iPhone so I'm not gonna run out of space that's not the big issue with, you know, with Overcast it downloads that whole big file and all I get is the audio.

You know, so just to to sum it up, I I really do like the Apple Podcasts app, on the iPhone and the iPad and the computer and the Apple TV and I guess sort of on the watch, but you know, the only thing I use the watch for is turn the volume up and down when I'm listening on ear pods or the, you know, the the the headphones of my phone, which I don't do an awful lot. You know, it's either in the car or in the, you know, in the house or

or in the office here, whatever. You know, I prefer speakers to headphones. But, again, you know, sometimes you're out for a walk, mowing the lawn, doing all that stuff, which you can't do with a YouTube video most of the time. You know, that's kinda nice. I can listen and control it with my watch and, you know, it syncs up with all the other places I listen. So I I'm gonna stick with it for a while. I'll I'll report back. At some point, I am gonna do a review of Overcast, which is an iOS only

independent app. Marco Arment, I believe his last name, does that and does a really good job. Also, gonna give Pocket Casts a try again. I have, you know, used it on and off over the years. Had a little project at work where, we were trying to figure out, you know, just which apps and, directories and web pages and all that support RSS video podcasts. And, you know, I did come up with a list.

I haven't done the blog post over at Blueberry yet but, I am going to do a blog post over there explaining which apps do video, which ones don't, for RSS delivered video. Of course, Spotify and Apple or not Apple, Spotify and YouTube claim to have video podcasts but their video product over there is not via RSS. So technically, again, viewers listeners don't care. So call it a podcast if you want. We don't care but again it's not technically a RSS delivered podcast.

You know what what's, you know, near and dear to my heart is the RSS feed is the key to free and open podcasting. You don't have to have a particular app to watch and or listen to a podcast of your choice because it's available via RSS. You can use any of about 200 apps out there for listening to podcasts, you know. And then of course there are what I call real podcast apps, and there

are apps that do other things that added podcasting. Again, nothing wrong with that. I don't care how you listen, just as long as you do. But, you know, like Spotify, that's a music app. IHeartRadio is a radio app and they've added podcasting to their catalog, their directory, whatever, so to the user of those apps there's really not a lot of difference. So, you know, that's not the be all end all. I don't care how you listen, as long as you listen.

But, you know, all the real podcast apps get their catalogs from either Apple or Podcast Index and pull the RSS feed in to, deliver shows to the listeners. And the thing about the RSS feed is, you know, as long as you own that feed address you can't be canceled. Now certain ways of creating an RSS feed do lend themselves to cancellation. Podcasts or I mean, Spotify for creators comes to mind. You know, they Spotify owns the the feed. Anchor.fm/whatever,

that belongs to them. If you're on Libsyn, libsyn dot com slash feed slash whatever, dot XML or .RSS. Okay. Libsyn owns that feed. No. Libsyn's not going to censor you, I don't believe. You know, most most podcast hosts won't. RSS.com definitely won't. Buzzsprout won't. You know, a lot of the a lot of the, the bigger hosts do not. Blueberry, of course, does not. But you know if you're, you know, if you have that RSS feed you really can't be canceled. Yes Apple could

take you out of their directory. Podcasts Index could take you out of their directory, which they also won't because they believe in Open RSS and non censorship, free speech, all that good stuff, wave the flag, yeehaw. But, you know, there's a whole lot less of a chance you're gonna get canceled if you're using an open RSS feed. And, you know, you really don't need to do any of that. You know, you could self host and use a WordPress site and generate a feed that way.

You could hand roll the RSS feed. It's not that hard. And we did it. We all did it twenty years ago. So there's the FreedomController and there's lots of ways of generating an RSS feed and that's just a file sitting on a web server somewhere. And, you know, then you just have enclosures, so you have to have your media hosted somewhere. It could be on a web server, although that's not the best way to do it. Or it could be on a CDN, could be on Amazon, could be on, you know, a myriad of places.

So, you know, to not be canceled, the RSS feed is the key. And Apple so far, Apple Podcasts, back to the subject, Apple Podcasts also does not do any of or much if not at all censorship. Now if you're doing something illegal or you're violating copyright, that kind of thing, then yeah you might get pulled down from those apps, those directories, maybe even from Blueberry. I mean you know, if we get a takedown notice for copyright we're obliged

to deal with that. Now we'll take it down, we'll give you the option to fight it. If you protest it then we can put it back up until it's settled in court. But you don't really want to go that way, so don't do anything illegal. Don't do anything copyright violating. I've been guilty of that in the past, violating copyright probably. But then again, if you don't get caught, who cares? But eventually you will get caught so don't don't do it.

You know, podcasting is just a good way to get your, your word out there. So anyway, I would recommend you give Apple Podcasts a try. You know, if you're a podcast listener and you haven't looked at it in a while or, you know, and if you have an iPhone, of course, Apple Podcasts sort of works on Android but as a progressive web app. So you can go to the Apple Podcasts and save it to your home screen as a progressive web app, but it's not as robust

a way to do that. Best one for Android, the mainstream wise anyway is Podcast Addict. That seems to be the number one Android app, although Pocket Cast is good. There's a few, you know, Spotify, I guess, if you have to. I'm not a fan. But, you know, if you have to, you can listen to podcasts on Spotify for Android. But, you know, for the full podcast RSS experience, Podcast Addict or or PocketCasts or any of the podcast two point o apps that have an Android app are probably better. But,

just my humble opinion. So

on to some personal stuff. I think the last episode I talked about, you know, the snow. Finally the snow has melted. In fact, it's, it's like 09:00 at night here and it's, still around 60. That's about as warm as it's been so far this spring, but, it's been nice. Getting a little bit of rain. Probably could use a little more. So, I don't want a lot of rain because I wanna I wanna get back to flying. And it seems like every time I schedule a flight, the weather goes to crap. So, you

know, it is what it is. But, so you can tell if, Traverse City, Michigan gets a a line of thunderstorms, probably I scheduled an airplane to go for a flight. So it's alright. Kathy's doing alright, my wife. The family is sort of settled in after the passing of my dad. We're, getting things at the old homestead, in line. I had to do some deck repair and got the snowblower off the tractor

and the cab off the tractor. And, I didn't put the, mower deck on it yet, but, I figured that might tempt fate and get us some snow. Whenever I take the snow removal equipment and put that away for the year, then we get another snow. But, I figured mother nature brings it, she can take it back. Let's see. Got the camper into town. Haven't started really de winterizing that yet, but, that's on the agenda.

Got a few camping trips planned. And I do have a ham radio station I'm gonna install in the camper, and I'm gonna install a TV antenna in place of the satellite dish that's on it. So, when we do go camping, we might have a little bit of over the air TV and, definitely some over the air radio and, all that good stuff. Where we where we end up camping usually is out of range of of good, Internet. It has some Internet, but not great Internet.

So can't really rely on that. Of course, I could just drive up the hill and download all my podcasts, Apple podcasts, and have all the entertainment I need. But most of the time camping is chasing the dog around or or, playing in the lake or whatever. So but I guess that's it. Thanks for listening. Of course. Oh, I've been working on the website too. I that website's been really terrible for the longest time, And I think I found a theme that I like and

I've been, tweaking things. So don't mind the dust, but, go check out mikedell.com. And I do have some blog posts over there. I got some other things going on over there. Of course, you can also listen to the podcast over there if you don't want to listen to it on Apple Podcasts or any of the other apps I mentioned. So periodically, I will, review a podcast app or two for, you guys that are listening to this, our podcast listeners by definition. So

it might be interesting. Might not. Not sure when the next one will be, but we'll see you then. Go check out mikedel.com. Catch me later.