Summary: News: Hands on: Apple’s Podcasts app loses reel animation, gains playlists Apple's Podcasts 1.2 for iOS replaces skeuomorphism with iCloud and playlists. Last summer, Apple released the Podcasts application as a new way to play podcasts on your iOS device. Until that time, this was a job done by the built-in iPod or Music app, but as of iOS 6, podcasts disappear from Music if you have the Podcasts app installed. The initial poor performance and bugginess were addressed as the year progressed, albeit not to everyone's satisfaction. And the astonishingly accurately animated reel-to-reel tape deck displayed as podcasts played was seen as a prime example of Apple's foray in excessive skeuomorphism. But as of this week's release of Podcasts 1.2, skeuomorphism is out the door. And you know what? I actually miss the reel-to-reel tape deck animation a little. But now at least I don't have to worry about the animation using up valuable battery life. Playlists A more important change is that Podcasts now has playlists, found under "My Stations." Four different types, even: the On-The-Go playlist, custom "stations," and both smart and regular playlists synced from iTunes. The iTunes playlists behave largely as expected: you get to edit the regular ones, letting you reorder and remove episodes... but not add any. There's no editing of smart playlists, and Podcasts inherits an issue that Music has had in recent years: the order of episodes in a smart playlist set in iTunes is not carried over. Instead, episodes are sorted by the Artist field (usually the podcast's name), then the star rating from high to low, and finally alphabetically by episode name. The On-The-Go playlist doesn't suffer from these issues: it lets you add, reorder, and remove episodes. Although you can set whether episodes are shown from old to new or from new to old and, separately, whether they play oldest first or newest first for each individual podcast feed, the On-The-Go interface always adds episodes at the top. But you can also add episodes to the On-The-Go playlist through a big button on the episode's information screen. In this case, they're added at the bottom. As a strong old-goes-on-top proponent, I really hope Apple doesn't simplify all of this by making new-goes-on-top the only option. If that's the alternative, please give me this mess instead. But a global new-goes-on-top vs old-goes-on-top default setting would certainly go a long way here. Stations Last but not least, you get to build your own stations. These are basically smart playlists. Two are provided out of the box: Most Recent and All Unplayed. The Most Recent station has one episode of every podcast. Strangely, for podcasts synced from iTunes, it's the oldest episode, while for podcasts that you're subscribed to within Podcasts, it's the newest. The episodes are ordered from the newest to the oldest. The All Unplayed station obviously has all unplayed episodes in it, grouped by podcast. You also get to make your own stations. You can select which podcasts to include, and how many episodes. You only get to select the 1, 2, 3, 5, or 10 most recent ones (if you don't want to include all), but for iTunes-synced podcasts, this actually seems to mean "oldest." The episodes can then be ordered manually, in "most recent" order or in the order you've set up in "My Podcasts." Please Apple, how hard is it to add "least recent" and "alphabetically"? The ordering is important, because episodes play one after the other. (You can still avoid automatically starting the next podcast with the sleep timer, now reachable through the little clock with zz icon above the artwork in the playback screen.) Last but not least, you can include audio or video podcasts or both, and limit the station to unplayed episodes only. I listen to several science podcasts, so I make a station that collects those. I'm also catching up on some podcasts I recently discovered. For these,
