Apple Podcasts 12+

Since Covid struck and since having a baby fashion to me has seemed pointless, frivolous and made me ashamed of the amount of money I used to spend on clothes. Finding out more on how terrible the impact the fashion industry has on the environment has really stopped me in my tracks and I just ceased to shop for new things…. However I have always loved vintage, even before it was a ‘thing’ and I have some insane pieces in my collection that I could never throw away even though I will never be able to fit into them again, and listening to this podcast has made me stop and think that I don’t need to throw the ‘baby out with the bath water’ as it were, I just need to start thrifting again (which doesn’t have a negative impact on our planet), I needed that love of vintage to be re-ignited even though I am no longer a size 8 (and probably never will be) and embrace a different me and this podcast series has done just that. The guests are fascinating and intelligent - it’s the guests that really make the podcast great - particularly the episode with Jemima Kirke who is so articulate and fascinating. I found this podcast because I love Bay’s style, glad I gave it a go!

I see high ratings for Apple’s podcast and really understand. The enjoyment I get from the amazing range of (free) podcasts is massive. This 1 star rating is for the app, which frankly is terrible. The app itself has not changed much since the first versions I used back on iPhone 4. It freezes, it glitches, it’s almost impossible to sort podcasts and some of my favourites like The Daily just never appear in my latest feeds. It’s also a massive memory hog, and you’ve few options for listening offline other than to download every episode of a show. Another bugbear is that most of the app is given over to promoting podcasts I have no interest in. A “shop window” is nice starting out, but as an experienced user this app leaves me cold, especially when what I’m looking for is well hidden. It’s a real shame, this app is the gateway to amazing content. It’s just been neglected, with bells and whistles added while the engine is as old and rotten as you’d expect from something over 10 years old.

I’ve been using this app for years. It’s great that Apple have a podcast where you can quickly access an array of podcast and audio books. BUT the app doesn’t work as well as it use to - it’s freezes the podcasts at the end of the episode instead of auto playing the next episode as it’s meant to, you have to manually open app and click next. It’s also a little frustrating instead of cycling through episodes of the same podcasts series sometimes it will just randomly start playing an episode of something completely different so I have to open the app and go back to the actual series I wanted to listen to. Seems minor but can be a bit annoying if like me, you leave podcasts on for background listening whilst carrying out other tasks.

This app also isn’t very easy to navigate in terms of finding certain options that should be really easy to figure out. Such as selecting options to ONLY play downloaded podcasts. Or to ONLY play podcasts that you have added to your library.

Overall the app is good but just some small issues I’ve noticed recently with the app slightly take away from the experience.