April 23, 2025 • 23 mins
As an Apple fanboy with a collection of Apple devices, I wanted to share what motivated this experiment. I hadn’t used Apple Podcasts for my personal listening in quite a while—I mostly opened it to double-check my own podcast episodes for work. My go-to app had always been Overcast, mostly because of its smart playlisting feature. It made it super easy to organize and stay on top of my favorite shows.
But one thing Apple Podcasts does really well is helping users discover new podcasts. I love that it gives you sample episodes without needing to subscribe first—that feature alone really caught my attention.
While I was at an event in Chicago recently, I had a chance to chat with someone from Apple. They showed me some features I hadn’t even noticed before—like the ability to save episodes for later without subscribing to the full podcast. I’m still not a fan of how the industry has moved from saying "subscribe" to "follow," but I end up using both terms depending on the context.
One of the biggest things I’ve come to appreciate about Apple Podcasts is how well it processes audio and syncs across all my Apple devices. I can start listening on my desktop, pick it up on my iPhone, and even continue on the Apple TV without missing a beat. That cross-device sync is slick. Plus, I can access video podcasts through the Apple TV app—something Overcast doesn’t offer.
That said, there are definitely things I miss from Overcast. Apple Podcasts doesn’t have smart playlists. Instead, it uses something called “Stations,” which can pull in episodes from shows I choose, but I still have to manually line them up to play in the order I want. So while I’m enjoying the discovery side of Apple Podcasts, I’m still not sure if it’ll become my long-term app—I just really like how Overcast handles playlists.
Toward the end of the episode, I also talked a bit about what’s been going on personally. Spring has finally arrived here, and I’ve been spending time with family and working on a few projects—including updates to the camper and getting a ham radio setup installed. I’ve also been making progress on my website, so if you haven’t checked it out lately, I invite you to take a look. MikeDell.com
And of course, I’ll be reviewing more podcast apps down the road, so stay tuned—and thanks, as always, for listening.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
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
(00:22):
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
(00:42):
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
(01:02):
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
(01:23):
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
(01:45):
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
(02:05):
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
(02:26):
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
(02:48):
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
(03:08):
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
(03:30):
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
(03:52):
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.
(04:12):
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
(04:34):
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
(04:55):
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.
(05:16):
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
(05:37):
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
(05:57):
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.
(06:19):
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
(06:40):
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
(07:02):
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
(07:23):
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.
(07:43):
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
(08:04):
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
(08:26):
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
(08:48):
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.
(09:08):
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
(09:30):
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
(09:52):
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
(10:14):
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.
(10:35):
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
(10:58):
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
(11:19):
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
(11:40):
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
(12:02):
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
(12:24):
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
(12:46):
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
(13:06):
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.
(13:29):
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
(13:51):
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
(14:11):
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
(14:33):
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
(14:54):
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
(15:15):
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.
(15:37):
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.
(15:58):
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.
(16:18):
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
(16:39):
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
(16:59):
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,
(17:20):
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.
(17:41):
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
(18:02):
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
(18:24):
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.
(18:46):
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
(19:06):
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.
(19:27):
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
(19:47):
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
(20:07):
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.
(20:28):
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.
(20:48):
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
(21:09):
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.
(21:30):
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
(21:52):
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,
(22:14):
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
(22:35):
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.
(22:56):
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
(23:16):
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.
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
(00:22):
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
(00:42):
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
(01:02):
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
(01:23):
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
(01:45):
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
(02:05):
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
(02:26):
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
(02:48):
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
(03:08):
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
(03:30):
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
(03:52):
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.
(04:12):
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
(04:34):
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
(04:55):
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.
(05:16):
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
(05:37):
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
(05:57):
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.
(06:19):
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
(06:40):
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
(07:02):
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
(07:23):
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.
(07:43):
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
(08:04):
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
(08:26):
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
(08:48):
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.
(09:08):
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
(09:30):
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
(09:52):
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
(10:14):
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.
(10:35):
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
(10:58):
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
(11:19):
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
(11:40):
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
(12:02):
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
(12:24):
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
(12:46):
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
(13:06):
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.
(13:29):
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
(13:51):
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
(14:11):
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
(14:33):
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
(14:54):
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
(15:15):
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.
(15:37):
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.
(15:58):
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.
(16:18):
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
(16:39):
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
(16:59):
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,
(17:20):
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.
(17:41):
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
(18:02):
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
(18:24):
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.
(18:46):
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
(19:06):
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.
(19:27):
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
(19:47):
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
(20:07):
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.
(20:28):
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.
(20:48):
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
(21:09):
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.
(21:30):
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
(21:52):
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,
(22:14):
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
(22:35):
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.
(22:56):
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
(23:16):
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.
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