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What we need from Apple to make standalone Apple Watch podcast apps

374 points by qzervaas 9y ago

kwerk 9y ago
I’ve considered setting up a cron job to change select podcasts in iTunes to music so they sync with the watch. No position sync or fast forward but enough for a run. Having spent 24 hours with the cellular watch and taken two runs without the iPhone, this is now a near necessity.
- pragone 9y ago
  That would be awesome if you wanted to share it!
  - kwerk 9y ago
    I've got it working with a node script to change the id3 tag, and re-add to itunes, that triggers a smart playlist called "Watch Podcasts" in the Music section. Then the node script triggers AppleScript to Update iCloud Library. The "Watch Podcasts" smart playlist is added in iPhone Watch app under Music. Now when the watch is charging any of those podcasts are synced. Don't have a clean way to share (and selecting podcasts to transfer is manual on the Mac). If there's interest I may expand on utility and share
    - RobSim 9y ago
      Just wanted to throw another name down for interest in this script! Would be an awesome feature
      - kwerk 9y ago
        Here it is: https://github.com/kylewill/apple-watch-podcast-sync https://github.com/kylewill/apple-watch-podcast-sync I really did hack it together before a run and am very embarrassed by the code. pull requests welcome :)
- discordance 9y ago
  It's pretty sad that such a useful and obvious UX needs to be hacked up
Analemma_ 9y ago
The Apple Watch might be selling well, but it's definitely not getting the kind of 3rd-party app support Apple probably wanted to see (me and everyone I know who has one likes it, but only uses notifications and fitness tracking). With that in mind, it's crazy to me that Apple isn't beating down Marco's door to give him his requests. In the limited time that standalone Watch playback was in Overcast, even in its crappy implementation I used the hell out of it. Audio is one of the few home-run use cases for Watch apps, whereas in most other cases it's so much simpler and easier to just use your phone. Why wasn't that the first API implemented and the one polished to a shine? I hope they're not trying to make Apple Music the only available option.
- djrogers 9y ago
  > even in its crappy implementation I used the hell out of it. Then based on Marco's own stats, you were one of about 0.1% of users... That said, now that the watch is free* from the tether of my iPhone, I'd love to listen to podcasts on it on a run while leaving my phone behind. [1] https://marco.org/2017/08/10/removed-send-to-watch https://marco.org/2017/08/10/removed-send-to-watch [2] relatively
DavidAdams 9y ago
This article is a great example of how the Apple Watch has failed to reach its potential almost entirely because of indifferent software product design on Apple's part. I'm sure that ever Watch owner and developer can come up with a few other examples of things that the apple watch ought to be able to do but can't. When I bought my Apple Watch, I had assumed that I'd be able to use it to view and control the podcasts I'm listening to on my attached iPhone, which is even more fundamental than what's described in this blog post. But nope, not in any meaningful or useful way. That being said, the Apple watch is still pretty good at pretty much one thing: when my phone beeps with a notification from one of many sources (SMS, eBay, Invision Trello, Messenger, etc) I need only glance at my watch. It's also a decent exercise tracker. But it could be so much more. Sadly, I think Apple has probably missed it's best chance to recruit top developers, so it's likely it will be relegated to fancy text reader and step counter forever.
- atomical 9y ago
  Average podcast is over 30 minutes, right? That means you would need to pull out your phone every 30 minutes to select the next podcast. Is that a big deal to you?
  - sneak 9y ago
    Where we’re going, we don’t need phones.
  - captain_crabs 9y ago
    Depending on what you're doing, you might need to pause/play/rewind the podcast a lot. I walk to coffee shops through some neighborhood area, and then some busy roads. So I make sure to pause for traffic noises, often I've gotta do so to talk with neighbors, and then so on. I don't even have an apple watch, but not having to deal with pulling my phone out a good number of times per walk over a lot of walks means a lot less times I could potentially drop my phone.
    - djrogers 9y ago
      > Depending on what you're doing, you might need to pause/play/rewind the podcast a lot. The existing 'now playing' capabilities of the watch handle this perfectly well. They don't handle selecting podcasts to play though.
eddieroger 9y ago
I don't think Apple needs to be told where their APIs are lacking for podcasting, as evident through the absence of standalone playback in their own Podcasts app, let alone an app at all. Either Apple can't figure out how to take the podcast experience and make it a good one on the Watch, or more likely (I think), the way it would need to work would make the Watch experience bad. I imagine they've got the "just play" experience for music heavily optimized, but the callbacks Marco mentions probably do terrible things to the Watch's battery and processor. Either way, this is a known desired thing, and if it could be done in a reasonable way, I'm sure they would have - they did put the 'pod' in podcast, after all.
- floatingatoll 9y ago
  Apple has, in recent years, made explicit overtures to the developer community. They’ve welcomed feedback, requests, and concerns. They’ve acted on some of them. It’s absolutely appropriate to write a piece like this. Clearly summarizing a perceived need driven by a clear set of user stories permits Apple to evaluate viewpoints that may not be familiar.
- madeofpalk 9y ago
  > as evident through the absence of standalone playback in their own Podcasts app, let alone an app at all This is moot. If Apple wanted were to put their podcast app on Apple Watch they would just use internal APIs that third parties can't use, like the default music app.
  - ascagnel_ 9y ago
    They actually had a podcasts app for the Watch early on, and removed it without giving a reason why.
  - eddieroger 9y ago
    That was actually my point - either they don't want it done, or can't figure out a way to do it in a consumer-friendly way (read: without wrecking the battery). Apple gets to go first thanks to private APIs, and they haven't done this yet.
MBCook 9y ago
A little over a week ago I found out that watchOS 4 would show you the now playing screen by default when listening to something and couldn’t wait to install it. It’s fantastic to be able to easily look at my watch to change the volume or skip track or go forward or backward in a podcast. But then Overcast came up. And just like Marco said I ended up on installing it on my watch because I lost the ability to change the volume. The now playing widget still let me change the volume and I can use the little buttons to skip forward and backward 30 seconds. But now I can’t choose which podcast I’m listening to from the watch. I can’t put the app on my watch because it actively brakes a useful feature. All because Apple won’t provide a simple API the people have been asking for for two years now? It’s sort of made sense in the original watchOS I guess but once we got the ability to run apps on the watch and access the digital crown seems like an obvious step that volume control should’ve been provided. Please, Apple?
- zippergz 9y ago
  I actually was thrilled when I realized that turning the Digital Crown didn’t adjust the volume in overcast on the watch. With the stock now playing widget, I found myself far more often accidentally adjusting the volume than doing it on purpose.
- mike-cardwell 9y ago
  We keep hitting these barriers with proprietary software and locked down hardware. Hopefully the guys behind https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ will be a massive success and then turn around and do a smart-watch version.
  - bpicolo 9y ago
    Seems almost impossible for them to have success on the consumer market, as those just aren't the things your typical consumer thinks about. Consumers like having e.g. reliable Maps, which is very difficult for anybody not-BigCo because they're the ones with data to do it. Apple, Google have thousands of people and billions of dollars invested in building consumer experience for their mobile phones/apps. Getting even a tiny fraction of that market as a startup would require something wholly original. Privacy-focused <x> isn't that thing. (See: email, past privacy-OS-for-desktop attempts). Not to mention, Apple is doing a half decent job with the privacy angle, too.
cbhl 9y ago
The entire time I was reading this piece, I couldn't help but think, "I wouldn't be surprised if Apple explicitly omitted that feature from the API to keep battery life reasonable on the Apple Watch." Syncing progress for a podcast once every minute is excessive. Rather than polling, the app should update progress on the boundary transition (when starting the podcast app, when playback pauses, when bluetooth headphones disconnect, just before and after going to next/previous podcast).
- chime 9y ago
  That's exactly what I thought too. Apple generally prefers to limit features in order to provide adequate performance/usability. The moment hardware gets advanced enough to handle the features without issues, they build them in.
  - kobeya 9y ago
    If that were true they’d be making something more like the Pebble Time series of watches with week long battery life, essentials built in, and minimal API. Apple Watch is a battery hog, culprit number one being the sexy watchOS UI. If you want practicality and pragmatic trade offs, it is nowhere near what others have demonstrated.
    - bpicolo 9y ago
      They're clearly optimizing for a single waking-day of battery life, which is (imo) a reasonable thing to aim for. I don't want to wear a watch when I'm sleeping anyway. It's a different tradeoff than Pebble that allows them to do more. It's also something they've worked hard to pack features into (e.g. Siri voice on-watch in series 3)
- simplyluke 9y ago
  Agreed on battery but it raises a question of UX vs battery life. I'd rather have a very useful watch for 6 hours than a mediocre one for 18 (less on the newer LTE models apparently). Audio is in many ways what should be the killer app for the watch. The watch should make it so I can go on a run and leave my phone at home, but omitting features like this make it a lot more difficult to fill that role. The lifetime of a $350+++ Fitbit/notification screen is limited. Apple needs to improve the software side quickly - the hardware has come a long way from the first version. Things like omitting error handling are just poor software design though.
0xbear 9y ago
Do people still listen to podcasts? I lasted 3 months, and then moved to Audible.
- dreamcompiler 9y ago
  I don't listen to them nearly as much as I used to, mostly because podcasts are so ad-laden these days. Listening to a two-minute ad for Ziprecruiter for every 7 minutes of content gets old fast.
  - X86BSD 9y ago
    Oddly the wife and I bit57 and moan about the same experience with google fiber tv. I swear we are watching 80% ads for 20% content. It's to the point we can't watch anything live anymore. We just record it and wait at least 30 minutes before playing it off the dvr so we can FF through all the freaking commercials. It's insane how were paying $70/mo to watch mostly ads. Advertising has gotten so out of control, on the web, podcasts, tv, etc.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    There are still a bunch of great podcasts with little or no ads. Mike Duncan's "History of Rome" and "Revolutions" (single ad at the start), Omega Tau (no ads), Econtalk (no ads), and Hardcore History (which has two ads, IIRC, but the episodes last literally hours). I think the difference is mostly between shows made by companies, or by individuals and non-profits. Gotta pay those investors.
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      > I think the difference is mostly between shows made by companies, or by individuals and non-profits. Gotta pay those investors. Basically, the same situation as with videos and websites.
    - thanatropism 9y ago
      What? Both Joe Rogan (individual) and NPR (nonprofit) are ad-laden as...
synicalx 9y ago
I liked this piece right off the bat, not because the content is relevant to me but because it took responsibility and initiative, unlike many similar such articles I see on here. The key is in the title "What we need from Apple TO MAKE standalone Apple Watch podcast apps", rather than "Why Apple needs to make a standalone Watch podcast app".
- Olivia56 9y ago
  Yeah it`s Possible. .....Anybody can earn 250$+ daily... You can earn from 6000-12000 a month or even more if you work as a full time job... <a href="http://www.todaysfox.com" http://www.todaysfox.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Click Here And Start Work</a>
- askafriend 9y ago
  This is an excellent point and I completely agree. I loved the way the Marco took initiative to propose actual viable technical solutions rather than just vague complaining like so many articles do.
xtat 9y ago
I just found out people still care about apple watch
- austenallred 9y ago
  They’ve sold 32 million of them by some estimates, including 12 million in 2016. No iPhone, but we’re it any other company than Apple it would be an enormous, company-making win.
joshfarrant 9y ago
This is the single thing preventing me from buying an Apple Watch. I use Overcast to listen to podcasts on iOS and usually listen while running. As soon as Apple make these APIs available and Marco is able to create a watch app I'll be straight down the Apple Store to give Apple my £429.
- enraged_camel 9y ago
  For me it's the battery. Having to charge a watch every 24-48 hours is a complete non-starter, regardless of its functionality. I don't want to carry more cables or charging stations with me wherever I go. It's the single-most point of stress, especially when I travel. If the battery lasted 7-10 days, it would be perfect. That's about how long my business trips take, so I could charge it to full beforehand and not worry about it at all during the trip.
  - whipoodle 9y ago
    Yeah, I'm not sure I would want one even in that case, but certainly not until then.
  - macintux 9y ago
    You won't see a week-long battery life on the Watch for many years, but you will see a single charging pad for Watch + iPhone + AirPods next year. Seems like a reasonable compromise for travelers.
    - ciaranm 9y ago
      I've been using a plug like this ( https://www.amazon.co.uk/Charger-Syncwire-4-Port-Interchangeable-Adaptor-White/dp/B011KPRE1G/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1506355234&sr=8-7&keywords=usb+plug https://www.amazon.co.uk/Charger-Syncwire-4-Port-Interchange... )for my phone/watch/headphone/kindle charging for years. It's very handy - especially when travelling.
TheeKslay 9y ago
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ksec 9y ago
My guess is that Apple takes battery life over everything else. You can tell that Apple has kept a consistent Talk Time/ 4G usage time over the years with iPhone. And some of these consideration means Podcast on Apple watch a little harder to get right. And I am wondering, how much would people paid for longer battery life on Apple watch? We do have the tech, solid state battery, it is simply too expensive if it is used in the size of smartphone, because solid state battery prices scale exponentially with size. But what about Smart watches? Are user willing to paid extra $200 for LTE + Solid State Battery?
- detaro 9y ago
  I thought these were still prototype-stage? Do you maybe have I link where I can learn more?
uptown 9y ago
Ironic that progress sync is listed as the deal-breaker. That's the one thing which doesn't seem to work properly between my laptop and my iPhone with Apple's Podcasts app and iTunes on the desktop.
drewg123 9y ago
Can somebody please, please, please make a podcast app for Android Wear? One that I can use without my phone, so I can go for a run/hike/walk with just my watch and headphones? Even Google Play Music doesn't sync podcasts to wear. Sigh. I periodically search the play store for AW enabled podcast apps, but the best I've found are apps that put playback controls for the phone on the watchface. Sigh.
brlewis 9y ago
Why not just listen to the podcast only on the watch, since you always have it with you? What's the use case for switching to some other device once the podcast is on your watch?
- falcolas 9y ago
  Using external speakers (or headphones), battery life, and disk storage are three I can think of off hand. Some podcasts are exceptionally long (10's of hours - think the out-of-copyright version of audiobooks), and those consume a lot of battery life (for both playback and transfer) and disk space.
- yoz-y 9y ago
  When you have your phone with you it is still a better device for podcasts: - You have access to show notes and have a full fledged browser to follow the links - You have way more battery life. I listen to about 4 hours of audio content during a day, I suppose I'd have to recharge the watch more often - Exploration of episodes and general library management is better on a bigger screen
whipoodle 9y ago
This thing still ain't fully baked.
_ZeD_ 9y ago
offtopic, but on the page there is a note with: There’s one elaborate exception that we discussed in Under The Radar #98: workout apps, which are allowed to run in the background and play audio. So this all becomes possible if you combine a standalone podcast player with a workout app, and only allow podcast playback while a workout is active that was started from that app. But this forces the combination of two completely different app types, and users would find the workout-during-playback requirement confusing, inexplicable, and limiting. Requiring podcast apps to also be workout apps is a user- and developer-hostile hack that Apple probably doesn’t intend. whaaat? what kind of OS has this business rules so embedded?
TheSpecialist 9y ago
I suspect a lot of reasons this functionality isn't available is due to power concerns. Why is some of this functionality available if you're a workout app then? 1) People are aware that running workouts on the Watch is a big battery hog. Apple makes that pretty clear and it makes sense. 2) Most people don't do enough working out in a day to impact the "all day battery life" 18-hours on average claim. Clearly with the release of Apple Music streaming is possible, but they are probably being careful with how they design the networking for that feature. I'm curious to see what battery life will be like when streaming on the watch.
izzard 9y ago
Somewhat off topic but somewhat related, I have tried a whole bunch of different smart watches and activity trackers, and my current favorite is made by Skagen. Specifically, the "Signatur Connected Leather Hybrid Smartwatch". It looks like an analog watch, but it has smart watch functions and connects to your phone with bluetooth. Favorite things about it: It has an analog subdial that shows progress towards your daily step goal. It has three 'real' analog buttons that you can connect to just about any function on your phone. I have one button mapped to start/stop any music that is playing. Another button moves the hour and minute hands to point to the date. The third button sets off the ringer on my phone. And the battery is a normal watch battery, which should last between 6 months and a year. Check it out, I think it hits the right balance between minimal analog watch and smart functions.
jjtheblunt 9y ago
Who is "we"?

374 points by qzervaas 9y ago

I’ve considered setting up a cron job to change select podcasts in iTunes to music so they sync with the watch. No position sync or fast forward but enough for a run. Having spent 24 hours with the cellular watch and taken two runs without the iPhone, this is now a near necessity.

pragone 9y ago
That would be awesome if you wanted to share it!
- kwerk 9y ago
  I've got it working with a node script to change the id3 tag, and re-add to itunes, that triggers a smart playlist called "Watch Podcasts" in the Music section. Then the node script triggers AppleScript to Update iCloud Library. The "Watch Podcasts" smart playlist is added in iPhone Watch app under Music. Now when the watch is charging any of those podcasts are synced. Don't have a clean way to share (and selecting podcasts to transfer is manual on the Mac). If there's interest I may expand on utility and share
  - RobSim 9y ago
    Just wanted to throw another name down for interest in this script! Would be an awesome feature
    - kwerk 9y ago
      Here it is: https://github.com/kylewill/apple-watch-podcast-sync https://github.com/kylewill/apple-watch-podcast-sync I really did hack it together before a run and am very embarrassed by the code. pull requests welcome :)
discordance 9y ago
It's pretty sad that such a useful and obvious UX needs to be hacked up

Analemma_ 9y ago

The Apple Watch might be selling well, but it's definitely not getting the kind of 3rd-party app support Apple probably wanted to see (me and everyone I know who has one likes it, but only uses notifications and fitness tracking). With that in mind, it's crazy to me that Apple isn't beating down Marco's door to give him his requests. In the limited time that standalone Watch playback was in Overcast, even in its crappy implementation I used the hell out of it. Audio is one of the few home-run use cases for Watch apps, whereas in most other cases it's so much simpler and easier to just use your phone. Why wasn't that the first API implemented and the one polished to a shine? I hope they're not trying to make Apple Music the only available option.

djrogers 9y ago
> even in its crappy implementation I used the hell out of it. Then based on Marco's own stats, you were one of about 0.1% of users... That said, now that the watch is free* from the tether of my iPhone, I'd love to listen to podcasts on it on a run while leaving my phone behind. [1] https://marco.org/2017/08/10/removed-send-to-watch https://marco.org/2017/08/10/removed-send-to-watch [2] relatively

DavidAdams 9y ago

This article is a great example of how the Apple Watch has failed to reach its potential almost entirely because of indifferent software product design on Apple's part. I'm sure that ever Watch owner and developer can come up with a few other examples of things that the apple watch ought to be able to do but can't. When I bought my Apple Watch, I had assumed that I'd be able to use it to view and control the podcasts I'm listening to on my attached iPhone, which is even more fundamental than what's described in this blog post. But nope, not in any meaningful or useful way. That being said, the Apple watch is still pretty good at pretty much one thing: when my phone beeps with a notification from one of many sources (SMS, eBay, Invision Trello, Messenger, etc) I need only glance at my watch. It's also a decent exercise tracker. But it could be so much more. Sadly, I think Apple has probably missed it's best chance to recruit top developers, so it's likely it will be relegated to fancy text reader and step counter forever.

atomical 9y ago
Average podcast is over 30 minutes, right? That means you would need to pull out your phone every 30 minutes to select the next podcast. Is that a big deal to you?
- sneak 9y ago
  Where we’re going, we don’t need phones.
- captain_crabs 9y ago
  Depending on what you're doing, you might need to pause/play/rewind the podcast a lot. I walk to coffee shops through some neighborhood area, and then some busy roads. So I make sure to pause for traffic noises, often I've gotta do so to talk with neighbors, and then so on. I don't even have an apple watch, but not having to deal with pulling my phone out a good number of times per walk over a lot of walks means a lot less times I could potentially drop my phone.
  - djrogers 9y ago
    > Depending on what you're doing, you might need to pause/play/rewind the podcast a lot. The existing 'now playing' capabilities of the watch handle this perfectly well. They don't handle selecting podcasts to play though.

eddieroger 9y ago

I don't think Apple needs to be told where their APIs are lacking for podcasting, as evident through the absence of standalone playback in their own Podcasts app, let alone an app at all. Either Apple can't figure out how to take the podcast experience and make it a good one on the Watch, or more likely (I think), the way it would need to work would make the Watch experience bad. I imagine they've got the "just play" experience for music heavily optimized, but the callbacks Marco mentions probably do terrible things to the Watch's battery and processor. Either way, this is a known desired thing, and if it could be done in a reasonable way, I'm sure they would have - they did put the 'pod' in podcast, after all.

floatingatoll 9y ago
Apple has, in recent years, made explicit overtures to the developer community. They’ve welcomed feedback, requests, and concerns. They’ve acted on some of them. It’s absolutely appropriate to write a piece like this. Clearly summarizing a perceived need driven by a clear set of user stories permits Apple to evaluate viewpoints that may not be familiar.
madeofpalk 9y ago
> as evident through the absence of standalone playback in their own Podcasts app, let alone an app at all This is moot. If Apple wanted were to put their podcast app on Apple Watch they would just use internal APIs that third parties can't use, like the default music app.
- ascagnel_ 9y ago
  They actually had a podcasts app for the Watch early on, and removed it without giving a reason why.
- eddieroger 9y ago
  That was actually my point - either they don't want it done, or can't figure out a way to do it in a consumer-friendly way (read: without wrecking the battery). Apple gets to go first thanks to private APIs, and they haven't done this yet.

MBCook 9y ago

A little over a week ago I found out that watchOS 4 would show you the now playing screen by default when listening to something and couldn’t wait to install it. It’s fantastic to be able to easily look at my watch to change the volume or skip track or go forward or backward in a podcast. But then Overcast came up. And just like Marco said I ended up on installing it on my watch because I lost the ability to change the volume. The now playing widget still let me change the volume and I can use the little buttons to skip forward and backward 30 seconds. But now I can’t choose which podcast I’m listening to from the watch. I can’t put the app on my watch because it actively brakes a useful feature. All because Apple won’t provide a simple API the people have been asking for for two years now? It’s sort of made sense in the original watchOS I guess but once we got the ability to run apps on the watch and access the digital crown seems like an obvious step that volume control should’ve been provided. Please, Apple?

zippergz 9y ago
I actually was thrilled when I realized that turning the Digital Crown didn’t adjust the volume in overcast on the watch. With the stock now playing widget, I found myself far more often accidentally adjusting the volume than doing it on purpose.
mike-cardwell 9y ago
We keep hitting these barriers with proprietary software and locked down hardware. Hopefully the guys behind https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ will be a massive success and then turn around and do a smart-watch version.
- bpicolo 9y ago
  Seems almost impossible for them to have success on the consumer market, as those just aren't the things your typical consumer thinks about. Consumers like having e.g. reliable Maps, which is very difficult for anybody not-BigCo because they're the ones with data to do it. Apple, Google have thousands of people and billions of dollars invested in building consumer experience for their mobile phones/apps. Getting even a tiny fraction of that market as a startup would require something wholly original. Privacy-focused <x> isn't that thing. (See: email, past privacy-OS-for-desktop attempts). Not to mention, Apple is doing a half decent job with the privacy angle, too.

cbhl 9y ago

The entire time I was reading this piece, I couldn't help but think, "I wouldn't be surprised if Apple explicitly omitted that feature from the API to keep battery life reasonable on the Apple Watch." Syncing progress for a podcast once every minute is excessive. Rather than polling, the app should update progress on the boundary transition (when starting the podcast app, when playback pauses, when bluetooth headphones disconnect, just before and after going to next/previous podcast).

chime 9y ago
That's exactly what I thought too. Apple generally prefers to limit features in order to provide adequate performance/usability. The moment hardware gets advanced enough to handle the features without issues, they build them in.
- kobeya 9y ago
  If that were true they’d be making something more like the Pebble Time series of watches with week long battery life, essentials built in, and minimal API. Apple Watch is a battery hog, culprit number one being the sexy watchOS UI. If you want practicality and pragmatic trade offs, it is nowhere near what others have demonstrated.
  - bpicolo 9y ago
    They're clearly optimizing for a single waking-day of battery life, which is (imo) a reasonable thing to aim for. I don't want to wear a watch when I'm sleeping anyway. It's a different tradeoff than Pebble that allows them to do more. It's also something they've worked hard to pack features into (e.g. Siri voice on-watch in series 3)
simplyluke 9y ago
Agreed on battery but it raises a question of UX vs battery life. I'd rather have a very useful watch for 6 hours than a mediocre one for 18 (less on the newer LTE models apparently). Audio is in many ways what should be the killer app for the watch. The watch should make it so I can go on a run and leave my phone at home, but omitting features like this make it a lot more difficult to fill that role. The lifetime of a $350+++ Fitbit/notification screen is limited. Apple needs to improve the software side quickly - the hardware has come a long way from the first version. Things like omitting error handling are just poor software design though.

0xbear 9y ago

Do people still listen to podcasts? I lasted 3 months, and then moved to Audible.

dreamcompiler 9y ago
I don't listen to them nearly as much as I used to, mostly because podcasts are so ad-laden these days. Listening to a two-minute ad for Ziprecruiter for every 7 minutes of content gets old fast.
- X86BSD 9y ago
  Oddly the wife and I bit57 and moan about the same experience with google fiber tv. I swear we are watching 80% ads for 20% content. It's to the point we can't watch anything live anymore. We just record it and wait at least 30 minutes before playing it off the dvr so we can FF through all the freaking commercials. It's insane how were paying $70/mo to watch mostly ads. Advertising has gotten so out of control, on the web, podcasts, tv, etc.
- icebraining 9y ago
  There are still a bunch of great podcasts with little or no ads. Mike Duncan's "History of Rome" and "Revolutions" (single ad at the start), Omega Tau (no ads), Econtalk (no ads), and Hardcore History (which has two ads, IIRC, but the episodes last literally hours). I think the difference is mostly between shows made by companies, or by individuals and non-profits. Gotta pay those investors.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    > I think the difference is mostly between shows made by companies, or by individuals and non-profits. Gotta pay those investors. Basically, the same situation as with videos and websites.
  - thanatropism 9y ago
    What? Both Joe Rogan (individual) and NPR (nonprofit) are ad-laden as...

synicalx 9y ago

I liked this piece right off the bat, not because the content is relevant to me but because it took responsibility and initiative, unlike many similar such articles I see on here. The key is in the title "What we need from Apple TO MAKE standalone Apple Watch podcast apps", rather than "Why Apple needs to make a standalone Watch podcast app".

Olivia56 9y ago
Yeah it`s Possible. .....Anybody can earn 250$+ daily... You can earn from 6000-12000 a month or even more if you work as a full time job... <a href="http://www.todaysfox.com" http://www.todaysfox.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Click Here And Start Work</a>
askafriend 9y ago
This is an excellent point and I completely agree. I loved the way the Marco took initiative to propose actual viable technical solutions rather than just vague complaining like so many articles do.

xtat 9y ago

I just found out people still care about apple watch

austenallred 9y ago
They’ve sold 32 million of them by some estimates, including 12 million in 2016. No iPhone, but we’re it any other company than Apple it would be an enormous, company-making win.

joshfarrant 9y ago

This is the single thing preventing me from buying an Apple Watch. I use Overcast to listen to podcasts on iOS and usually listen while running. As soon as Apple make these APIs available and Marco is able to create a watch app I'll be straight down the Apple Store to give Apple my £429.

enraged_camel 9y ago
For me it's the battery. Having to charge a watch every 24-48 hours is a complete non-starter, regardless of its functionality. I don't want to carry more cables or charging stations with me wherever I go. It's the single-most point of stress, especially when I travel. If the battery lasted 7-10 days, it would be perfect. That's about how long my business trips take, so I could charge it to full beforehand and not worry about it at all during the trip.
- whipoodle 9y ago
  Yeah, I'm not sure I would want one even in that case, but certainly not until then.
- macintux 9y ago
  You won't see a week-long battery life on the Watch for many years, but you will see a single charging pad for Watch + iPhone + AirPods next year. Seems like a reasonable compromise for travelers.
  - ciaranm 9y ago
    I've been using a plug like this ( https://www.amazon.co.uk/Charger-Syncwire-4-Port-Interchangeable-Adaptor-White/dp/B011KPRE1G/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1506355234&sr=8-7&keywords=usb+plug https://www.amazon.co.uk/Charger-Syncwire-4-Port-Interchange... )for my phone/watch/headphone/kindle charging for years. It's very handy - especially when travelling.

TheeKslay 9y ago

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ksec 9y ago

My guess is that Apple takes battery life over everything else. You can tell that Apple has kept a consistent Talk Time/ 4G usage time over the years with iPhone. And some of these consideration means Podcast on Apple watch a little harder to get right. And I am wondering, how much would people paid for longer battery life on Apple watch? We do have the tech, solid state battery, it is simply too expensive if it is used in the size of smartphone, because solid state battery prices scale exponentially with size. But what about Smart watches? Are user willing to paid extra $200 for LTE + Solid State Battery?

detaro 9y ago
I thought these were still prototype-stage? Do you maybe have I link where I can learn more?

uptown 9y ago

Ironic that progress sync is listed as the deal-breaker. That's the one thing which doesn't seem to work properly between my laptop and my iPhone with Apple's Podcasts app and iTunes on the desktop.

drewg123 9y ago

Can somebody please, please, please make a podcast app for Android Wear? One that I can use without my phone, so I can go for a run/hike/walk with just my watch and headphones? Even Google Play Music doesn't sync podcasts to wear. Sigh. I periodically search the play store for AW enabled podcast apps, but the best I've found are apps that put playback controls for the phone on the watchface. Sigh.

brlewis 9y ago

Why not just listen to the podcast only on the watch, since you always have it with you? What's the use case for switching to some other device once the podcast is on your watch?

falcolas 9y ago
Using external speakers (or headphones), battery life, and disk storage are three I can think of off hand. Some podcasts are exceptionally long (10's of hours - think the out-of-copyright version of audiobooks), and those consume a lot of battery life (for both playback and transfer) and disk space.
yoz-y 9y ago
When you have your phone with you it is still a better device for podcasts: - You have access to show notes and have a full fledged browser to follow the links - You have way more battery life. I listen to about 4 hours of audio content during a day, I suppose I'd have to recharge the watch more often - Exploration of episodes and general library management is better on a bigger screen

whipoodle 9y ago

This thing still ain't fully baked.

_ZeD_ 9y ago

offtopic, but on the page there is a note with: There’s one elaborate exception that we discussed in Under The Radar #98: workout apps, which are allowed to run in the background and play audio. So this all becomes possible if you combine a standalone podcast player with a workout app, and only allow podcast playback while a workout is active that was started from that app. But this forces the combination of two completely different app types, and users would find the workout-during-playback requirement confusing, inexplicable, and limiting. Requiring podcast apps to also be workout apps is a user- and developer-hostile hack that Apple probably doesn’t intend. whaaat? what kind of OS has this business rules so embedded?

TheSpecialist 9y ago

I suspect a lot of reasons this functionality isn't available is due to power concerns. Why is some of this functionality available if you're a workout app then? 1) People are aware that running workouts on the Watch is a big battery hog. Apple makes that pretty clear and it makes sense. 2) Most people don't do enough working out in a day to impact the "all day battery life" 18-hours on average claim. Clearly with the release of Apple Music streaming is possible, but they are probably being careful with how they design the networking for that feature. I'm curious to see what battery life will be like when streaming on the watch.

izzard 9y ago

Somewhat off topic but somewhat related, I have tried a whole bunch of different smart watches and activity trackers, and my current favorite is made by Skagen. Specifically, the "Signatur Connected Leather Hybrid Smartwatch". It looks like an analog watch, but it has smart watch functions and connects to your phone with bluetooth. Favorite things about it: It has an analog subdial that shows progress towards your daily step goal. It has three 'real' analog buttons that you can connect to just about any function on your phone. I have one button mapped to start/stop any music that is playing. Another button moves the hour and minute hands to point to the date. The third button sets off the ringer on my phone. And the battery is a normal watch battery, which should last between 6 months and a year. Check it out, I think it hits the right balance between minimal analog watch and smart functions.

jjtheblunt 9y ago

Who is "we"?