Podcaster: So good, Apple won’t let you have it (DownloadExaminer.com)
Podcaster: So good, Apple won’t let you have it
Podcaster lets you subscribe to podcasts from your iPhone.
Correction: The price of the app has been corrected from the original post.
Apple has told Alex Sokirynsky that he cannot distribute his Podcaster app for iPhone via the Apple iTunes store since, he reports, “it duplicates the functionality of the Podcast section of iTunes.” This is a crime that Apple is perpetrating on iPhone users, and it is a lie, since Podcaster does something iTunes doesn’t do, and it adds real functionality to the iPhone that lots of people, like me, really want.
Read more: Tom Krazit’s Apple to Podcaster: No App Store for you.
Podcaster lets you sign up for podcasts from your iPhone. You can then stream them, or download them to your phone for later listening when you are offline (like on an airplane). Apple’s own iTunes software (which runs on Windows and Mac PCs, not the phone itself) lets you subscribe to podcasts, but the only way to get them onto your phone is to sync it with your computer. If you’re out and about without a computer (or, like me, your travel laptop doesn’t have your installation of iTunes), you can’t update your podcasts. And that, my friends, sucks.
Podcaster is the solution to Apple’s oversight. It works well, even if it isn’t all that pretty. You can search for podcasts by name, and the system will download the titles of recent episodes. If you hit play on an episode, the product streams the podcast from its source. (It uses the YouTube player, so the interface rotates to landscape mode whether you like it or not.) Or, as I said, you can tag individual podcasts for downoad–but not a whole series.
Once you subscribe to a podcast, you can view all the episodes, and then either stream or download them.
The app is “sandboxed” on the iPhone, so it has no knowledge of podcasts subscribed to from your iTunes account. Nor can you play your Podcaster podcasts from within iTunes. And it’s not nearly as pretty as iTunes is. It’s also got a few bugs. But it is highly functional, and useful.
And although Apple doesn’t want you to have it, you can still get it, at least for now. Sokirynsky is sending it to people using a workaround Apple created to let developers distribute iPhone apps to testers. Go to www.nextdayoff.com for an e-mail form. You will eventually need your phone’s UDID number, which is easy to get: See these instructions from TUAW.com.
The app is $9.95 (via PayPal donation). Sokirynsky notes that Apple has the capability to remotely disable apps, though, and I would not be surprised to see Apple turn this app off considering that it’s being distributed outside of Apple’s own marketplace. I also have heard that there may be a cap on the number of copies of an app that can be distributed with this workaround.
I’ll spare you the paragraphs of righteous indignation I could write about how Apple is dealing with this. I’ll just say: Apple, I’m very disappointed. You should do better.
Source: www.download.com
Quickoffice updates BlackBerry document editor
There’s much to admire in RIM’s native software set for BlackBerry phones, but for many, the built-in document viewer isn’t one of them. Word documents on most models open in a plain text monotone; serviceable, but without the benefit of formatting or the capability to edit the text.
On Monday, Quickoffice released an updated solution for business users and prosumers angling for a more familiar desktop read and the capability to edit attached documents. In addition to support for the usual Microsoft documents–Word, Excel, PowerPoint–eOffice 4.5 ($29.95 after a free 7-day trial) supports Google Docs and Spreadsheets. For companies that have adopted Google’s collaboration tools, this feature could indeed provide a valuable way for employees to update their feedback–if their BlackBerry runs on platform 4.5.
The newer models do (the anticipated BlackBerry Bold will run on 4.6), but in the U.S. at least, carriers have been slower in releasing the software upgrade to existing customers whose BlackBerrys run on older software. Eventually, everyone will be approved for version 4.5, but when they get it, will they still want eOffice? Key Quickoffice competitor DataViz confirms that their free read-only viewer, Documents To Go Standard Edition, will come bundled with the carriers’ 4.5 update.
The question, then, will be if BlackBerry owners seeking more advanced editing capabilities will upgrade from the free standard edition of Documents To Go to the premium edition, or if they’ll give eOffice a try. While the DataViz Web site charts differences between the standard and premium builds, support for Google documents isn’t listed among them. That could prove to be eOffice’s edge.
Source: www.download.com
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