Club Admiralty

v7.2 - moving along, a point increase at a time

Club Admiralty Blog

A blog about life in general, in as many languages as I can manage. Ενα ιστολόγιο περι ζωής, πολυγλωσσο - σε όσες γλωσσες εχω μεράκι να γράψω.

MediaFly demo over - lukewarm results

Well, I gave MediaFly a once over this past week to see if it can replace me syncing with iTunes for my podcasts, or me having to remember all the podcasts I subscribe to so I can search for new episodes on iTunes on my iPod Touch (or iPhone).  There were some good things, and some things that made using the app on the iPhone annoying as hell.

The thing that drove me to the app is the seamless integration between the website and the app itself.  I can hop onto the website, create an account, import my OPML list of podcasts from iTunes and BAM - there's my stuff!  I can the go organize the podcasts into folders on the web, and given a local client I can play it anywhere I am! Simple!  I have to admit that the website was fairly easy to use - there were some hickups - like using a remote control for putting podcasts into "channels" as opposed to a "folder" but those are more or less frames of reference. The UI on the website could be improved, but it ain't horrible.

Most of my problems are with the iOS client, which have made me not want to use the service on my iOS devices.  Here's a quick laundry list of major FAILs
  • The app seems to have problems with Enhanced Podcasts.
  • The app doesn't support background playback so when I hit the home button it goes silent.
  • The app doesn't remember which podcast I was playing when I quit the app, so when I go back I have to remember what I was listening to in order to continue listening to it.
  • The app does not support the "pause" functionality of apple's headset (this may be an apple limitation)
  • The app has NO WAY to delete 1 podcast that I listened to. There is a "purge all downloads" option which is useless - that's not the way I operate. I listen to a podcast, I delete it, I download X more, I don't download X, listen to all of them, purge all, then download X more.


There are also some minor UI fails that were annoying but easily fixed.  The tab for instance that you tap on to reveal the playback buttons doesn't support drag-up and drag-down.  I was confused as to why this tab wasn't coming up when I was dragging it.  Some of the UI seems to be built for a mouse-based UI interaction while other UI elements seem to be somewhat thumb-touch-based.

The final thing that was kind of annoying was that audio playback didn't start up quickly enough. There was always lag between pressing "play" and the thing actually starting.

I feel like this app would be great if it left playback to Apple's built-in app, and it just handled the podcast retrieving and loading.  For the time being I won't be using the app since it was just one huge aggravation (in-between listening to podcasts). It will however stay on my iOS devices as a reminder of what podcasts I've subscribed to, and to keep an eye out for future developments.  It has potential, but the iOS client is just not there yet!
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