Recently, I heard about an iOS app called Instacast. It’s a podcatcher and makes it easy to discover and download podcasts. Tired of using iTunes and the Music app on my iPod Touch, I decided to give it a try.
Well done. The app took me a bit to figure out at first. The interface, though somewhat sparse, has lots of little icons that don’t really make sense to me. For instance, a little circle represents unplayed podcasts. Once the podcast has been played, the circle gets filled in. Only by touching the circle repeatedly was I able to figure out its purpose. The same goes for other interface elements.
However, I’ve been using it for a few weeks now and I think I’ve figured out everything I need to in order to get the most out of the app.
Why do I like it? Well, for one thing, it gets my podcasts out of my iTunes library. Personally, I prefer music to only exist in my library so outsourcing the podcatching to a dedicated app is nice.
Also, it’s easy to discover podcasts and subscribe to them. Just scroll through the categories, genres, etc.
I like that I can easily download older episodes too. And being able to quickly remove a podcast once I’m done listening to it is great, especially on my 8GB iPod Touch.
The app is inexpensive. A couple bucks I believe. Check it out if you listen to podcasts.