Hate the update. Turned this once easy to use app into unuseable space wasted on my android phone. Can not find any useful functions easily. Can not listen to episodes i chose, only the latest episodes. Dont have the time needed to study a figure out how to work your new app. How unfortunate that I now have to spend time writing this, deleting your app, finding a new app(s),downloading the content I chose. Poorly executed update people.
I see I'm not the only one that thinks this update a waste of time and effort.
I really agree. I hope the developer would reach out to us, the long term users, to get much needed insights. Change for the sake of change is useless.
Sadly I spent $ on this app. There must be a real need to catagorize and playlist podcasts as opposed to, you know, listening to them. Honestly development people maybe you could share with the few people here why the main focus on catagorizing and playlisting? Do the majority of users use this app to store music? Personally I listen to talk show/ adio story podcasts. I listen to them, delete them, then search for others(not necessarily the latest episode). Also this app is used on my phone not my home computer, to much info per episode...not needed. Need an app that I can "quickly" find episodes, not this maze you've created. Download , Listen , Delete , not Search, Catagorize,Playlist. But you've got the user info so there must be a HUGE demand for your new model, good luck.
I'm sorry you don't like the update.
We did reach out to the forum users, many of whom have been beta testing the update for quite some time.
This might help: Upgrade from 3.x to 4.x
If not, and you prefer to go back to 3.x, you can find a link at the bottom of that page. However, try sticking with it for a few days first. You may find it grows on you.
Julie
If it is possile for me to go back to 3.x AND!! to not have it automaticly upgrade to 4x ....i might still keep Beyond. But i have already begun looking at other apps.
FYI...I have worked with and for people who draw info from there online forums. There are large holes in that info, for instance how many(%) of your daily users ever post. When they do is it to praise or complain about your product. I'll bet those number are in the low single digits.
I think your overall numers will decrease over this update, like I said before good luck.
LOVE your app!! - Me....last week.
Forum users? Really? What about your PAYING CUSTOMERS? Where was the invite to provide feedback to people who SUPPORT YOU FINANCIALLY? Where was the survey to find out if your paying customers were actually forum users at all? VERY little feedback that I can find in the beta forum is positive for the new version and there is a fair amount of negative feedback that is easily discoverable. Where were the conversations with the people that felt negatively about this update?Originally Posted by juwlz
The UI did not need to be changed to meet any Android development changes as was pointed out to me on Twitter. There is no reason to REQUIRE your users RELEARN how to use your application. You could very easily provide OPTIONS for the changes that you implemented. Look and feel SHOULD be end user configurable, that would be a good thing! But what BP did was make a difficult to use application WORSE by requiring RELEARNING it!
Feel free to refund my money for the application, you obviously do not need it as your forum users are the only ones that matter to you. I'm sure they would all LOVE to pay for the right to visit this place.
@kboutelle Forum users and paying customers intersect. The forum is the best method we have to contact users, and also provides a forum for feedback. It is also important to get feedback from users who choose not to pay for the app.
The reality is that it's simply impossible to please every single one of over a million users; providing settings for old UI vs new UI isn't practical either in terms of the code (which would inevitably be much larger, which would cause problems of its own) or for support. However, you do have the option to go back to the old UI if you wish, or, of course, to choose another application if you prefer. We don't like to lose users, but we have to accept that in the real world it happens.
@joeblow You can prevent any/all Android apps from updating automatically by changing your Google Play settings to disable automatic updates.
Last edited by juwlz; 11-03-2014 at 04:50 PM.
For users with a large number and wide variety of podcasts and subscribed feeds, Categorisation and Smart Playlists make it really easy to listen to what you want when you want to, without having to manually pick episodes to listen to at any given time. There is, of course, no need to categorise if you don't want to, or to use BeyondPod that way, but users have the choice.
However, you asked why we focus on Categorisation and SmartPlay lists. One answer is that they're features that BeyondPod has, which many other podcast apps don't.
As an example of why they're useful, the vast majority of my own podcast playing is done in the car, so I want very minimal interaction with the app for safety reasons. My feeds all update overnight and episodes get downloaded automatically in a scheduled update. I (currently) have four SmartPlay lists. The first is for one particular feed that I only ever listen to in the car with my partner. Those episodes get saved until we're on a long car journey together, and it has its own SmartPlay list shortcut in a folder on my homescreen - but obviously I don't want those episodes mixed in with my general solo listening. I have another list for general/commuting listening (mostly tech podcasts), a third one that I prefer for long car journeys (mostly radio drama / fiction), and a fourth for bed time (feeds that are quite interesting and don't have ads that I'd want to skip, but that I won't be upset about missing bits from when I fall asleep), which I use in combination with a Sleep timer. All my SmartPlay lists have shortcuts in a folder on my phone's main home screen, so I simply pick the one I want in any given situation.
In addition to SmartPlay lists, being able to categorise my podcasts means that if I want something different, I can ad hoc easily pick a category if I want to, sort it in whatever order I want to, and play everything in it, just by using Automatic Playlist. SmartPlay rules mean I can take this a step further and set up more complex rules to automatically create a play list that will last for way longer than any car journey I might undertake, for safe listening with minimal interaction. In fact, all of my play lists are typically far longer than I could possibly have time to listen to, and are set up to be in an order that I choose (most important to me first, going right down to "interesting if I've run out of other stuff to listen to"), and I use Automatic Cleanup to delete older podcasts from low priority feeds that I never get around to playing. I don't use BP for listening to music at all. In general, if I subscribe to a feed, it's because I'll probably want to play everything in it. I have very few that I'm likely to pick out just the odd episode from.
All of this means that once I've set up my feed settings and SmartPlay rules to do what I want, I don't have to spend any time at all picking and choosing episodes to listen to. I know that I can just select a SmartPlay list, and immediately start listening to the episodes in it, without any fuss or manual intervention, and I'll get the episodes I want in the order I want them, automatically. I very rarely even look at my feed list - I don't need to, unless I want to edit the download rules, add a new feed or delete an existing one.
Obviously, this is a very different approach than manually picking and downloading an individual episode to listen to one at a time, but BP is capable of both.
However, the ability to create SmartPlay lists is a feature that differentiates BP from most of the other podcast apps available for Android. (You'll note that my SmartPlay descriptions all say "mostly" one category or another - I can also include episodes from other categories, such as Sport, to mix and match a bit, which suits me in the situations where I play the episodes in those particular SmartPlay lists. Also, some feeds or categories are included in more than one of my SmartPlay lists.) There are some other Android podcast apps that support categorisation, which allow you to play all podcasts in a category, but often with very little control over what order they play in.
This is just the first released iteration of the new UI. It evolved during beta testing, and will continue to evolve further as we go along, just as every previous version has.
We've had both positive and negative feedback about version 4 via our various support channels, so in addition to all the many thousands who haven't commented at all, there are those who love it as well as those who hate it. If it turns out that nobody likes it, then the product will die, which is clearly not something that we want. And, as we've said before, if you want to go back to version 3.x, it's still available to download.
I have some comments after using BP for about 5 years... I bought the full version pretty much straight away as this is the biggest use of my phone by a long way (walk the dog, commute to/from work etc..)
When the update occurred & I started using it, I really hated it. Since then I have decided to try & stick with it to see if I can get my head around it, though I agree with some other comments that change isn't necessarily always good, I will see if I warm to the new interface.
I have read the v.4 updates but I can't see *at the moment* how they are an improvement on what I loved previously. I'll admit I have been close to leaving to look for alternative but so far my concerns are;
Previous v.3 was good to control, knew what I was doing, easy to manage. Now it does feel like I've an extra chore in my busy life re-learning something that was quite well managed. :'(
A few days on and the new layout slowing warming to me& getting used to it. I feel the categories screen has made managing the podcasts a little more messy. This could be just me being so used to the old version though.
From any screen previously I could pick any other menu option and get from settings to manage feeds. Not quite so now, each menu only appears in the relevant section to what the current tab is. So I feel I have to move about a lot more. Maybe the re-introduction of the "other" option in any menu allowing you to go to any setting would be the answer?
It appears the episodes tab has been completely removed (previously the tab listing all podcasts currently downloaded) and replaced off the front screen with "What to Play" listing just the latest stuff. I'd prefer the *option* to control this a lot better too. again maybe the option to see ALL episodes from this screen would suffice?
Another reason I miss the "Episodes" screen is I used this to batch Delete episodes. Now this process appears to be more manual where I have to go into each feed or pick it up off "What to Play". I like the more manual approach to managing podcasts this way because I don't have a lot of space on my phone and some of the video podcasts I listen to are very heavy on storage, so once I've watched them, I need to bin them straight off. With tons of storage, I could leave the app to automation & have the app housekeep on its own self but I'm always around the X hundred MB - 4GB mark and I have a weekly IGN Gamescoop HD podcast that is huge. If I get behind on those, I'm out of storage.
There is a "Clear Played" option to unset what one has watched but would like a "Delete Played" option here as well now please? (this is where I think it could be put).
Having said all this - The **Biggest** thing missing for me in this v.4 update is the removal of the control screen/BP app off the lock screen. The closest I now get is the lock screen widget which is placed 1 screen along from the lock. I now have to flick multiple times (because it never happens 1st time and tells me the unlock code is wrong, lol) off the initial screen to get to it, the previous control screen whereby I pressed power button on my Nexus 4 once and had the BP app in all it's glory is just... gone :'-( - That is the single biggest miss for me. It was quick to pause where I was and re-start again, now it's longer to sort.
Ultimately I want to give you guys time to address these issues and have no doubt some (hopefully soon) updates will do just that, so will stick with it for now.
Cheers.
Posting Permissions
