Apple Podcasts

As Apple continues its marketing campaign for the Apple Watch along with its release, the company has shared a recent interview with Christy Turlington Burns hosted by fitness lead Jay Blahnik at the Regent Street Apple Store in London.
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The popular podcast app Stitcher Radio has been accused of stealing content from Podcast One, which claims to have the exclusive rights to some of the content streamed by the app. Podcast One has cited a long list of shows it says Stitcher has no right to use, including Adam Carolla, Clark Howard, Dan Patrick, Carcast, The Dr. Drew Podcast, Rich Eisen and Yahoo! Sports Radio …

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Stitcher Radio, one of Apple’s first CarPlay partners, has released an update that enables the dashboard interface in its popular podcast app. The update also includes bug fixes and stability improvements. The release comes just days after Stitcher was acquired by a music streaming company called Deezer.

Stitcher joins Rdio, Spotify, and iHeartRadio in supporting the in-car UI that was first demonstrated alongside iOS 7 last year. Several other apps, including Apple’s own Podcasts and Beats Music software, are still slated to gain support in future updates.

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Apple’s acquisition of talk-radio service Swell appears to now be a done deal: the start-up’s App Store app and website shut down this morning. The website now provides the following message:

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Apple appears to be looking to further improve the iTunes Radio service through the $30 million acquisition of a radio application called Swell, Re/code reported early Monday morning. Unlike the $3 billion Beats Electronics (and Beats Music) buyout, however, this purchase centers more on talk radio than music.

Swell currently carries news from sources such as NPR, ABC, ESPN, the BBC, and more, and uses a user’s listening history to create personalized content playlists. Apple, on the other hand, only recently jumped into the streaming news market through iTunes Radio with ESPN and NPR stations, including over 40 local stations.

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After Mark uncovered it last April and Apple announced it last June, this week we’ve seen a steady stream of details about Apple’s iOS and car integration following Apple’s marketing push. There’s plenty more coverage on the way as we continue to explore what CarPlay means for Apple and its users, but now we want to hear from you. What effect will CarPlay have on your next car purchase?

Cars certainly aren’t purchases you make impulsively (or often), and CarPlay seems to address that by relying on the iPhone (something we may purchase impulsively and often) for much of the functionality. Among other things, will CarPlay be on the list of things you look for in your next car purchase?
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Along with updates to iWork and iLife today, Apple has overhauled their Podcasts, Find my iPhone, and iTunes Trailers apps to fall in line with the design paradigms of iOS 7. Along with new icons, all three apps have been completely redesigned, with user interfaces that closely resemble Apple’s other iOS 7 apps. While Find my iPhone and iTunes Trailers don’t include new features, Podcasts has received updates to the search tab, Top Charts section, and more. Here’s what the new icons for all three apps look like:

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[youtube=http://youtu.be/rRm1yiphjGc]

It’s back. After a short hiatus, the 9to5Mac Happy Hour has returned and will be coming out every Friday with new content, giveaways, promo codes, and exclusive interviews. With new segments and special features, this updated format doesn’t lend itself well to the “live” environment, but there may be special live episodes in the future.

Subscribe to the 9to5Mac Happy Hour podcast

Today’s episode:

• Dan Desilva of 9to5Toys.com discusses the latest deals for potential Macbook buyers and others
• An anonymous developer speaks of their game plan for iOS 7
• Mark Gurman speaks of the latest iWatch rumors – the “dream team” Apple is building

During the episode, we also mention a special software discount that brings a video conversion app from $49.99 to absolutely free. Be sure to listen in.

Lastly, with all of the NSA news swirling around, the secure VPN service proxpn.com is offering 9to5Mac Happy Hour listeners a special 20% discount on all paid plans. Use the promo code NTFMAC and the code will give you a discount for life. Check out the service here.
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Apple has updated its Podcasts app today with a number of new features. Among the most notable is the ability to create custom stations that update automatically as new episodes of podcasts are available. There are also a number of new enhancements for stations and playlists, including iCloud support to keep stations up to date on all your iOS devices.

The app also now includes a redesigned “Now Playing” view that shows playback controls, as pictured in the screenshots above.

Other improvements include On-The-Go playlists and support for syncing playlists from iTunes, an option to have stations begin playing with the latest or oldest episode, and other fixes and performance enhancements:
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In July 2011, a federal jury in Texas awarded “patent licensing company” Personal Audio LLC $8 million in its patent infringement lawsuit against Apple. The jury found Apple infringed two valid patents related to downloadable playlists with its iOS devices as far back as the original iPod. One covered an “audio program player including a dynamic program selection controller,” while the other covered an “audio program distribution and playback system.” 9to5Mac has now learned Personal Audio LLC is attempting to target content creators directly, starting with a new patent infringement case in Texas against one of iTunes biggest podcasters, Adam Carolla’s Ace Broadcasting.

If the outcome of the case is anything like Personal Audio’s previous cases, it could have a major impact on podcasters and other content creators on iTunes and elsewhere. Personal Audio also sued and entered licensing agreements with Sirius XM Radio, Archos, Coby, RIM, Samsung, Amazon, and Motorola related to its downloadable playlist patents and others.

The new patent, issued just last year on Feb. 7, 2012, is quite broad and describes a “System for Disseminating Media Content Representing Episodes in a Serialized Sequence.” Personal Audio is also suing the popular Howstuffworks.com series, which like Ace Broadcasting, is a large podcasting presence on iTunes and across the web…

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We already had a number of updates to Apple’s own apps today, including iWork for iOS, Apple Remote Desktop, iTunes U, Xcode 4.4, Safari 6, and OS X Server, but below is our usual list of popular apps and updates hitting the store today:

Update: Apple has now updated its Podcasts app with the expected bug fixes. Release notes below:

What’s New in Version 1.0.1

Podcasts 1.0.1 provides a number of improvements, including:

• Significant improvements to performance and stability
• Podcasts in your library now show the number of unplayed episodes
• Top Stations now show the podcast title if artwork is missing
• Playback speed is now remembered when playing the next episode
• Fix for a problem where the Subscribe button is inactive
• Resolution of an issue where Top Stations artwork may not appear

Podcasts: If you have experienced issues with Apple’s Podcasts iOS app that released last month, as many have, you will be happy to know Apple plans to release an update today that brings a number of fixes to common bugs. According to a report from AllThingsD, “Apple has been hard at work tweaking the app to fix the problems that currently plague it” and the update expected today should “vastly improve it.” 

AutoCAD WS version 1.5: Autodesk’s app for viewing, editing, and sharing AutoCAD drawings on iOS devices was updated today with two new “powerful collaboration tools that transform design creation, review, and approval into a social experience.” The two features include:

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