One of my most anticipated features for Mango was the ability to subscribe and download podcasts directly to my phone. Unfortunately MS botched the implementation completely.
Problem 1: Previously podcasts were managed through Zune. Zune had a setting to only sync unplayed podcasts and it removed played podcasts from the device. When you subscribe to a podcast on the phone played podcasts are not removed until a new one is downloaded to replace it. This wastes space.
Problem 2: Played/unplayed status does not migrate from Zune software to WP7. If I listen to a podcast on my Zune HD or on my PC but I have a subscription set up on my phone that played status is not propagated to the phone. When I listen to a podcast that's subscribed on my phone, that played status isn't pushed to the zune software.
Problem 3: Podcasts subscribed to on the phone are not synced to the PC via zune. The subscription is not transferred and you need to subscribe in both places to get content on both devices. Everything is downloaded twice, once locally when it's subscribed on the PC and again it's downloaded to the phone when subscribed there. This creates duplicates.
All in all, MS couldn't have screwed up the implementation of this feature any worse. I seems to assume that WP7 owners are going to abandon Zune PC as a podcast subscription client altogether with Mango. I might be able to do that if I didn't want to keep using my Zune HD. I'm HUGELY disappointed in this. Smartphones are all about content, managing it is critical. They failed here badly.
Problem 1: Previously podcasts were managed through Zune. Zune had a setting to only sync unplayed podcasts and it removed played podcasts from the device. When you subscribe to a podcast on the phone played podcasts are not removed until a new one is downloaded to replace it. This wastes space.
Problem 2: Played/unplayed status does not migrate from Zune software to WP7. If I listen to a podcast on my Zune HD or on my PC but I have a subscription set up on my phone that played status is not propagated to the phone. When I listen to a podcast that's subscribed on my phone, that played status isn't pushed to the zune software.
Problem 3: Podcasts subscribed to on the phone are not synced to the PC via zune. The subscription is not transferred and you need to subscribe in both places to get content on both devices. Everything is downloaded twice, once locally when it's subscribed on the PC and again it's downloaded to the phone when subscribed there. This creates duplicates.
All in all, MS couldn't have screwed up the implementation of this feature any worse. I seems to assume that WP7 owners are going to abandon Zune PC as a podcast subscription client altogether with Mango. I might be able to do that if I didn't want to keep using my Zune HD. I'm HUGELY disappointed in this. Smartphones are all about content, managing it is critical. They failed here badly.
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