More on "Apple Hates Podcasts"

As always, I'll preface this by noting the irony that the very term "podcast" arose from Apple products and technology. 

No screenshots for this one, just a frustrating bug report. (Side note: Does anyone know how to report iOS app bugs to Apple?)

Use case: I want to create a playlist of podcasts in iTunes. I pick and choose from various podcasts, and various (not just the most current) episodes. I arrange them in a particular order, like a mix tape, in the iTunes playlist. I select that playlist to sync to the iOS Podcasts app. 

As I've documented in the past, this inevitably results in the iOS Podcasts app showing my playlist either in a random order or a reversed order. Both of which completely defeat the purpose of my (often time-consuming, as iTunes hangs when accessing the Podcasts app) efforts. 

Today, after multiple tries, and deleting the playlist and creating a new one, and syncing only when the Podcasts app was killed on my iPhone, it appeared to be in the order I wanted. Success! Wait, success? 

After playing the top episode in the list, Podcasts queued up not the second episode I'd placed in the playlist, but some random one. When I looked at the Podcast app, all seemed to be in the order I'd wanted; did it just skip?  

Now, here's the weird bug. I tapped on one episode in the Podcasts app playlist screen – and a different one showed up. iTunes had loaded my playlist in reverse order again, but the Podcast app was displaying the apps in my preferred order, which was a lie. 

A friend pointed out on Twitter that Apple has no interest in putting any effort into supporting podcasts, as they're hard to monetize. I can't speak to that directly, but circumstantial evidence keeps piling up. These are such stupid bugs and such difficult to overlook use cases. Come on, Apple. If it's not intentional, this is amateur hour.