Overcast 3: Design Walkthrough

Marco Arment just released version 3.0 of his iOS podcast player, Overcast, and here he documents all of the significant UI changes. I have two high-level takeaways:

  • This is a terrific update. A lot has changed, and I think every single one of the changes is for the better. But, I think casual Overcast users might not realize just how much has changed. It still feels familiar. That’s hard to pull off.

  • The work that went into re-doing existing features in 3.0 is exactly why we, as a community of users, need developers to be able to generate sustainable revenue for apps. The 1.0 for any app always has conceptual mistakes, and even when the developer is not correcting mistakes, the OS state of the art moves forward. Old parts of the app need to be revisited just to stay up to date. The idea that you pay once — and just a few bucks at that — and then get updates for years to come just doesn’t allow for something like Overcast 3.0. There are some nice new features in Overcast 3.0, but the best aspects of Overcast 3.0 are the ways that existing features have been improved.

★ Tuesday, 21 February 2017