NPR Software

I should have known better than to go with the new this app app that replaced this app News. There was so much to love about it. Although I do Support my local this app Station, I also like to browse, including locally produced programs from other parts of the country, which are not carried by my local station. That was easy to do in the old app. I simply brought up the station, and chose an on-demand program. These shows were displayed alongside the live streams. In addition , I could create a Favorites list, and even add items to a playlist for later use. In the new version, all of these features are gone. Now, the only way to get on-demand material from other stations seems to involve changing one’s favorite station; and, even if you do that, you then have to go to a separate On-Demand tab to get such material, and there are fewer choices of podcasts and topics. For instance, on the old app, I could go to WUNC (not my local station), and listen to podcasts from The People’s Pharmacy. Now, even by making that station my favorite, I found very few choices—and The People’s Pharmacy wasn’t one of them. Then, I had to reset my favorite station; then, to get back to where I was (if it wasn’t my local station), I had to go to Recently Streamed, and _hope to find it there. I hope I will grow to like the new app better, but don’t count on it. The reason I even gave it 4 stars is that I’m a huge fan of this app.

So I’m leaving my previous review at the bottom so people know what I’m talking about. I received a developer response asking me to provide them some more info, and I just kept forgetting to respond to it so I never actually gave them additional feedback. But the primary station and crashing issues I gripes about below seem to have been resolved. It’s still not the most intuitive interface, but now I like it better than the old app. It’s been working pretty reliably well for the past week or so. Not my fave app, but solid for my use (which is just listening to my local station in the AM while I get ready for work). Newest version is crazy buggy. I’ve had to search for and set my primary station pretty much daily. Sometimes the search function decides not to work and I need to close and reopen the app. Sometimes the whole deal just freezes and I need to close and reopen the app. Pausing causes it to crash. Dropping the signal causes it to crash. Navigating through the app causes it to crash. Fix them bugs!!

This is a pointless feature, totally inconsistent with normal app functionality, and is a privacy concern. Why even have this feature? It’s nice that you guys brought back a somewhat functional app but why do you insist on overthinking everything? The old this app app worked fine, this app One was deeply overthought (and overwrought) and barely functional and this new this app app brings in some some of that limited functionality. It seems like it was designed by someone reviewing the corporate description of this app - obsessive focus on repetitive news that generates local revenue for national this app, as if it were the 90s and we weren’t able to get a news summary immediately by swiping on our phone - rather than actually providing access to the rich diversity of content available throughout the this app network. It just doesn’t seem that hard to give people what they want and have clearly asked for for some time. It honestly seems like there are developers “guessing” at what users might want. Why not just ask them if it is so hard? Why waste all this time, money and waning good will creating limited functionality?