<story><title>Apple Releases Dedicated iOS Podcasts App</title><url>http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/podcasts/id525463029?mt=8</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Lewisham</author><text>Apple&apos;s highly questionable and deeply unfortunate skeuomorphism kick continues unabated. Now we&apos;re treated to a radio dial which died out in 1995, and playing podcasts presents a reel-to-reel, which died out in god knows when.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s completely bizarre. I guess podcasts are a form of talk radio, but tying them to some ancient radio technology that anyone under the age of 18 will have never touched is mental. They&apos;re even called podcasts: they arose because of the popularity of the iPod! Insane.&lt;p&gt;Apple really need to sort their designers out. I wish we could somehow have Microsoft&apos;s new Metro design aesthetics on Mac OS X and iOS, then I could have the best apps and OS design, and the best UI to use with them.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>siglesias</author><text>I don&apos;t think it&apos;s as heavy-handed as you suggest. Most of the app&apos;s navigation is handled by tableviews and collection views. The dial that you reference is really a sideways scrollview (albeit with a material skin)--this controls a non-skeuomorphic list in an intuitive way that isn&apos;t confined to the limitations of a physical radio&apos;s interface.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;ll grant that the tape deck is outdated, but it&apos;s a largely hidden little visual treat that suggests a hidden mechanism underneath AND provides visual feedback on playback speed.&lt;p&gt;Skeuomorphism is bad when it restricts the UI to the properties of physical objects, but in this case Apple hasn&apos;t done that.</text></comment>
<story><title>Apple Releases Dedicated iOS Podcasts App</title><url>http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/podcasts/id525463029?mt=8</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Lewisham</author><text>Apple&apos;s highly questionable and deeply unfortunate skeuomorphism kick continues unabated. Now we&apos;re treated to a radio dial which died out in 1995, and playing podcasts presents a reel-to-reel, which died out in god knows when.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s completely bizarre. I guess podcasts are a form of talk radio, but tying them to some ancient radio technology that anyone under the age of 18 will have never touched is mental. They&apos;re even called podcasts: they arose because of the popularity of the iPod! Insane.&lt;p&gt;Apple really need to sort their designers out. I wish we could somehow have Microsoft&apos;s new Metro design aesthetics on Mac OS X and iOS, then I could have the best apps and OS design, and the best UI to use with them.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>glhaynes</author><text>I dunno, I think it&apos;s kinda fun. The app has some personality. I can certainly appreciate that some people don&apos;t like this style of design, but there are a lot of people who do, too. (Perhaps part of why we don&apos;t hear as much from them is because most of them don&apos;t know the word &quot;skeumorphism&quot;?)</text></comment>