Podcast listeners and viewers around the world, rejoice, for soon you may have a new way of managing your podcasts on your iPad, iPhone and iPod touch if reports are to be believed.
According to new reports coming out of AllThingsD, Apple may be about to break Podcasts out of the iTunes app, giving the audio and video shows a whole new app to live in.
The news comes as Apple releases the first iOS 6 beta for testing by developers, with plenty of changes coming across a variety of first-party applications. The App Store itself is even receiving a facelift, and the notion that a Podcast app could also be added before the Fall release data is one that will no doubt make many happy.
Currently, podcast fans need to launch the iTunes app, choose their podcast of choice and then download it. From here, playing audio podcasts for example, requires a visit to the Music app to play them. Using two different apps just to play one audio file is far from ideal, and something that we are very surprised Apple has yet to work on.
The strange situation with podcasts has left iPhone and iPad users to head to the App Store, with apps such as Podcaster and Instacast filling the void with considerable success. Both apps allow in-app podcast subscriptions, something that Apple’s solution would also surely feature.
The rumors of a new podcast app for iOS do not stretch as far as the Mac, with no news of such a change for podcast management on the desktop.
Apple showed off iOS 6 during its WWDC keynote earlier this week, with changes galore. Podcast management was not part of the show and tell, nor is it showing up on any of the devices running iOS 6 that we know of, but that does not mean it will not find its way into the final shipping product. A later version of the iOS beta is also a possible destination for the new app, so we will be sure to keep our eyes peeled on that front.
More importantly, if a new podcast app does arrive in iOS 6, why on Earth has it taken so long?
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