Latest Instacast Update Moves Smart Playlists Feature From Pro To Free
May 26, 2012
The previous update to Vemedio's podcasting app Instacast, which was pushed to the app earlier this month, apparently caused a bit of a stir within its customer base. While most users approved of the update chiefly on account of its redesigned interface, there are those who objected to the new pricing scheme that came with it. A follow-up to the update, which presented itself just hours ago, contains a few changes that seem to have been made in hopes of allaying the disapproval of the app's recently dissatisfied users.
The issue concerning the app's new pricing scheme stems from Vemedio's decision to ditch the $2.99 cost of the old version and go with two dollars less for the new one. But the thing is, several features that were part and parcel of the previous version were relegated to an Instacast Pro IAP bundle costing an additional $1.99. One of these features is support for smart playlists, such as "Favorites" and "Partially Played." The good news is that in the latest version of Instacast, smart playlists have crossed the Pro paywall and become a basic (that is, non-Pro) feature. In line with this, the "Favorites" and "Partially Played" smart playlists have been fixed so as to also show deleted episodes and to not show played episodes, respectively.
Other changes brought by the update are the renaming of the "Archiving" action to "Deleting," the addition of a setting to remove a downloaded file after playback, and a bunch of performance and stability improvements.
Designed for iPhone, Instacast is available in the App Store for $0.99. The aforementioned optional Pro IAP, which unlocks support for bookmarks and push notifications in addition to smart playlists, is currently on sale for another $0.99. The app's iPad version, Instacast HD, is also available for $4.99. Instacast HD is, as yet, free of IAP.
