Developer Marco Arment is best known for his read-it-later app Instapaper, and for his former role as Tumblr's lead developer.
Arment's
latest project, however, tackles an entirely different medium:
podcasts. The developer just rolled out the first version of Overcast, a
deceptively simple, yet powerful, podcast player.
The app was inspired by the simplicity of iOS 7, according to Arment.
"iOS
7 shook up the market, and by pure luck, shifted high-end iOS design
away from fashions I could never compete in — heavy use of textures and
complex graphical widgets — into what I could actually do: simplicity,
space and typography," he wrote in a blog post.
But
it's two of Overcast's premium features (both of which are available
for a single $4.99 in-app purchase) that really set it apart from other
players: Smart Speed and Voice Boost.
Smart
Speed enables you to listen to their podcasts faster by speeding up the
silences within the recordings. Arment said the feature makes listening
faster, but adds no detectable changes to a podcast's audio. Voice
Boost is a feature that essentially equalizes a podcast's volume, so
listeners won't have to constantly turn it up or down at different
points while listening— an issue that crops up more frequently with
amateur podcasts.
Overcast
is free, but the one in-app purchase buys you all of its premium
features, including a sleep timer and the ability to download podcasts
over cellular data, along with Smart Speed and Voice Boost.
For
those who don't care to pay for the bonus features, the app has a very
simple interface that makes it easy to find, listen and subscribe to
podcasts. In addition to browsing titles by name, you can also link the
app to your Twitter account to see recommendations from people you
follow. The app also has a dedicated web player that allows you to pause
a podcast from your iPhone, and resume listening on the web.
Overcast
was in development for a long time; Arment first announced the app last
September during the XOXO festival, and it spent more than two months
in beta before its official release Wednesday.
Overcast is currently iPhone-only. Arment said he is working on an iPad app, but has no plans to create an Android version.
Posted by : Gizmeon
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