Why the latest iOS app is somewhat useless

I’ve had the new iOS app for a about a month now. The appearance is definitely nice, new and cool. That’s about it. For those of us who are confined to riding the iron horse and try to fill that void with language activities this app is trash compared to the prior one. The old iOS app you could download the lessons into the app. Meaning, if you go underground where there is no reception you still can listen ( in New York there is no connection in the train, yes Taipei beats us in that category). I’m speaking for those of us who have basic subscription, cause I see the option to download for premium users. I’ve attempted to stream before going on the train and as soon as you lose reception that’s it, lesson is on hold. Even YouTube streams ahead. Even lingq streams ahead. Is that some slick programming? Only stream up to where you have listened to so you can’t listen on the subway. Cool. I say this as my rate of listening to Chinese pod has declined since this new app. I’m sorry, I’m not paying double the price just to download, because I don’t need flashcards and excercises or special lessons to “say it right”. I prefer to say it wrong and let real people correct me.

It’s okay, I guess I’ll just download my lessons on my desktop and load them into my phone. Analogue style.

Thanks. Peace.

Does anyone know, if you do download the lessons into your app, will you still be able to play them after your subscription expires? In the old ChinesePod iOS app you could not. It would first connect and check your subscriber status, and then block you from accessing the content you had previously downloaded on your device if your subscription was out of date. It almost seemed like ransomware. CPod never disclosed that though. Maybe the new app is different. I would really want to know that before considering upgrading to premium. Right now I’m still burning lesson playlists to CDs.

Damn podster, they still make CDs?!?

Strange cause I actually had that going in the old app when I missed a payment for one month, but the then after a week I logged out wondering if it would stay and boom they were gone. And another thing that gets me is I can’t download just the dialogue as a basic subscriber, so pretty much, I just drag the whole lesson into protools and truncate the dialogue. But that gets boring pretty quickly. Earliet today when I went to hook my phone to my computer to manually get the file, I realized I can’t even do that at this moment because my new iPhone has the new iTunes and I have to upgrade my desktop os. Which I am reluctant to do because I have a old audio interface I still use, and my friend who had the same setup told me when he updated his os the thing stopped working. I guess for now I’m stuck listening to cpod above ground. Until I’m willing to drop some cash on a new interface. : /

Actually I just thought of a way around dragging the files from the computer or carrying around floppy discs, err, I mean compact discs. Lol.

If you have a smartphone you can use drop box and put the files in there. When your drop box on your computer and phone are synced then you can listen through dropbox.

Thanks for the tip. I do use dropbox. And you are the second person in the last 24 hours to make me feel that I might as well have said “wax cylinders” when referring to storing information on CDs. It does have some advantages though, especially in the car. For some reason I can’t get iTunes to add files to my phone anymore. Probably something obvious, but I’m stumped. Maybe I have accumulated too many different mobile devices and computers.

I actually enjoy the app. Then again, I only use the app for the vocabulary, expansion etc.

Maybe I’m a little old-school, but I’ve always downloaded lessons manually from my laptop and manually put them into iTunes, playlists then my iPhone. I bookmark those lessons then set the app to show bookmarked lessons only.

My laptop and iTunes is great for organising the audio.
Pleco for the flashcards.
Cpod app for sentence review, (the expansion is so useful).

I do miss the flashcards part of the app. I did enjoy using that.

All in all, I love the app. It looks good and runs smooth. One of the reasons o left cpod a year and a half ago was the broken app and lack of response from cpod in getting it sorted. I was paying for premium, but couldn’t even sign in to it. Now, the new ChinesePod team have completely upgraded it and are doing a fantastic job. I look forward to what’s in store over the coming years.

Update: Tried the RSS feed this morning on the iPhone. So simple. I don’t know why I haven’t been using it all these years. Also played around with the app audio download. Both methods are super convenient. Which I will end up using as my dominant method, not yet sure.

The app provides easy access to all lessons and the RSS feed in podcast keeps me up to date with everything new. Both have good uses. The app is far from useless. It’s one of the best apps out there.

RSS feed instructions Here

If anyone has any pros and cons of the RSS podcast method vs app audio I’d love to hear them.

Hey. Thanks for all your comments, they have been interesting to read.

Only, it seems you haven’t grasped my point. Useless for me, I’m not here speaking for you or anyone else. Useless for a basic subscriber like me. Who primarily listens to Chinese pod, underground, on the train, to and from work. Thanks , I know my way around this site quite well, been doing it for a year more or less. The point of this thread was to raise awareness of the downgrade of not being able to load the lesson prior to losing reception. You say you manually load the files in your phone as if suggesting that is the solution to my complaint. If you read the thread you would see why I can not do this at the moment without sacrificing something else. Thanks. Helped a bunch. Glad your enjoying yourself here. Add oil.
Peace.

I’ve re-read your message, and can only assume that this is a local problem, as the app at my end, (Kunming), works ok wherever there is a signal.

Regarding paying for premium, it’s not for you, then ok. But I see the the exercises, review, expansion and so on to be highly useful. Always have done.

Sorry the app isn’t working our for you though. Works for me.

It works fine. My point was where there is no signal it doesn’t, where the old one it did, because it let you load the lesson into the app. It’s fine, I’ve figured a way to get around it for the time being.

I was premium once upon a time, but didn’t find myself using those features. I just use the text and the audio. All my other studying is done on lingq, conversing with people, writing on paper or reading books. Thanks again for your concern.

Hi @KnowledgeAllah, we’re sorry the app isn’t working well for you offline. The app is only for premium subscribers I’m afraid.

If you want the easiest way to listen to lessons offline, the RSS method is the simplest and most robust (it’s actually how I listen most often since I use a lot of podcasts). You can set an app like Overcast or the podcast player to auto download new lessons so they are always offline.

You can find your Self Study feed RSS here: https://chinesepod.com/dashboard/selfstudy

cool, I’ll check those recommendations out. For now, Im just downloading on my computer and putting them in drop box. Thanks.

Hi @KnowledgeAllah, I have exactly the same problem, and after mentioning it before when on the new ios beta and mentioning it again, and trying it on Android and mentioning it again I’ve finally given up and stopped my subscription renewal, it just wasn’t suitable for using on a commute where I was wanting to do my learning.

Peace Guzzibar, sorry to hear that. I just did what Gwilym suggested and copied the rss feed into the apple podcast app and it worked perfectly. I tested it out and you can download the audio/dialogue/transcript into the app, set my phone on airplane mode and they are still accessible. That just fixed all my problems with the app. Now I don’t even know why anyone needed the app in the first place? Its probably funny that I just caught on now… You should definitely do that if you want to continue using this site. Chinesepod isn’t my end all be all for language study but having a few lessons a week prepared for me definitely makes things easier, especially when I get lazy or am too busy to really do anything else.

You might like Overcast. It’s free, has a nicer UI, and you get push notifications when a new lesson comes out. There is also a useful boost sound button for noisy trains etc.

Another user recommends iCatcher:

An alternate payed app that is excellent for language study is iCatcher! It has all of the features of Overcast, like 3/4 speed and a 5 second rewind, plus some nice additional ones, like the ability to bookmark locations within a podcast so that you can return to them later, a great internal browser that enables access to all the premium content of ChinesePod, including a PDF reader for reviewing the lesson, and some convenient gestures for play/stop/rewind. Plus, it can do split screen, so you can work side by side with Pleco for example, if you have a capable device. The developer is extremely responsive, and the settings are deep and allow a lot of customization. I’ve tried all the other popular podcast apps in the App Store, and iCatcher is the only one that enabled access to all the supplemental material in ChinesePod.

I started using Overcast, and it seems pretty good so far. Today I was using the CPod app and when I switched to airplane mode on the iPhone the audio halted after about 5 seconds. I thought maybe it was downloading the podcast, so I turned airplane mode off and listened to the podcast all the way through. I then switched airplane mode back on and it again stopped playing after a few seconds. Is the app streaming off the CPod server, or does it required constant contact with the server to enable playing podcasts even if they have already been downloaded?

Hi there,
I prefer the previous version of the app because the new version is so clunky, i.e. it has slower response times:

• Slow buttons -“downloaded only”, the back arrow symbol, the eye symbol for getting the English version of the dialogue and vocab; the symbol with 3 buttons
• Scrolling through the lessons is painfully slow

Also, previously downloaded lessons which I subsequently delete still show up when the “downloaded only” option is activated. This means I have to scroll down an increasingly longer list and as mentioned above, scrolling through lessons is painfully slow.

It would be great if these could be fixed!

Thanks Gwilym for your suggestion about Overcast. I’m a basic subscriber and have found this really useful to be able to listen to my lessons (even works in Airplane mode), without any fuss!

CPod team,
I see other user are also complaining about the same problem with the Chinese Pod app. So, is it a bug that you plan to fix? A legacy ransomware to force authentication every time one’s own content is accessed? Or nobody knows or cares as future iOS app development has been taken off the table?

Nobody cares.
That’s the only answer

No, seriously, I’m thinking but it is just my personnal opinion, there is two major problem now:
1°/ Lack of answer from the team on the forum. It seems they are gambling on roulette: who lose who have to answer on the forum. The problem is, still from my point of view, the community around something (a game, a serie or something else) is starting to be really important. that’s why there is community manager. And that is missing here. In order to keep calm people, to give some news etc…

2°/ Lack of programmer for iOS. They already said currently there is no programmer and they are looking for one. I guess it is still not done. But it’s starting to be really urgent 'cz this app is really bllsht.

I wonder if the app not working offline means that it is streaming content that I have already downloaded, and therefore counting against my telephone company’s data allowance each time I use the app, despite having downloaded it originally over WiFi.

Hi Leurne,

Sorry that you’re not completely happy with the app at the moment. Sadly it is still far from an ideal app. We decided to outsource it to a company but development is slow and not as high quality as we would like. We are currently looking for in-house iOS developers to take over full-time development and make it more stable. The Android app on the other hand has had a passionate in-house developer working on it over the last few months, and was a big fan of ChinesePod already, and the quality shows in the app. Sadly the same can’t be said for iOS.

If the app is not to your expectations, the best way to listen currently is using the RSS feed with a podcast player (for offline use, or using our responsive mobile website. If you would like to discuss some sort of refund or extension to your account, feel free to email me at gwilym@chinespeod.com

Since

Hi gwilym,
I do not want any refund because I f*cking enjoy to listen your podcast and honestly, I already try to look somewhere else and nothing was nice as chinesepod. At least some extension could be nice
But what I really would like is to have this information earlier: lot of people are complaining about the app, but I’m thinking it could be due to a lack of information. For example on the blog/on the forum or whatever. It could be really nice to know what is the objectif for the app, the next features , how the website will progress etc…

+1 Bump this thread. It looks nicer but the UI is unintuitive – swipe left and right to select between levels? I do a lot of audio review.

The button on the lower right has a “list” icon, but inside here is the way to hit Play on the audio?
How come I can’t queue up lessons?
Why don’t I have a unified feed?
What’s up with the left side menu filtering?

How much feedback did the dev team actually get from real users about how useable is the App?

I have found the YepChinese app to be so much more functional. And free. I have spent thousand USD on Chinese pod for the past few years and I don’t bother to log in anymore for the past few months because it’s just not adding value. I am seriously questioning renewing.

Can you shed some light on why you think in-house iOS developers will do a better job? Just to help us understand.

EASY! I can answer!
Because there is NO ios developers!
I understood that currently, there is only one android dev’, but it seems quiet difficult for an android dev to make the same quality on ios (because for the android users, it seems ok).
So currently = nobody for ios.
But my point is : we already heard they were looking for a new dev (it was in january or february, I can’t remember exactly). So I’m bit worry they still not find him

wtf. Yepchinese is completely free, that’s strange… I’m trying it but until now, I had few bug on the website and the app

I’m a bit surprised that it’s hard to find an iOS dev considering how large the platform is. Given that there is no dedicated iOS developer it’s no wonder that the changes can’t be implement quickly. I’m on android and have to say that @Armel is doing an amazing job on the Android app. I have been helping test the new app from the beginning and whenever there is a bug or requested feature it’s usually implemented in the next update.

I’m sorry to hear that iOS users are having so much trouble through

It’s actually @hunter_robbert that develops the Android app

Ah, that’s right, my mistake. Thanks @GwilymJames for the correction, I got their names confused But yes, @hunter_robbert has been doing a great job on the android app.

@Matt_T @GwilymJames

Thanks Matt!

App is USELESS.

AAARGHH

I have been using chinesepod on and off for years, this app is the worst so far. I just signed up for premium so I can do the vocab things on the app but it only works when connected to the Internet. I live in China so connecting to stable internet is a rare thing.

I tried downloading some of the lessons so I could listen to the lessons on the go but the button to then access downloaded lessons doesn’t work at all. Nor to any of the buttons on the menu screen. I have already done the re download the app to my phone, after deleting the two older versions I had from before.

why why why

Can the app god of Chinese pod please hear my prayers and make an app that allows me to listen to the lessons when I am not online?

I’m now back to what I was doing 4 or 5 years ago, downloading the audio to may laptop to then transfer to my iphone/ipod. Progress! Oh, I am paying more this time…

Chinesepod demigods I’m sure you are working on a new version of the app with developers. Can you give us a timeline on how long this will take???

Hi, Thanks for the tip. Does ICatcher work off line?

Just bought Icatcher from app store. I can only find newbie podcasts. How do I find the other podcasts?

Hi Misty104, you might find these support articles helpful. I recommend you check your RSS feed settings first.

https://support.chinesepod.com/hc/en-us/articles/204145624-All-About-the-Self-Study-Feed-Bookmarked-Studied-Subscribed-Lessons-

Hi Misty, If you want stable offline listening, I recommend using the RSS feed and using a podcast app like Icatcher (which I see you’ve downloaded) or Overcast: https://support.chinesepod.com/hc/en-us/articles/207657553-ChinesePod-s-Recommended-Podcast-Player-for-iOS. I apologise on behalf of ChinesePod for the state of the current iOS app.

Gwilym, could you please explain about the Course Feed. How is it different from the lesson feed and how do you use it?

I used to be a subscriber, a couple of years ago. At that time Chinesepod was, as the name implies, a podcast service, Along with visual lesson materials. You could download lessons and listen back to them whenever you had a minute. I thought that was central to the whole concept of ChinesePod. Study when you want, where you want. Travel, which so often has no wifi, is also the perfect kind of downtime to switch on a Chinesepod lesson.
I have an iPad with the latest CP app installed. You click the download lesson link. It downloads. But then, hey presto, when you want to listen to it, the lesson is unavailable. Great!
I am mystified by this. Am I missing something really obvious ( I realise I could be) or is Chinese Pod failing to deliver on its own main selling concept?

I don’t understand how this thread just continues on and on.

It’s already been said multiple times that the iOS app is not the best choice. Use any podcast player and insert your RSS feed. Simple as that, it’s been said multiple times if you read the thread. Does anybody actually read the thread before they post? It’s not that difficult to use the podcast player and functions better than the app itself.

Yes it’s unfortunate the app isn’t working as should be, but understand they obviously don’t have the resources to meet the demand. If you can code swift or objective c, there’s an opportunity here. If not lets just stop complaining how bad the app is, we already know!

Please people read the thread.

Yeah, point taken!
But it’s good to let off steam a bit and keep communicating the urgency to the Chinese Pod team. We pay our subscriptions based on reasonable expectations of being able to listen to lessons on the move, away from wifi. It shouldn’t be too hard to implement this within iOS (hardly a minority platform) with the budget. It’s not like this is a free service. I sent a support request to CP and it took 10 days to get an answer. It just feels like this side of the business is underfunded and neglected and letting down the amazing quality of the teaching materials.

I preface this with saying that i am a premium subscription holder and use the Android app. i am not experiencing the same issues since the android app works great buy wanted to share my thoughts as I work professionally in software support and client management.

Since the iOS app isn’t working as expected they shouldn’t even offer it as an option until it’s fixed. when ordering the premium subscription it should say android only. I understand that premium subscription offers other bonuses but it should be clarified that the app us android only. It’s causing so many problems to have iOS users try the app and pay more money for their subscription only to find that the app doesn’t work. It makes users feel cheated and really hurts the companies brand in my opinion. You hurt customers and it makes them possibly cancel heir subscription and possibly not come back because of the bad experience. It’s a simple fix and one that could save the companies reputation and save lots of time for the support staff who are probably dealing with calls about this constantly.

Here are two support articles that explain it better, but the course feed (playlists of curated lessons) and self-study are indeed different with separate RSS feeds.

Self-study is for any bookmarked or studied lessons as well as lessons that you have subscribed to. This means that if you are elementary, the Self-study feed will automatically add new lessons of that level as they come out. Change the settings here: https://chinesepod.com/dashboard/feedsettings/

For the course feed, you can save a course from this page and click the star (https://chinesepod.com/library/courses/), and grab the unique RSS feed for that course here: https://chinesepod.com/dashboard/course/course-list.

Using the RSS feed for your self study feed and any course that you want to study is the best way to listen to ChinesePod on the go (using iOS).

https://support.chinesepod.com/hc/en-us/articles/207995516-Subscribing-to-ChinesePod-Playlists-Courses

I am a premium subscriber for last 3 years and also for me the new application is horrible and lacks of many functionalities I used before. If I don’t see improvements I will not renew my subscription

Chinese pod is still a great service, well worth the price of the subscription and there are currently work arounds available for the iOS users that @GwilymJames has already mentioned . If you don’t have access to the features from the premium subscription just downgrade to the regular subscription and use the apps mentions already mentioned. Until the ChinesePod iOS is fixed.

From the earlier posts it seems that ChinesePod is having trouble finding a quality iOS developer and from talking to some friends who are also developers I’m not surprised. My friends say that many companies are having the same problem. Many companies are having to insource their iOS development but it’s hard to find good applicants.

The point is why we are going backward instead of improving. I mean, the old application was much better than the new one

Most of the lessons subscribed/bookmarked don’t appear in the icatcher

Hi, I was precisely reflecting on the fact this morning that I don’t use the app -at all !!- bc so bad. Even from my iPad I would go through the regular site…
Please give us back the old version or do sth to fix the bugs ( it keeps shutting down randomly, many lessons don’t have any thorough recording…). Better would be to rework on a new version, sorry I know that you just released this version but how unfriendly and poor app