Recently Apple announced Podcasts Subscriptions, which are now live in macOS 11.4, iOS, iPadOS and tvOS 14.6, and watchOS 7.5. Feeder 4 has some changes to help people who want to offer podcast subscriptions in Apple Podcasts, and to handle HTML links in show notes with the latest Apple Podcasts redesign.

Apple provides two ways to offer alternative versions of episodes without subscribers seeing the freely available versions as duplicates. Feeder supports both these methods.

Matching Type, Season and Episode Numbers

If your podcast is a Serial or an Episodic podcast that includes Season and Episode Number tags, you will not need to do anything different in Feeder, apart from make sure the numbers match the episode in Podcasts Connect.

Serial podcasts show the Episode Type / Season / Number fields by default. If you want to use these for your Episodic podcast, you can show the fields:

• While editing an item, choose Editor > Edit Template from the menu
• Scroll down to the Apple Podcasts section
• Click the checkbox next to Episode Type
• Click Save

Using the Apple Podcasts Episode ID as the GUID

If your podcast is not a Serial or Episodic podcast that uses season and episode numbers, you can set the episode’s GUID to match the Apple Podcasts Episode ID, which you can get from Podcasts Connect after uploading your subscriber audio there.

In Feeder, the GUID is called the Unique ID. Feeder automatically generates a Unique ID for each item in the feed. The Unique ID field is normally hidden; to show it, while editing an item:

• Choose Editor > Unique ID > Show Unique ID from the menu

The Unique ID is not editable by default, because if it’s changed for an item that has already been published, your episode will appear as a duplicate. To edit the Unique ID:

• Click the action button next to the Unique ID field
• Choose Make Editable from the menu shown

If the item has already been published, Feeder will show a warning.

Formatting Show Notes

Update: From July 1, 2021 this issue has been fixed in Apple Podcasts.

Apple Podcasts no longer uses any HTML in your show notes, but other podcast apps might. That means that links in the show notes won’t be active in Apple Podcasts unless they literally appear as URLs. 

If necessary, Feeder can create a version of your show notes just for Apple Podcasts in the Episode Summary, which is an alternative to the Description.

When a podcast episode has an Episode Summary, Apple Podcasts shows that instead of the Description. This means you can keep your Descriptions as before, and use Episode Summary to provide a plain text version for Apple Podcasts only.

Feeder can convert HTML in the Description to plain text, expanding links that otherwise wouldn’t appear clickable. The links will be shown in brackets alongside what would normally be the clickable text.

To show the Episode Summary, while editing an item:

• Choose Editor > Show Episode Summary from the menu

You can now switch between the Description and Episode Summary fields using the buttons above the text area.

To have Feeder insert a plain text version of the Description with links expanded:

• Choose Editor > Episode Summary > Insert Description With Links from the menu

You can see how your podcast will look in Apple Podcasts and other apps using Feeder’s preview.

• Click the Preview button in the editor window toolbar
• Use the pop-up below the preview to switch between the Podcasts and Standard previews.

Together was chosen as Leo Laporte’s pick on this week’s MacBreak Weekly, recorded at NAB, and you can hear about that towards the end of the podcast.

Link: MacBreak Weekly 242: The World’s Largest Dongle.

While talking about Together, Leo remarks about “forking”, where there are differences between the versions on the Mac App Store and developers’ sites, that I would like to address.

In the case of Together (and just about all other examples I’ve seen of this), it’s the Mac App Store guidelines forcing the differences or limitations. If it were up to me, I would have the versions as close to identical as possible.

With Together, Apple rejected it because for the “Save PDF to Together” feature to work, Together has to put a file in your Library/PDF Services folder, which is prohibited by the guidelines. It’s a stupid limitation, because putting files in the PDF Services folders is a completely supported Mac OS X thing otherwise.

In this case, there is a workaround in the form of an installer that you can get from the Together downloads page. I hope to come up with a smarter workaround in the future.

Links:
YouTube — Together for Mac
T4 Show – Together for Mac

Probably worth noting that Flash caused the hang. Get rid of it!

In case you missed it, Poster got a great review on Allison Sheridan’s excellent NosillaCast a week or so ago. Allison is also fairly unique in that there is a complete transcript of her audio podcast, so you can read as well as listen.

I authorized Poster to access my Flickr account and a beautiful window came up. It showed my uploaded photo in a pane on the left, and in the right sidebar it showed all of the meta data that goes along with a photo on Flickr. I could change the name, enter a description, enter tags, select a set to add the photo to, put it in a group and change moderation settings like privacy, safety, content type and accessibility to public searches. Rather than being utilitarian, the interface is what you’ve come to expect from great Mac software; simple, yet elegant. Even the tags autofill from YOUR tags you’ve used in the past.

Link: NosillaCast #293

Together gets a comprehensive review by Allison Sheridan on the Mac ReviewCast #137. It’s a great review, although Allison is unsure about the difference between folders and groups, most of the new features get a big thumbs up.

Allison also interviews me afterwards on her own podcast, NosillaCast, so I get to explain the difference between groups and smart groups, and also mention some future plans for Together and Feeder. Unfortunately, due to Skype woes, the sound quality of the interview wasn’t so great, so you can hear me clearly while Allison’s audio was very quiet. Normally it’s the other way around!

Update: Allison informs me that the audio is fixed, thanks to some late night work by Ambrosia Software, so now you can hear her ask the questions that I answer!

Also, Together was reviewed on MacApper last week and that seems favourable too.

I must be doing something right. 🙂