Today Instacast got its most substantial update yet, the app has been updated to version 2.0. Instacast is easily the most-used app on my phone, every day of the week I have a pretty lengthy commute to college there and back, and Instacast is the main thing that keeps me entertained. It’s up there with Twitter.app on time spent in the app.
This update to Instacast ditches the Reeder-style layout of old for a fresh new look, nesting the three views from Instacast 1.x (Unplayed, Downloaded and Favourites) as smart playlists under the Playlists tab, one of the new features in version 2.0. The new layout also adds a tab for ‘Bookmarks’ yet another new feature of version 2.0. The bottom bit of interface chrome in the app is now occupied by a listing of how many podcasts I’m subscribed to, and how much space my downloaded episodes are occupying, something I was always checking in Settings before. This whole new hierarchy of the app is going to take some getting used to for me, but I’m loving it so far.

One thing with originally attracted me to Instacast and has kept me with it is the native feel, the minimalist design sensibility of the app makes it look like it was built into the OS, and they’ve managed to sustain that with version 2.0, even with all the stuff that has been added.
The update has also brought a revamped player interface, it looks much of the same except for two grips either side of the player controls, drag up on one and it reveals Instacast’s own player tray, complete with linen. The tray includes volume controls, playback speed controls and AirPlay like the original player, as well as a share button for bookmarks, the tray also included two other buttons, honestly I’m not quite sure what they do1, maybe I’ll find out in regular use.

The player interface also adds a persistent button to reveal links and bookmarks, this used to exist for enhanced podcasts with chapter markers, graphics, and links like the ones Engadget publish, but now Instacast parses show notes for links to provide this for all podcast episodes. This is a feature I see myself using day-to-day as a quicker way to find links mentioned in podcast episodes without having to look through the actual show notes.

With the update to the app, Vimedio have also come up with a new pricing model: the app is cheaper and now costs only 69p, with an in-app purchase for “Instacast Pro” which costs £1.49 and add’s features “that novice users won’t need most likely, but power-users will appreciate when using the app on a day-to-day basis”:
For now it includes the ability to manage playlists, add your own bookmarks, configure settings on a podcast-by-podcast basis and receive push notifications for new episodes. Every other new feature is going to be delivered to previous owners for free. This way everybody has the opportunity to stay up-to-date on the latest architectural advances, but opt-in for new features.
Frankly these are features I wouldn’t have been able to live without, and I’ve bought the in-app purchase already. I’ve already put together two custom playlists for all of the shows I subscribe to from 5by5 and 70Decibels.

The killer feature of this update though is bookmarks, something I had wanted for a while with the Favourites functionality was a way to comment on why I had “favorited” the episode, the addition of bookmarks allows me to do this personally and a lot more with the bookmarks socially. Podcast’s have been a siloed medium where there’s no way to directly link to the part of an episode which you’re talking about on Twitter, Instacast 2.0 fixes that. Podcasts just got social. While listening to a podcast you can add a bookmark and name it and then share it by email or Twitter (or just copy the URL) and post it, like this, then people can respond and comment on the discussion from the bookmarked part of the episode. It’s really awesome.
Overall this is a solid update to Instacast, I admit I had one false start on my first launch of the app, which got me pretty worried, but everything has been working fine since then. If you were on the fence about getting Instacast, now is the time to act, and if you have just updated, check out Instacast Pro, you won’t regret it.