In the finale of the Supertop Podcast we discuss Pádraig leaving Castro and look back over 7 years of Supertop, with a little help from our friends.

Links for this Episode:

• Playdate
• Pádraig’s announcement tweet
• Oisín’s missing bike
• Xcake developer meetup in Dublin
• Úll
• In Lemon With An iPhone
• Mountee
• Tokens
  • The skeumorphtastic early design
• Steamclock Software
• Unread
  • Business Model and Pricing for Unread 2
• Relay
• Release Notes
  • Podcast
  • Conference
• A software company called Panic
• A computer company called Apple
• Cabel Sasser’s talk at XOXO 2013
• Grace App for Autism
• Cast

Special Guests:

• Dermot Daly
• Vinny Coyne
• Dave McMahon
• Liam Dunne
• John Ryan
• Jesse Herlitz
• Allen Pike
• Ellen Shapiro
• Baz McBrien
• Marc Edwards
• Myke Hurley
• Russell Ivanovic
• Charles Perry
• Joe Cieplinski
• Dan Messing
• Cabel Sasser
• Jared Sinclair
• John Brayton
• Denis Hennessy
• Ryan McCuaig
• Glen Gray
• Marco Arment
• Bosco Ho
• Bryan Clark
• Bryan Irace
• Elsie Escobar
• Eileen Prendiville
• Alexey Rashevskiy
• Lisa Domican
• Julian Lepinski
• Dave Verwer
• John Voorhees
• Mark Bramhill
• Guy English

Thanks to Myke Atkinson for the Supertop bloops at the end, and to Emily for sending in the clips of Ida.

This episode was edited by Quinn Rose and Oisín Prendiville.

Oisín and Pádraig discuss the new clip sharing feature in Castro, some changes to Castro Plus pricing, Panic’s Playdate console and WWDC.

Clip sharing in Castro

Marco on clip sharing

Bosco Ho

Jesse James Herlitz

Playdate

Castro swag at WWDC

Oisín and Pádraig discuss Top Picks, the new Castro feature that helps surface the best episodes in your inbox.

• Castro on the App Store
• Top Picks announcement blog post
• Castro 1 showing in search results for “Fidel”
• Castro designer Jesse’s twitter
• Oisin in Cuba

We talk about additional improvements to discovery in Castro, including featured collections. We also discuss Spotify’s complaint filed with the European Commission alleging that Apple uses anti-competitive business practices.

• Enhanced Podcast Discovery in Castro ( https://twitter.com/CastroPodcasts/status/1103718809372745730 )
• Featured Collections in Castro ( https://twitter.com/CastroPodcasts/status/1104120758723272704 )
• Saransh Sinha ( https://dribbble.com/screenshake )
• Spotify filed a complaint against Apple:
  • Spotify’s published timeline ( https://www.timetoplayfair.com/timeline/ )
  • Updates on the complaint status so far ( https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/17/18268861/spotify-apple-antitrust-fight-latest-updates-news )
  •  Sherlocking ( https://www.howtogeek.com/297651/what-does-it-mean-when-a-company-sherlocks-an-app/ )
  • James Cridland: What Apple Should Do Next ( https://medium.com/@JamesCridland/podcasting-what-apple-should-do-next-986ab5fd1026 )

We discuss improvements to search and discovery in Castro, and what Spotify’s recent acquisitions might mean for the future of indie podcast apps.

Links for this episode:

• Local Search in Castro 2019.1
• Discovery & Snappy Search in Castro 2019.2
• Spotify bought Gimlet and Anchor:
  • Spotify’s announcement
  • Ben Thompson: Spotify’s Podcast Aggregation Play
  • Exponent: 162 — Why Exponent Isn’t on Spotify
  • Recode Media: interview with Alex Blumberg and Matt Lieber

Pádraig and Oisín discuss selling a majority stake in Castro to Tiny.

• Who are Tiny?
• How the deal went down
• Announcing the acquisition
• Response from users
• Why did we sell?
• What’s different now?

Links for this episode

• Tiny’s website
• Our blog post announcing the acquisition
• David Harrison’s question and subscriptions and privacy.
  • Castro’s Privacy Policy
• Jesse James Herlitz’s tweet to Andrew about Castro

Our direct emails if you’d like to talk with either of us: [email protected], [email protected].

This episode was edited by Jim Metzendorf.

We discuss how we can better introduce the features of Castro and improve the Castro Plus subscription pitch. To do that we need to better understand how people are using the app have better ways to measure whether changes we make are working.

Other topics include:

• App analytics and the problems with Apple’s offering
• Keeping a handle on the flow of new items into RSS reader and podcast apps
• Castro’s iOS 12 features
• What kind of topics should we discuss on this podcast?

Links for this episode:

• Lake Coloring app for iPad and iPhone
• Amplitude
• NetNewsWire Article Age Limits
• Unread RSS Reader

Padraig has a new CarPlay unit to debug with. We reflect on the work we did for Drag & Drop last summer. Castro 3.1 is out with Sideloading and Chapter Preselection. We discuss a new targeted marketing platform from Panoply, and the (in)accuracy of reporting podcast subscriber counts.

• CarPlay
  • Padraig’s CarPlay setup
  • Greg Spiers on Twitter
• Drag and Drop
  • Design Details blog post about our implementation
  • YouTube Walkthrough of using the feature in Castro
  • Another hopeful blog post we published about drag and drop
• Chapter Preselection
  • On MacStories
  • On SixColors
• Panoply
  • Tweet announcing Megaphone
  • Megaphone.fm
• Subscriber Counts
  • An Open Letter

In this episode with discuss the just released Castro 3.0.4 and what’s coming in 3.1, as well as trying to improve Castro’s performance in China, and thoughts on Anchor.

Links for this episode:

• Our tweet announcing alternative app icons in Castro 3.0.4
• Why You Should Never Pay For Podcast Hosting by Nir Zicherman, Anchor co-founder and CTO
• Anchor On Free Podcasting by Manton Reece
• There’s No Such Thing As Free Podcast Hosting by Jason Snell
• Past episode of this podcast: The Future of Podcasting
• Rhob Cunningham on Bandcamp
• Six Montreal Poets featuring Leonard Cohen

This episode was edited by Jim Metzendorf.

We discuss subscriber projections for Castro and things we’ve been doing at Supertop to keep us motivated on the road to sustainability.

Links for this episode:

• Our episode about the “Doom Clock”: Doom, I Guess
• Chuck Morris at Aptfolk now helping us with support
• Jim Metzendorf edited this episode, the previous episode, and future episodes
• Raccoon in the episode artwork by Mikhail Listopadov from the Noun Project

We discuss the launch of Castro 3: pre-launch drama, launch day emotions, subscription feedback, reviews, and thoughts about future updates.

• On our blog: Release Week roundup including reviews from:
  • MacStories
  • Macworld
  • iMore
• Receipt Validation Programming Guide: Receipt Fields
• Max Seelemann from Ulysses on SaaS Open Mic

This episode was edited by Jim Metzendorf.