"Which means then figuring out that process" means I have no experience with Android or the available apps. :S But it certainly is a nice looking device, and I like the homage to the tape cassette Walkman I had in the 1980s.

Eh, if you're technical enough to be posting on hackernews I don't think it will take you more than 15 minutes to install a podcasting app and figure out the software

While I could make all sorts of technical points, like how HN's interface is little different from trn I used in the 1990s, or how I dislike tinkering (as Godel_unicode commented), I'll point out one that's not so technical.

I am detail oriented, which contributes to the quality of the software I develop. That level of attention to detail extends to other areas. For example, I read all of the license agreements I'm told that I have to assent to. This makes it really hard for me to agree to all of the automatic software updates, which update the license agreement, so I disable updates until I have the time to read the new license.

(As an aside, OmniGroup has the best proprietary license I've read, and I've commended them for it. And I've complained to ORCId that they claim their signup takes only seconds, which means they don't expect people to read their license.)

So one reason I prefer FOSS is that I don't to read the #%^#$^ licenses.

If I switch to the Android ecosystem, and sign up to Google's app store, I expect have to read pages of legalese - which I don't care to do.

I understand that most people are not this way. I hope you understand that some people are not like you.

You could switch to more open versions of Android like Graphene/Lineage etc that are based on AOSP and use free software. F-Droid is a FOSS app store for FOSS apps, and it has quite a few good apps, including AntennaPod, which is an excellent podcatcher and my podcasting app of choice.

From some of your other comments, I gathered that you aren't heavily into using smartphones, so there's no reason you have to subscribe to the _full_ experience of it, proprietariness and all. Our devices are only as complicated as we allow them to be.

I totally understand if you want something that works out of the box too, the rest of us who would like a functional experience with the creature comforts of smart-devices have to go out of our way to debloat and tweak things because these experiences are not yet readily available for us.

Thanks for the followup. Yeah, that would be part of what I meant by "Which means then figuring out that process." ... except I didn't even knew all that existed. ;)

I think you're missing an important part of the use case. People who like iPods in particular are usually deep into "it just works" territory and have a visceral aversion to tinkering. It sounds like you have a pro-tinkering mindset, possibly subconsciously, and are discounting the degree to which some people hate tinkering with their personal setup.

Yup. I don't like to tinker. Don't like to tweak. Don't like to configure. It should indeed "just work."

Ok you might need to meet us halfway here or DIY a device to do this for you.

Or, thanks to comments from several other here, I've found a device which appears to meet my needs. Already ordered it too.