I think it's pretty close to perfect at this point and is a million times better that the interface they had when I started using it nearly 10 years ago.
Exactly! What features do we really need? Many “feature” suggestions I come across are people trying to make podcasts something they’re not so that they suit the person writing.
As someone who's never taken notes while listening to podcasts, I'm curious what your use cases are. Do you listen as part of your research for a project?
Mostly I listen to podcasts but there's a few I listen to for learning, specifically a podcast discussing recent developments in law. I might try listening to these podcasts in Snipd (or with Airr) to try out how easy it is to clip relevant chunks, while using Pocket Casts for the vast stuff I listen to for fun/entertainment.
I think most people listen to podcasts for fun and entertainment so it's unlikely they'll want to clip, get transcripts etc. But the small number of podcasts doing deep dives on scholarly, technical or professional matters? It's potentially quite useful to be able to get transcripts/excerpts with highlights and audio clips to add to personal notes for future reference.
Plenty of good and useful features have been added to podcast apps since the first one shipped.