[stevoski]

To the writer of the article: you missed a big opportunity with this article by not having an obvious link straight to your product, Castro, and by not telling us in a few words what it does.

It’s not too late to change the first sentence to:

> I had an idea when I bought [Castro](whatever_the_url_is), a XXX app, that human support…

[dabluck]

Yes thanks added. Next article: "What I got wrong: Marketing 101"

[jaffa2]

i still don't know what castro is, and I'm not interested to look it up. something to do with podcasts, is all I've gleaned from the comments.

[dabluck]

I didn't really write this to promote the product and it's not important to understand the content but it's now linked in the first sentence. But since you don't care I think we are good.

[cyral]

I'm not sure why you are being ripped apart in the comments, especially for a lot of nitpicky things. It was an interesting article, I can resonate with it from years of doing customer support. Comment sections like this make you realize you should not be taking business advice from HN.

[dabluck]

I asked Claude to check my post for spelling and typos, etc before posting, and it told me not to post it because people on hacker news are the same ones who email you about subscriptions, so it wouldn't be well received. Gotta hand it to the AI there!

I get the post was a little provocative, but I have posted a lot of content on the internet in the past and usually get like 1 comment if that, so I'd rather get feedback tbh and it seems like it resonated with a good number of people

[jaffa2]

well. perhaps through some kind of reverse psychology, i decided to check it out. turns out its a podcast player. which IS of interest to me since the apple podcast player is truly horrendous to use.

The migration of podcasts from apple podcast to this is quite good.

I don't understand what the X and tick buttons do. Interface is pretty dense, with pop up fucntions I count about 6 'rows' of 'buttons' that i can choose to press. that's quite a lot

my biggest issue with the podcasts app is just getting back to the podcast show page so i can choose the next program. I can't seem to do it on your app either.

from the main play screen (which as fasr as i can see is only accessibly by pressing a tiny up arrow at the lower left of the screen) I then press the big picture - it takes me to the episode. then i click the show banner and it takes me to the list not bad. But then how do i get back to the main show player? If i click the show (that's playing) it does this weird extra row of buttins (play X tick star and inbox) ..

do i need to click the tiny right arrow icon. OK this takes me to the episode details. I tried to click 'play' again at the bottom but it linked me to a sponser link since there appears to be a hyperlink in the descriptino text under the play button. I don't know how to get back to the main playback page that shows the picture and gives me the big controls. I've spent a few mins on this so far going in circles. Presed Tick a few times, i still don't know what it does.

Nope. I can't find out how to get to the main page. Also its difficult to tell if a podcast is actually playing or not. (i have sound turned down as I do all this)

I will maybe check it out a bit more but It seems very fiddly and twitchy.

IMO podcast app needs a couple of things :

1. constant playback/progress bar. If a podcast is playing, at all times I should have a progress bar, with skip,back,pause controls.

2. I should be able to one press back to the main play screen 3. one press backto the podcast show page (with the list of eps) 4. one press back to the podcast list page (with list of podcasts)

I do like what looks like nice speed adjuster, sleep, and audio enhancers . not tried yet.

hah i feel a bit thick as I still can't work out how to get back to a screen n that shows the currently playing podcast with a progress bar. lol.