[robinsta]

I believe the account is so that Overcast's servers can look for new episodes and push background updates so new episodes are there when you open it.

[jonny_eh]

PocketCasts has the same feature without an account. The app can auto-generate a server account using the device's uuid.

[ZitchDog]

Take it from someone who has gone down that path, it's a support nightmare, especially when you want to allow cross-device sync. Much easier to just require the account up-front.

[geuis]

It may be easier from the engineering perspective, but its a major turn off for the user. Building good user experiences is often harder than the engineering part.

[guywithabike]

Overcast has a web client, too. If Overcast used the UUID, it wouldn't be able to give you the web client side of things easily.

[robmcm]

You can't get a device UUID anymore I don't think.

There is also a web view/player I think.

[dsuriano]

There is now `[UIDevice identifierForVendor]`.

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/uikit/...