Poorly designed update

This was a poorly designed update from a visual/user interface standpoint.

1) Instead of the former drop-down “menu style” window the program opens a standalone window that must be closed again—it does not go away after you click away. This just adds clutter to my monitor for no good reason. I don’t need or want the window to stay open. I want to select something to listen to and have it go away.

2) The new window does not always show the list of stations to select from. Now it shows what I presume would be album art if I were listening to a stream that supported it. Instead it shows boring, repetitive clip art based on the stream’s genre (i.e. BBC World News is a newspaper icon repeated over and over, a local public radio station is a radio tower, a jazz station is a trumpet, etc.). Again, there’s no good reason for this except to make the app more visible—ironically, this is the LAST thing I want a basic streaming player to do. I want to select a station and have the app go away.

3) There is no obvious pause/stop button. You have to click on the currently playing stream to stop it. There is, however, an unlabeled “X” in the corner of the currently playing stream. This is actually a delete button. It also stops the current stream. I deleted three streaming channels before I figured out what was going on.

For an update that’s supposed to have “tonnes of user interface improvements” they went completely the wrong way on this one. It’s harder to use and doesn’t do its job and get out of the way like it should. I’ve been using Radium for years (since before the App Store existed) but I’m very disappointed and I’ve begun looking for an alternative.

I will say that being able to hide the dock icon is nice, but that’s not actually an update. I could do that with every prior version as well.

Update - 3/30/15:
They released an update and listed “user interface tweaks and fixes” as part of the release notes. That apparently still doesn’t include a stop button. You can pause the stream by clicking on the stream title a second time but it continues the streaming process and uses data/bandwidth/battery. To actually stop the playback, you have to Opt.-Click. This isn’t in the help file. I had to search for the answer.

There’s still no way to make it auto-hide itself. You have to close it intentionally every time you open it. It also needs to be closed manually every time you start up your computer if you have it set to start on login.

Finally, the developers’ social media strategy seems to be responding to criticisms with snark and sarcasm. The app has gone from 4.5 stars down to 2 and they don’t seem to notice it’s because they made a hamfisted attempt at making it look “sleek” or whatever and failed to actually ask users if that’s something they wanted or even beta test it with real users.

This is seriously disappointing, especially since I’ve been using the app since before the app store even existed and bought it again when they released it on here.

Update - 6/1/15:
The newest update fixes missing album art. It does not address the issues brought up by a significant percentage of users in reviews. The dropdown-menu style is still missing and there’s no stop button. You still have to opt-click to actually stop a stream (otherwise it continues to run, using power and data) and there’s nothing to tell you this in-app. Their response to criticism on social media still seems to be to thumb their nose and blow a raspberry.

Update - 8/26/15:
So after MONTHS of radio silence (please excuse the pun), they finally release an update that addresses one bug (subscription services) and have done nothing to address any of the other issues that have been brought up by users and reviewers since they released this new version. The app is still confusing and poorly designed from a UX perspective and their communication is still incredibly lacking.

Update - 4/20/16:
It’s been 9 months since the last update. At this point, it just seems like they’ve abandoned the app. Especially so, since it’s been offered with the text “*** Introductory 33% off sale! ***” at the top of the description since this version was introduced.

magnuspraeda about Radium ~ Perfect Internet Radio