[remh]

discoverability, if a friend talks to me about a podcast I could be interested in, i'd rather just have the name of the podcast than a full URL. Here i can just use any podcast app that integrates with Apple podcast service and type the name of the podcast i want to listen to.

Your question is the same as: "Why do you care if $YOUR_SEARCH_ENGINE (google, kaggle, duckduckgo) hosts a list of websites?"

[thaumasiotes]

You can already find the podcast by name using the normal internet method of searching for it. Where does Apple come into it?

The last search engine to host a list of websites was Yahoo!, and nobody did care.

[ska]

> You can already find the podcast by name using the normal internet method of searching for it.

You could, but I suspect most people search in their podcast app. Which is where apples directory comes in.

[Talanes]

A lot of smaller podcasts don't have much web presence outside of their RSS feed, and often have pretty generic titles to boot.

[remh]

sure, you can use google or a search engine, look in the results for the actual feeds url (vs just a website or something), and copy paste it in your podcast player. Or you can just search from it directly in your podcast app.

The UX on the latter side is clearly superior.