Serenity Caldwell provides some help if Touch ID is giving you fits.

Have you heard of these “podcasts”? Apparently the kids all love the podcasts these days. While I’m sure it’s a fad that will never catch on, you might want something to listen to these podcasts on for the duration of the fad (which has been something like eight years so far) and you could do much worse than Castro, which just came out from Supertop.

I’ve been beta-testing it for a few weeks and it’s one of those apps that does iOS 7-ication right. In fact, better than Apple’s Podcasts app. There aren’t many buttons, but the ones there are have borders of some kind. Where there aren’t buttons, there are gestures. To move forward or backward in a podcast, just swipe the area at the bottom where the controls are. I had to learn that trick from their site, but it’s a nice implementation once you know it.

Castro lets you see podcasts by show or by episode, which is a handy view to see what’s the most recent. It has its own podcast search and didn’t have any trouble finding the shows I listen to. Not that the above is a complete list. Rest assured I also listen to your show, whoever you might be.

One of my favorite features of Castro is simply a visual effect. They take the podcast logo and blow it up as a background for that podcast, so there’s no question about which podcast you’re about to listen to.

OK, maybe that’s not a problem for you because you’re so on top of things and mom likes you better and, god, how I hate you, but it still looks great. Just swipe right to go back to the list view.

So far Castro has been great about downloading episodes in the background and having them waiting for me when it’s time to walk the dog (which is not a euphemism I actually have a dog that I walk). The only downside to Castro I can think of is that it’s iPhone-only, so there’s no syncing, of course. Not that Apple’s syncing has worked that well for me anyway.

Castro is $2.99 from the App Store. Yes, I got my copy for free and, yes, they used a screenshot of the last episode of The Talk Show I was in on the App Store. Now you know how deep I’m in to Supertop. Scandalously deep, really. But if you think I wouldn’t drop $2.99 on a great app for listening to podcasts — in fact, the best I’ve used — well, then you don’t know how much I spend on apps. So maybe mom’s wrong and you’re not so smart.

Qualcomm: at the cutting edge of gimmick technology.

Oh, right, like I was going to let that go.

Jean-Louise Gassée speculates on Microsoft’s CEO search problem:

A worthy contender makes it clear that he or she needs an unfettered mandate with no Office Of The Second Guessing in the back of the boardroom. Bill and Steve would have to go — but the Old Duo doesn’t want to leave.

It’s a stalemate…and that’s the most likely explanation for the protracted recruitment process.

Add in the employees also second-guessing and managers protecting their turf and, yeah, good luck, future Microsoft CEO! May your golden parachute be large and easy to exercise!

The pictured device looks decent and I’d hope Razer would make a nice unit as they make the best-looking gaming PCs and peripherals and arguably simply the best overall. The Razer Blade, for example, looks like a black MacBook Pro and frequently tops the best gaming laptop lists. Starting at $1800, they aren’t cheap.

So far iPhone game controllers have been lackluster from what I’ve read so this could be a good entrant.

Dr. Drang (via Daring Fireball):

I’ve been using Touch ID since I got an iPhone 5s in mid-October. Generally speaking, I like it, and I find it faster than the old swipe-and-passcode method, but I’ve felt compelled to reteach it my fingerprints twice already. I know this sounds impossible, but its recognition of my prints seems to decay with time.

I don’t know about his experience, but here’s what I found. After first teaching Touch ID my fingerprints it seems to work on the first try less and less. Eventually I was having to input my passcode almost every time. When I went to reteach it my fingerprint, I realized I was teaching it a part of my finger I wasn’t actually using when I went to unlock it most of the time. I think maybe we take the process of teaching it more carefully. I would put my finger flat against the home button like I was being fingerprinted which, well, I was. Then the first few times after that I would unlock very deliberately. “Are we OK, here? Have you got it?” A few successes and then you just want your phone to unlock quickly. LET ME IN. And what was I using when I did that? My finger tip, not the flat part of my finger. Well, I didn’t teach it my fingertip because when you get fingerprinted (and I have been, at least four times, and none of them involving incarceration) you start with the flat part of your finger. What was decaying wasn’t Touch ID, it was my behavior.

I don’t really know if it’ll help, his problem may be something else, but my advice is to recognize which part of your finger you’re asking it to remember, because that’s the part of your finger you need to use to unlock. Now that I’ve done that I have an extremely high success rate. Sometimes it’ll fail the first time, maybe a quarter of the time, but I haven’t had to type my passcode in other than for reboots in maybe a month.

ZDNet’s Adrian Kinsley-Hughes isn’t the only one who reported it this way, but note to all who did: that record could be 2012 + 1, as Amazon does not report Kindle sales figures. If it were not a record that would be cause for concern.

Oh, A massive spike in traffic and web orders quickly led to Moto Maker going down for the count. “We couldn’t fulfill orders. The site became unstable.”

Charles Arthur reporting for The Guardian:

Microsoft looks ready to kill off Windows RT, its version of Windows devised for chips based on ARMs architecture, judging by remarks by senior executive Julie Larson-Green.

Hard to believe an operating system that tried to differentiate itself by putting the acronym for “run time” in the name didn’t catch on with consumers. Consumers love runtime environments!

If this is the case, this will leave Microsoft with only the higher-cost Surface Pro line that competes more with Ultrabooks than with tablets. They’ll need a new strategy if they hope to better compete in the consumer space.