iPhone app grabs archived NPR shows

Since December, users of the Apple iPhone could tune in Pittsburgh’s WDUQ-FM, State College’s WPSU-FM, Youngstown’s WYSU-FM, the West Virginia Public Radio Network and hundreds of other National Public Radio affiliates from across the country using an application called “Public Radio Tuner.”

Now the newly renamed Public Radio Player also allows users to find archived shows from NPR, including “Car Talk,” “Fresh Air,” “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” and others.

The updated app can be downloaded for free from Apple’s iTunes store.

More than 1.8 million people were already using the older version.

Unfortunately, early reviews of the 2.0 release are mixed at best. Some users are delighted by the new functionality, but others logging into the iTunes store call the player “almost unusably slow,” prone to crashing and “full of bugs.”