I don’t feel like this is a new thing for Apple. Does anyone actually use Apple Maps? Their podcast app is poorly made also. I often have to manually go through episodes to mark them as unplayed because it randomly says I listened to them when I haven’t.

I use Maps about 50% of the time and it works well for my needs but Google Maps is better for discovery. I agree that the podcast app is terrible though. I use Pocket Casts as its the only one that seems to neatly organize shows, progress, etc.

The Podcast app is particularly horrible. If it was the only podcast app available I would stop listening to them

It isn't a new trend. It has just started to affect almost every app they make.

Shortcuts isn't even beta quality on the Mac. Podcasts, as mentioned, is awful. Music is a PITA to use unless all you want to do is stream random songs. I can't think of a single Apple app that I enjoy using.

Don't get me started on Books.

Apple seems to focus on one use-case for their apps. Anything other than that suffers.

One Thing to consider is:

It's not always good to have well grouped and aggregated content, because if you have, you may give away the possibility to get other content discovered by the users.

The same reason that you get unrelated suggestions for searches in YouTube, Facebook and Insta and others.

So, if everything is focused on teachers, then it's on purpose to promote other teachers among the one's you already know.

It's not "are they incompetent?". Rather the question should be "why this way and not the other?"