6 ms·

iOS7 has broken Audiobooks

59 points by lambada 13y ago

nicholassmith 13y ago
Bit of an oversight from the Music.app team, unless they decided that it was time to trim functionality and leave it to third party apps to handle.
- drharris 13y ago
  That would be an incredibly dumb decision, considering they sell audiobooks in the iTunes store.
imaffett 13y ago
I'm listening to an audio book right now - I can select any chapter I want and it shows the chapter length fine. This has been working the second I upgraded to iOS7 the day it was released.
- drharris 13y ago
  Have you figured out how to scrub through an individual chapter? It seems the time scrubber goes across the entire book for me, which is pretty unacceptable behavior for an audiobook.
- pooriaazimi 13y ago
  Is that an m4b file (the "official" way), or just a collection of mp3's shoved together to form a book ("Part of a compilation")? The former has been broken (especially on iPad) since iOS 5, and the latter has many issues but at least you "can" see how many chapters there are, and select them. See, for example, these support thread with hundreds of comments: https://discussions.apple.com/message/16397272#16397272 https://discussions.apple.com/message/16397272#16397272 The sad thing is that they don't give 3rd parties access to m4b metadata (chapter name, length and cover), and they themselves have broken their Music.app's ability to parse them. So nobody else can fix this mess.
  - imaffett 13y ago
    mp3's shoved together to form a book - that's probably why it works.
kmfrk 13y ago
They also broke podcasting in the newest version of iTunes for Windows. The interface is worse than something even Microsoft would ever make.
- protomyth 13y ago
  They broke it on OS X too. Now you can delete the media you downloaded, but cannot delete the entry. Makes for a very cluttered "Did I watch that" interface.
  - malloreon 13y ago
    Not only that, but I have several episodes from several different podcasts that continually try to download each time I refresh. I have listened to them before, and deleted them, but itunes insists I really really want to listen to them again. I do not.
kyleashipley 13y ago
It seems like the music app received some half-baked changes across the board. For example, you can no longer shuffle all music in a particular genre through the app. They added (or maybe always had) an option to shuffle through Siri ("Play some blues"), but there are some frustrating edge cases: "Play some video game music." "I'm sorry, I can't help you with videos." I've had to resort to creating smart playlists for most of my genres, which is highly inefficient. I find the new interface for shuffling to be confusing as well. It's now the word "Shuffle" with a white background, which changes to "Shuffle All" with a slight pink tinge when you tap it. If tapping "Shuffle" turns shuffle on, then why would tapping "Shuffle All" turn it off? It just seems like a confusing experience. Overall, I'm fairly happy with iOS 7. But outside of radio, the music app feels like a regression.
- icesoldier 13y ago
  Also missing from Music.app: The ability to delete music from the device. Fortunately I still have some space left on my phone, but barring plugging the phone into iTunes, I don't know how to decrease the amount of music on my phone. I'm with you: iTunes Radio is nice, but the rest of the music app feels a bit worse off.
  - adestefan 13y ago
    It's in Settings -> where ever the storage button is hidden these days -> Music. However, the option is only to delete all music.
    - icesoldier 13y ago
      I've seen that, and I guess as an iTunes Match subscriber I can be okay with that. It's just that I was able to delete individual songs/albums/artists off the phone in previous versions, so I was anticipating that here.
  - gurkendoktor 13y ago
    I can delete songs from my iOS 7 phone by swiping. I'm not sure which settings factor into this - it's being synced with iTunes via USB, and it's logged into iCloud but I doubt that makes a difference.
protomyth 13y ago
I get the same feeling from iOS 7 that I did from using the first versions of OS X after using NeXTSTEP / OpenStep, so much of the cool stuff and details were missing. I still miss the menus and the Digital Librarian among other things. Its like in the big rush, they just left things undone or looking like crud (the new icons for example).
- chmars 13y ago
  Getting iOS 7 ready for the announced date was obviously death march. I am therefore optimistic that many of the small bugs and annoyances will get smoothed out over time … :)
saturdaysaint 13y ago
The default Music app is a sub-par audiobook player, as was in iOS 6. I don't consider that a cardinal sin for an app called "Music", or good cause to say that the operating system upgrade itself 'broke' a medium. Audible works as well as it ever did. I have to say that audiobook players are an area where Android has an app that doesn't have an iOS equal - Maple Audio Player handles audiobook files about as well as you could ask, with excellent bookmarking and playback speed options.

59 points by lambada 13y ago

Bit of an oversight from the Music.app team, unless they decided that it was time to trim functionality and leave it to third party apps to handle.

drharris 13y ago
That would be an incredibly dumb decision, considering they sell audiobooks in the iTunes store.

imaffett 13y ago

I'm listening to an audio book right now - I can select any chapter I want and it shows the chapter length fine. This has been working the second I upgraded to iOS7 the day it was released.

drharris 13y ago
Have you figured out how to scrub through an individual chapter? It seems the time scrubber goes across the entire book for me, which is pretty unacceptable behavior for an audiobook.
pooriaazimi 13y ago
Is that an m4b file (the "official" way), or just a collection of mp3's shoved together to form a book ("Part of a compilation")? The former has been broken (especially on iPad) since iOS 5, and the latter has many issues but at least you "can" see how many chapters there are, and select them. See, for example, these support thread with hundreds of comments: https://discussions.apple.com/message/16397272#16397272 https://discussions.apple.com/message/16397272#16397272 The sad thing is that they don't give 3rd parties access to m4b metadata (chapter name, length and cover), and they themselves have broken their Music.app's ability to parse them. So nobody else can fix this mess.
- imaffett 13y ago
  mp3's shoved together to form a book - that's probably why it works.

kmfrk 13y ago

They also broke podcasting in the newest version of iTunes for Windows. The interface is worse than something even Microsoft would ever make.

protomyth 13y ago
They broke it on OS X too. Now you can delete the media you downloaded, but cannot delete the entry. Makes for a very cluttered "Did I watch that" interface.
- malloreon 13y ago
  Not only that, but I have several episodes from several different podcasts that continually try to download each time I refresh. I have listened to them before, and deleted them, but itunes insists I really really want to listen to them again. I do not.

kyleashipley 13y ago

It seems like the music app received some half-baked changes across the board. For example, you can no longer shuffle all music in a particular genre through the app. They added (or maybe always had) an option to shuffle through Siri ("Play some blues"), but there are some frustrating edge cases: "Play some video game music." "I'm sorry, I can't help you with videos." I've had to resort to creating smart playlists for most of my genres, which is highly inefficient. I find the new interface for shuffling to be confusing as well. It's now the word "Shuffle" with a white background, which changes to "Shuffle All" with a slight pink tinge when you tap it. If tapping "Shuffle" turns shuffle on, then why would tapping "Shuffle All" turn it off? It just seems like a confusing experience. Overall, I'm fairly happy with iOS 7. But outside of radio, the music app feels like a regression.

icesoldier 13y ago
Also missing from Music.app: The ability to delete music from the device. Fortunately I still have some space left on my phone, but barring plugging the phone into iTunes, I don't know how to decrease the amount of music on my phone. I'm with you: iTunes Radio is nice, but the rest of the music app feels a bit worse off.
- adestefan 13y ago
  It's in Settings -> where ever the storage button is hidden these days -> Music. However, the option is only to delete all music.
  - icesoldier 13y ago
    I've seen that, and I guess as an iTunes Match subscriber I can be okay with that. It's just that I was able to delete individual songs/albums/artists off the phone in previous versions, so I was anticipating that here.
- gurkendoktor 13y ago
  I can delete songs from my iOS 7 phone by swiping. I'm not sure which settings factor into this - it's being synced with iTunes via USB, and it's logged into iCloud but I doubt that makes a difference.

protomyth 13y ago

I get the same feeling from iOS 7 that I did from using the first versions of OS X after using NeXTSTEP / OpenStep, so much of the cool stuff and details were missing. I still miss the menus and the Digital Librarian among other things. Its like in the big rush, they just left things undone or looking like crud (the new icons for example).

chmars 13y ago
Getting iOS 7 ready for the announced date was obviously death march. I am therefore optimistic that many of the small bugs and annoyances will get smoothed out over time … :)

saturdaysaint 13y ago

The default Music app is a sub-par audiobook player, as was in iOS 6. I don't consider that a cardinal sin for an app called "Music", or good cause to say that the operating system upgrade itself 'broke' a medium. Audible works as well as it ever did. I have to say that audiobook players are an area where Android has an app that doesn't have an iOS equal - Maple Audio Player handles audiobook files about as well as you could ask, with excellent bookmarking and playback speed options.