

iOS7 has broken Audiobooks - lambada
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5320585?start=0&tstart=0

======
kyleashipley
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
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.

~~~
gurkendoktor
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.

~~~
icesoldier
Strange, I can't get the swipe behavior in the Music app. I've yet to plug the
phone into iTunes since the iOS 7 update, but whenever I swipe across an album
or song, it acts as if I tapped it.

~~~
rgsteele
Swipe right to left, not left to right.

~~~
icesoldier
Huh. Works for tracks and playlists, not anything else, looks like. Still,
much better than nothing. Thanks!

------
imaffett
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.

~~~
pooriaazimi
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
mp3's shoved together to form a book - that's probably why it works.

------
saturdaysaint
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.

------
nicholassmith
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
That would be an incredibly dumb decision, considering they sell audiobooks in
the iTunes store.

------
protomyth
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
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 … :)

------
kmfrk
They also broke podcasting in the newest version of iTunes for Windows.

The interface is worse than something even Microsoft would ever make.

~~~
protomyth
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
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.

