iOS 5 Music.app on iPad doesn't support audiobook chapters

This is unbelievable - I cant believe it hasn't even been acknowledged by Apple. I'm a fully fledged, line waiting Apple fanboy but this is just a horrible show of disdain for paying customers. Even a non committal acknowledgement would be better than ignorant silence.

Apple has been uncharacteristically silent about the recent Siri outage as well. As I mentioned it's industry standard policy to acknowledge customers complaints or a service outage (eleven if they don't intend to do anything) — it's just common courtesy customer relations.

What I find really outrageous is demanding that Audible rewrite their absolutely perfect App to eliminate support for: chapters and variable narration speed — actually making Audible strip there features from their App as well as eliminate the ability to directly purchase audiobooks from within the App and now it also seems accessing our Audible online library of purchased books from within the App has also been eliminated. The Audile App was a wonder to behold — a perfect gem (now crippled - mugged by Apple).

I think this issue is somehow related to iCloud and some conflict or limitation there but this silence — no response to the now very limited practicality of listening to audiobooks with the new Music App on iPad is so strange and why just iPad — the features remain for iPhone and iPod touch? Is there a prescident for this lack of response on something so key to usability and so antithetical to the Apple ethos of "It Just Works"?

Hi xristy;

I did not mean to be dramatic or describe the Audible App situation worse that it is however I have been using the Audible App since it was released and YES you could download from your online library to your device remotely and YES that included chapter support. in fact whether you were streaming from your online library Or downloading to the App and listening on your device Or listening from the titles on your iPod — all features were supported – including the all important Chapters. So when I say Apple disabled the Audible App, they did… and in a very big way.

I did not mean to imply anything sinister but I still contend that somehow all these hiccups or enforced feature limitations are related to iCloud in some way or other – perhaps related to – streaming and Push technology and whatever is needed to make that work the way Apple intends. After Apple feels iCloud is solid we will all be informed we have to use it — its part of the great plan (whether you like it or not). Let's hope we'll like it.

Right now for all of us iPad users though, the big mystery is Why Only iPad? Why does iPod touch and iPhone still support all the audiobook playing features (including Chapters) but iPad does not? That is so curious.

Hi Rikki

Like I said before, I don't know how the iphone users are happy, because I am not. I am not using audible, but I prepare myself audiobook sfrom mp3 to m4b format within audiobook binder on MAC. Everything was smooth before ios 5. Now all my books lost chapter structure in iphone. Can somebody give me a sample of m4b book such that I could check chapters on iphone?

I know that the chapter structure exists there because in itunes there is a shortcat allowing jump from chapter to chapter and it works.

Would a screen shot from my iPhone help you? It does support Chapters and 30 sec rewind and optional playback speeds. All the features we love and depended upon. Let me know – I have to run out of the office for a short bit but I'd be happy to send you a screen shot or anything that can help (if I can).

Do you have it in Music.app or Audible? Please send me the screen. BTW I do have 30 sec rewind and optional palyback speed. Only chapters are missing. May be this is problem of audiobook binder, I am using? (with ios 4 everything was fine, however)

I took this screen shot of my iPhone4S showing the Chapters in Part 1 of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.http://faine-oller.com/Screens/

Hope this helps.

Hmm, is it m4b file? Thanks a lot

I used my Audiable account to purchase — I forget exactly what format I have my account set to download. I'm out away from my computer — now on my iPhone… I'll check when I get back in and let you know.

Okay, now I remember the file format – I changed my settings for all my Audible downloads to Audible Enhanced Audio - which is CD Quality (larger files but great quality) this looks like an ACC file in iTunes. I changed that a long time ago. The Audible App and the former iPod App on iOS 4.3.3 played those files perfectly with all the features plus many others exclusive to the Audible App.

If you want to know what is really missing from the Audible App take a look on their site, there is a page that has descriptions of features with how to's and screen by screen visuals — its tragic what we lost (on all Apple iDevices). Well, at least the Music App still works on everything except iPad… if iPad was my only iOS device I would be Insanely Annoyed (to keep it politely stated).

Xristy, thank you very much . I did download some books from audible and they indeed work both in audible and in music app with chaptres. However, they are in format aa. Now at least I start to undersand. iPad probably has issues with all format of adiobook. Iphone has troubles with m4b but wit aa format it seems OK.

I noticed that although the music app doesn't list the chapters for m4b audiobooks on the chapter display, it actually recognizes the chapters...

By tapping once on the fast forward or rewind buttons the music app will move to the next or previous chapter within the audiobook. So you can jump one chapter at a time, but you can't jump to a specific chapter.