iOS 7 and Audiobook Chapters

Re third-party apps, isn't Audible a third-party app? Plus they are now an Amazon-owned company. Yet their app shows chapters. All of the audiobooks I've purchased for the past 2 years I've purchased directly from Audible and it's showing chapters just fine and appears to be accurate.

What happens when you try to sync an iPhone 3GS with iTunes 11.1? I've been afraid to try. Fortunately I already had some non-audible audiobooks on it when these problems started with OS 7. But that won't last. Maybe there's a good reason (beyond sentimentality) that I haven't passed my Icebook Duo to someone else?!

As I said earlier, the 3GS will not sync to iTunes 11.1 or 11.1.1. Every attempt has failed, but when syncing to my Power Mac G4, 10.5.8, iTunes 10.6.3, it works. I just don't want to take the chance of two iTunes versions fouling up the iTunes library.

But then I am only one case, that is having problems. Ask around and see if anyone else is having problems with iTunes 11 and a 3GS.

Same here, the Audible App can't find the audio books.

So i called Audible Germany, they said, that this might be an issue with the actual iTunes 11.1.1, this version can't import the audio books with axx files. They said too, that they'll try to contact Apple...

duke_ , your app looks really good to me, I'm going to try it! 🙂

Question: I have a lot of small "audiobooks", only about 4-7 mp3s each. These are all part of a series of podcasts "Bommel" (famous in the Netherlands).

In iTunes I have made playlists each containing about 5-8 of these audiobooks in a certain order, because the Bommel series, although can be read each story by itself, has a writing order which is nice to follow (development of charecters etc).

Is your app able to import an iTunes playlist? Or, is there another way to put books into a certain order within the app? Which would also be great for other audio books like the Harry Potter series, because the alphabetical order of the music app is really annoying.

Oh, and another question: it really appeals to me to be able to make bookmarks like "great quote" etc. with your app. But will these bookmarks "disappear" when I remove the book form my iPhone (but sync with iTunes) or will bookmarks like these be in the tag and reappear once the book is synced back to the iPhone?

dclkdm,

Bookmobile does not currently import playlists to organize audiobooks. If you make the books part of the same album, and set "Part of a Compilation" in iTunes, then the app will read in all the parts from that album. If you add more books to the album in your iTunes library, Bookmobile will automatically pick those up. It will play them in the order you have them in iTunes, but, yes, you can reorder them within Bookmobile.

If it is a podcast/audiobook with an RSS description, then you can just enter the RSS URL, and the app will automatically read in all of the part/episode descriptions and you can download all or some of the parts whenever you please. You can also reorder the podcast parts/episodes, and mark them as "finished" if you want them skipped, or "hidden" if you don't want to see them at all. You can delete the file(s) to save space on your device, and re-download them at any time.

Bookmobile supports RSS descriptions of both podcasts and audiobooks (Librivox.org provides such descriptions). They only difference is if you want it to check for new episides periodically (a podcast). You can specify an audio collection as an audiobook or a podcast within the app.

Here's a screenshot of the menu for re-ordering parts and switching between podcast and audiobook modes:

http://freshmowed.com/images/PodcastMenu2.png

I hope this is clear. Thanks for asking.

-Duke

Hi dclkdm,

I forgot to answer your last question.

Bookmarks remain on the phone even after you remove the audio file. So you can go back and view or export them, you just can't jump back to the audio location to play (obviously, since the file is no longer there). If you add the audio file back from an iTunes sync (or download from somewhere on the Internet), the app will match it with information it has about the audiboook/podcast, and bookmarks will work again.

In other words, information about your audiobooks/podcasts (bookmarks, what you've played, position, etc.) are all kept in a database within the app, separate from the audio files themselves.

-Duke

I've tried Bookmobile, Audiobooks player and Audiogopher. Bookmobile seems to have the best functionality, much nicer than the Apple Music app in iOS7. However, the only painful aspect (with all of the 3rd party apps) is that music always defaults back to a selection in the music player when i turn my car off and on, having left the iPhone plugged into the USB port. It happens at other iPhone waking times, but I can't seem to duplicate them now.

Duke, am I doing something wrong or is this a limitation?

thanks

I have tried it with audiobooks from Audible and audiobooks imported into iTunes (after correcting the Get Info, so iTunes sees them as audiobooks).

It is not a Audible issue as far as I can see. If you read through other thread here, you will see similar problems with Podcasts, and other symptoms.

James, use Get Info in iTunes and make sure that in the Options tab, that Remember position is set to Yes. For Audible books this should be the default, but for others I have to set this and change the Media Kind to Audiobook.

Brent

Following everyone's lead by making Apple aware of this problem that seems to chap everyone's hide, inlcuding mine. I wonder who made the decision to change this functionality? Had they ever listened to an audiobook before? I want to see each individual chapter. I want to see how much time is left in said chapter. I want the music app's audiobook functionality restored to how it worked in iOS 6. Please!!!!!!!!!!!

If you are reading this thread, please do everyone a favor and give feedback (http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html) here. That is the only way Apple will escalate this and get something done. Apple does NOT monitor this thread, but they will do something IF enough of us give feedback.

"The squeaky wheel gets the grease"

Feedback is great for cosmetic issues, but they need more than that to make the corrections and fixes. iTunes is broken.

Send in Error Reports. Call AppleCare and get escalated to a Senior Advisor.

In my case, we have already done a Capture Data that has been sent to the Engineers.

The all annoying removal of the chapter list is NOT the only thing that's wrong with the crippled way that Apples builtin musicplayer handles audiobooks (m4b's)

Since the introduction of iOS5, the remote control af m4b's via the double/trippleclick options on the headset have been missing - so since that time it haven't been possible to skip chapter forward or backward from the remote, or from the in app skip forward/backward buttons - the only way you could go to another chapter in iOS5 and iOS6, was to manually select it from the chapter list, and that functionallity have now been removed in both iOS7 and in iTunes.

So basically we want the musicplayers audiobook functionallity restored to how it worked in iOS4 - PLEASE!

Duke,

How does BookMobile move audiobooks to the iDevice?

I am having problems with iTunes 11.1.1 not syncing to my iPhone 4S, so I am currently having to get the audiobooks onto the 4S by other means. Most of my reading is currently from CD, rather than by download, so I need a way to load it onto the iPhone that the app can access.