iOS 7 and Audiobook Chapters

You say the DRM a problem, I have the chapters in the laptop but not in the phone? This is a phone problem with ios7. I would like to understand this?

This problem of Apple de-implementing audiobook support has been going on since iOS 5 on the iPad. It is was discussed at length here:

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

many, many feedbacks and bug reports have been filed since then to 0 (zero) benefit. Instead Apple have continued the relentless campaign of de-implementing the audiobook functionality on iOS devices.

The m4b audiobook functionality is now pretty much useless on iOS devices.

For whatever reason no audiobook apps have been developed to fill the void. It would seem an obvious product opportunity.

| For whatever reason no audiobook apps have been developed to fill the void. It would seem an obvious product opportunity.

I beg to differ. Bookmobile fills that void, and handles m4b audiobooks just fine. Soon to be a free trial, so you can try it before you buy it.

http://freshmowed.com/bookmobile/

-Duke

Well I couldn't wait for the free trial to find out if what you said is true. Looks like a really promising app!

However,

1, I see that there no's iPad native version.

2, It's pretty gnarly to shift between view and listen to navigate chapters - it seems I have to return to the bookshelf and then select the book - there must be an easier way but I don't see it

3, I seem to have a difficult time locating a link to help from within the app other than the help with download importing

4, I just downloaded an m4b that has chapters and chapter artwork that worked on the Music app in iOS 6 and earlier on iPhone and I don't see the artwork though I can see the chapter title list in the view mode and the currently playing chapter in the listen mode.

5, Some scrubbing control would be good.

Hi xristy,

Thanks for giving it a try!

1, Yes, but there will be in the future.

2, Yes, there is a much easier way: just swipe the title area left/right to go between chapters. Double-tapping on the title area will take you right to the chapter listing view.

3, Yes, I'm going to add that. The website (main page) has more instructions.

4, Artwork per chapter is not implemented yet, and see 1.

5, tapping the center of the clock will allow you to jump by 5/30 minutes. I think you'll find that 5/30 second/minute buttons, swiping between chapters, and using the auto-generated bookmarks will get you to where you want to be without a loss of context that occurs with scrubbing.

Thanks for the comments/questions! I've been putting out a new release every 1-2 weeks so feedback gets incorporated fairly quickly.

-Duke

1, looking forward to it

2, great! works quite reasonably

3, ditto 1

4, ditto 1, 3

5, I'll get used to it I imagine

6, Now that I've tried a non-DRM .m4b and a DRM'd .aa, I can report that I'm seeing chapters in the .m4b but not in the DRM'd .aa from Audible. The Apple Music app is seeing the chapters which I can of course navigate via tedious multiple tappings on the double left and right triangles; however, bookmobile does not see any chapters much like all other audiobook apps that access the iTunes shared library. The chapters in the .aa are also visible in iTunes on my laptop.

Chapter information is not exposed as public information by Apple for DRM audio (from iTunes or Audible). It is actually something you can find programatically, but it requires using a private API. Apple will not allow an app on the App Store that uses a private API, so it is essentially impossible for a publicly-released 3rd-party app (outside of Audible which owns the DRM technology) to expose DRM chapters. I guess it is possible Audible could license it to 3rd parties, but I haven't looked into that. There was a period last year where it looked like the API was going to be made public (it was in the development documentation), but in the final release of the SDK, it was kept private.

Probably more information than you wanted.

-Duke

I previously posted that I was someone considering to just use Audible from now on. After all, it's an Amazon company and Amazon first started off selling only books. The Audible app is decent and you can download audiobooks you purchase to 3 devices & 4 computers so there wouldn't be a need to sync audiobooks through iTunes any more. Chapters would be recognized and customer support is readily available. Sounded all right to me. However, I feel I should point out some of the disadvantages. The obvious one is for people who already own audiobooks purchased through iTunes. The Audible app won't see the chapters of those. So you'd probably still have to look for a 3rd party app if you go back and read your already owned audiobooks often.

The bigger disadvantage I noticed is the price of an audiobook. For someone like me who doesn't want to commit to a subscription & pay a monthly fee (which Audible offers), I'd have to pay the non-member fee for an audiobook. I don't want to commit because I'm not sure how often I'll listen to an audiobook, I just want to purchase one when I feel like it. So that means I'd have to pay the non-member price. And for the audiobooks which I browsed through in Audible, they were all more expensive than iTunes. Sometimes the difference was just a few dollars but sometimes the difference is substantial. For example, the audiobook "But I Trusted You and Other True Cases" by Ann Rule costs $9.95 at iTunes but the non-member price at Audible for the same audiobook is $23.09. So it'd probably be worth it to get the subscription ($14.95/month) if you know you listen to audiobooks frequently. But if you're in my case where you don't know if you'll read audiobooks that often, it's a factor that might hold you back. You'd probably have to assess how often you think you'll be listening to audiobooks to see if it'd be worth it for you. Anyway, I just thought I'd share that with you all since this seems to be an active thread with many audiobook listeners.

InquisitiveOne,

If you can make a commitment, you can get the price down to $9.95 for books that cost even more. But you have to commit to 24 books in a 12 month period with Audible. Which I have done for years. The books in iTunes in the past were usually higher than Audible's non-member prices. I guess it is time to check them out again.

Also you have ot ask for it, but there is a plan from Audible that will allow you to take advantage of their sales for $9.95 per year. You might try that out.

As for using another app, Music.app on the iPhone has had the Chapters until iOS 7, and will play audiobooks from every source that I have used. Audible.app will only play books from Audible. And it is funny, but I don't think it will play books from iTunes, even though I believe that Audible is the one who provides the service private-labeled for Apple.

It is funny that apple should remove Chapters on the iPad 2 years ago, and left it on the iPhone until iOS 7. I read some of the tech blogs and this is the first I am hearing of Chapters going missing on the iPad , 2 years ago.

It's actually quite annoying. There were several reports back in the day besides the thread linked above:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/apple/users-developers-react-to-apple-ios-5s-new-music -app-on-ipad-hate-it/11422

and

http://www.padgadget.com/2012/10/09/audiobooks-on-the-ipad-the-good-the-bad-and- the-m-i-a/

are two in particular

hi duke_

i just purchased your beautiful app, since i didn't want to wait for a free version and i'm of the opinion that it's always good to support good and motivated developers.

some comments from my side:

when downloading (non-DRM) m4b audiobooks from itunes, it appears as if you're not copying them to your sandbox, but are somehow able to access and playback the original itunes content.

now, i'm still using an iphone4, so using the app becomes extremely slow, especially when jumping across chapter borders or swiping to the next chapter.

would it make sense to add an option for importing the book data instead of just accessing the itunes content? would this possibly speed up things?

also, on my iphone4, the mentioned m4b import process takes very long (>1 minute), and i don't get any visual feedback regarding if there's something happening or not. so i use to keep pressing buttons, e.g. trying to import the second m4b file of the very same book, until i finally crash the app. the book always gets imported, though 😉

the star with social media options in my opinion received a far too prominent slot. also, it doesn't make sense to have a feature like 'sleep timer' in the same group as facebook and twitter sharing. i'd suggest to rather put the list of chapters here, which is otherwise quite confusing to access.

just my two (euro-)cents.

best regards from vienna, austria,

heinz.

p.s. i'm of the opinion that complaining about the audiobook playback downgrade is effortless, since it appears to be some kind of well-considered marketing-move rather than just a bug. however, because of this and also because of the latest keynote version, which turned out to be the first downgrade i ever paid for, i considered to kick apple for good.

well, two days ago i ordered the new iphone5. DUH. but - i've never felt less enthusiastic about reveiving a new apple device soon. i'm just annoyed over the price compared to android devices..

Hi Heinz,

The next release is for you! I hope to submit it (v3.3) to the App Store for review today.

Performance was a major focus, and I improved things significantly across the board. Audiobooks imports get processed in the background now (downloading was already in the background), so you should be able to start listening to the first part or download the next part much sooner.

There are a couple of obscure shortcuts on the main display:

- double-tap the clock face to bring up the sleep timer,

- double-tap the title area to jump right to the chapter list.

Thanks for the feedback from Austin, Texas, and enjoy the new iPhone 5 (I love mine).

-Duke

It's sorta weird getting support for a third party app on this site, you know? :-)

But, since the developer is here: I bought BM and like it. I can't figure out how to scrub through a book? I see the indicator just above the round circle, but if there's a way t grab a bar or something there I sure cant find it. And jumping 30sec to get half way through a 2 hour book won't work.

This has kept me from fully using the app.

Michael

It is weird. You can email me directly at duke@freshmowed.com.

There is no scrubber. If you tap the clock icon in the center of the buttons (the background will turn red), it switches to jump-by-minutes instead of jump-by-seconds. So, then two taps to get halfway through a 2 hour book.

-Duke