iOS 8 Remote update not displaying album art of currently playing album

Above, dsjac asked

Does anybody know if [Apple] is aware of and/or cares about this problem?

I do not know whether or not they care, but Apple does know about this problem. I'm obsessive with my album art and noticed the problem on September 17, right after downloading 4.2.1. I spend the next day troubleshooting and attempting to fix the issue myself, and, when I could not, I called Apple. I had recently (at that point) purchased an iPad mini so had access to Apple Care, and I spent a long time on the phone that evening. I was passed up to a senior representative who told me he had the ear of the engineers who would investigate the (issue if it existed).

At that point I would have been running whatever versions of Mavericks, the final version of iOS 7.x (on a 5s), and the final version of iTunes 11.x were current at the time. My now playing art appeared as the OP's on both my iPad and iPhone, but all the other artwork appeared. I could see every album cover when I browsed by artist or album. I could see album art in the Up Next and in the History dropdowns. If I streamed music to the television via AirPLay to the Apple TV, the artwork would appear there. It appeared everywhere that it should appear in iTunes. It appeared on my iPod classic. There was only one place that it did not appear.

For the record, all of my artwork is embedded directly into each file. If the only source for an album cover is the iTunes art, I always make a copy of the image, clean it up a bit, and then embed the art directly into the purchased m4a files. The images I use art not unduly large; The maximum size that I tend to use is 600x600 pixels.

I shall call the representative with whom I dealt Mister UU (in honor of the band who created the most bestest album ever). Mister UU went over the issue very carefully with me and I was confident that he understood the issue. He asked for screenshots and I took them and emailed them. He verified their receipt. I was put on hold, and, after some time, I was told that the engineers were unaware of any such problem and that it did not appear as if anyone else in the Apple User community was experiencing this issue. Nonetheless, he told me that he would check into it further and follow up with me. He said that he would call me the next Monday, September 22, and that we would speak later in the week as well. He said that the issue would be marked as medium priority.

Mister UU and I "spoke" three times that next week, on Monday, Wednesday and (in a manner of speaking) on Friday.

I don't recall what happened on Monday and what happened Wednesday, but, over those two days, Mister UU sent me a link to a dmg download that expanded into an application that dug through various parts of my OS and captured my pertinent iTunes data. I also supplied a song that I had ripped myself, and I created a new library, downloaded everything that I had purchased from iTunes over the years (they tried to stick me with the U2 album at that point, but I caught it in time and cancelled its download). I then began playing these tracks randomly and the issue persisted.

Mister UU made an appointment to speak with me on the phone that Friday at noon. At noon, instead of a phone call, I received an email from him telling me that he would be a little late calling. He never called.

He did eventually send an email, and, later that evening, two voice mails from him appeared on my iPhone, time stamped between 12:15 and 12:45, but there was no log of these calls in my recent calls and I swear on my daughter's life that I carried my iPhone with me, on my person, everywhere that afternoon. Had it rang, I would have heard it. No one else called me either, so there is no way he'd have been bumped to voice mail.

In the voice mails and the email, I was told that the data that they had collected was corrupted. Apparently I had done it wrong, even though all I had to do was press a button to gather the information and then attach the file the application generated to an email and send it. But, of course, they did not want me to attempt to collect data a second time. I was told, once more, that the engineers were unable to replicate the problem and that my issue was one that, as Apple's knowledge on September 26, was unique to me and my system.

The end of the email stated that my case had been closed. If, however, I wanted to reopen the case, I could do so by following the link below.

That link was a 404. I emailed the representative back and told him that I did not consider the case closed and informed him that the link was dead. He did not write me back.

I have not heard from Apple since. They are aware that there is a problem. I have no idea whether or not they care, but, if I had to guess whether or not they cared, I know which answer I would choose.

I am now back with 4.2 and everything works perfectly (I am running iOS 8.1, Yosemite 10.10, and iTunes 10.0.1.26 on a MacBook Pro).

These are the steps I took to reinstall 4.2:

• I deleted Remote 4.2.1. You can find it in Music > iTunes > iTunes Music > Mobile Applications

• I made sure it went to the trash and I emptied the trash.

• I manually deleted 4.2.1 from both my iPad and my iPhone.

• There are four preference panes where you must disable automatic downloads.

• On my iPad and iPhone, I went to Settings > iTunes & App Store, and I disabled the automatic downloading of "Apps" and "Updates.

• Then I went into the iTunes panels for my iPhone and iPad.

• I went to the second option, "Apps," between "Summary" and "Music." The left hand column displays apps that are or can be installed on that device. Scroll down to the bottom of that window. In between that window and the one below it, "File Sharing," there is a check box followed by "Automatically install new apps." This Should be unchecked for every iOS device you have or use.

• I went back into Time Machine to early September, found 4.2 in the same location where I deleted 4.2.1, and I restored it.

• I exited Time Machine and went back to iTunes. Under file, I selected "Add to Library" (command O), and selected Remote 4.2 from the same location to which I just restored it.

• Then, I installed 4.2 on my iOS devices and set them up as I normally would set up Remote on a brand new iOS device.

Finally, I duplicated Remote 4.2 and stashed the dupe in another folder because Time Machine is not infallible (knock on wood).

I don't think that anyone here knows how widespread this problem is. Apple may not either. A tiny modicum of users may not rate a fix when compared to other issues, deemed major, that affect more users. If you have this issue, please take the time to report it.

I hope that we all see fixes to this and our other issues soon.

M.

Nathan: thank you for attempting to get to the bottom of the problem with Apple. I too have a pretty good sense as to whether they care about the problem. That's why I can them Crapple now. I'm also meticulous about my album art. I went through a lot of work, like you, to get it right. At this point as I noted above, I just connect my device to my PC through Bluetooth and avoid the Remote app altogether. If they ever get around to fixing it, then fine. But I've learned to expect less from Crapple as time passes. And they're certainly living down to my expectations.

Many thanks, Nathan, for your attempts to get this looked at - Kudos.

So reverting to 4.2 is the only answer then.

What a total pain in the arse and disappointment they can be so careless in breaking something so basic like this. One of these days I'm going to rip out the DRM from my collection and use a different system. I'm not at that stage yet, but if they carry on making basic errors then I might be tempted.

I am by no means unsympathetic to your position, and I apologize if my interpolation caused offense. I have been an Apple fanboy since the advent of the Apple II, my first computer was a IIe, and I, too, have noticed certain trends of late. I do not intend this as a judgement, but posts in these forums have been known to go missing if they are deemed inflammatory toward Apple. I try to be careful and respectful when it comes to what I write here.

It disappointed me greatly when coverflow was removed from iTunes. Now that the large album view has changed to text in Remote, it seems as if album art is being slowly squeezed out (I am beginning to suspect that Apple may have been beat up on the playground by an album cover when it was a kid and is now carrying out its revenge). I don't use the music apps on the iOS devices and don't know what artwork looks like in said applications; I use an iPod Classic, the discontinuation of which makes me sad. It disappoints me that Apple does not realized that the ability to have 160GB of music in one's pocket is something that a subset of us value, and that the iPod Classic is the best available vehicle carrying and playing lossless files.

All that said, I have been ready to jump off the iTunes train several times before, but the bugs have always been solved . . . eventually.

Regards, N.

No need to apologize. I never found anything remotely offensive in your post. I don't think Crapple is alone in diminishing album art. They used to show it on Music Chiice too. I guess it's a casualty of the digital age. I also use Apple Lossless files, 90 gb of it, so I was pleased with the introduction of the iPhone 6 Plus. The bugs that came with it and ios 8 have been a nuisance, but survivable. But, they were also avoidable with some simple testing. I used to work with software and I made sure I had a test script to ensure that basic functions still worked with new releases. I find it hard to comprehend that these people don't do the same, but it sure appears that way. Given what they charge for their products, that's both telling and unacceptable.

The workaround, to install the old version of the Remote app, worked for me. Thank you. Hopefully the issue is fixed in the next update.

Feedback sent to Apple.

Is this fixed in Yosemite?

Nathan, I ran your fix and completed it in under 5 mins! Thanks, man. 🙂

You're welcome. I'm glad it worked for you.

To answer your earlier question, the problem does persist with Yosemite. I think most of us who've banged our heads against this problem tend to agree that it's a malfunction with the Remote app itself. I think it's possible that an iOS 8.1.x could fix the issue, but I think it's most likely we'll see Remote 4.2.x (or 4.x or 5.x) that fixes the issue.

I completely agree.

Nathan Walters,

I Have some questions on resurrecting the old app. If you have a moment, please mail me simontemplaratmacdotkom

thanks a lot

sT

first of all, I also would like to thank you, Nathan for the job you've done regarding this issue. I'm - exactly like you - obsessive with my album arts, and I also change them all, one by one before putting an ALAC album into my library (which is probably one of the largest itunes library of the world...). but anyway, I still would say, that this is a relatively minor issue, comparing to the many others by apple, which really affect the basic functionality of their products (both with softwares and with hws. just a few of them, off of the top of my head: apple tv stops streaming contents from itunes constantly after upgrading to 7.x, the dedicated volume buttons on my wireless apple keyboard don't work anymore after installing yosemite, yosemite-iphone calls can't use a headset microphone, etc.). my great problem is, that they seem to handle these problems the same way, they handled "your" (because to say, that this problem only occurs on your system is simply outrageous!) artwork problem.
anyway, that's fantastic, that there are people, ilke you, who spend their precious time, and energy to dig into these problem, so hats off, keep up this great work!

ps.: I couldn't reply to your post (I mean, to directly reply to your comment, because it said: User 'asfahan' is banned from posting content)...

Mister Templar,

If you post your issue and question(s) here, I'm sure than either I or any number of people familiar with the issue can and will assist you.

N.

I'm glad that I have the time and ability have chipped in on this issue. While it has made me (and most of us) grumpy, your list of bigger issues does put things in a larger context. There are more important issues that Apple needs to solve than the Remote problem. I'd rate keyboard functionality about the Remote issue, for instance. From that perspective (knock on wood), I'm pretty lucky in that this Remote issue is the only issue that affected my system functionality after having upgraded to both iOS 8 and Yosemite.

When I cast my memory back to what my system looked like when I first upgraded to OS X from 9 and all the additional hardware that's been added which my computer is tasked with operating, calibrating, and monitoring, it's actually amazing that (my) updates go as smoothly as they do.

That said, I'm not trying to be an apologist for the Remote issue. Version 4.2 works fine for me and my system. Perhaps a patch was needed for the iPhone 6; I don't know. But, from where I'm sitting, there does not seem to be any reason why a broken app was released to replace one that worked. (And, yes, I am aware that I don't know what's under the hood of each different app and how their programming interacts with the average Apple computer system.)

I'm sure that this will be addressed eventually. I only hope that the fix doesn't come with the new iOS or the new OS X.

I am having the same problem with the Remote App.

It seems to be model specific.

The album artwork shows up fine when using the IPod Touch (5th generation) but no album artwork on the iPhone 6 (as well as my old IPhone 5S).

I am running the latest iOS 8.1 and Remote App version.