IOS 8.4 Has Ruined my Audiobooks & Audio Drama Library

I'll just throw my 2 cents in here as well...

I don't like this app either. What YOU describe is even worse than the problems I'm having with it.

1. I'm used to seeing the files...not "Tracks" (i.e. if an audiobook was downloaded in 1 or 2 files I could easily tell how far along in the book I am...now I have absolutely no ******* idea.)

2. It seems laggy and if you've been listening a while it's almost like it has to wake up before it registers any button presses. It can take upward of 15 seconds or more to respond to a pause or to skip back 15 or 30 seconds if you missed something.

3. Again with the lag - for some reason when you first open it up it seems also to take much longer to wake up and start responding than the books used to when they were lumped in with the music.

4. I also notice the playback location isn't always in the EXACT same spot a lot of times it's a minute or two prior to where I left off sometimes more.

So if someone at apple sees this maybe you could fix this crap?

I went and submitted something but I don't know how helpful it'll be.

the drop downs for the version of ibooks doesn't have the most recent version and the newest phone you can select to say that you have is the iphone5s (I have a 6)

They aren't even keeping their submission forms up to date so it doesn't seem like they much care.

I submitted something also, and not only is an iPhone 6 or 6+ not even on the dropdown menu, there is no realization that audiobooks might be a category. As a long-time Apple geek, I am getting more and more distressed at the sloppy implementation of built-in software, and the fact that as consumers we are not taken into consideration or prepared for the change. Not to mention being taken unawares if there are new/different ways of maneuvering within an app, such as left or right swiping now does x or a function that you used to do is now controlled by y.

Apple, please make sure there are adults looking over the shoulders of the children so that their perspective on how software is used by your wide-ranging audience isn't confined to the narrow one of their peers.

Thats interesting. Which beta version are you using? I've been running public beta 2 and have come close to denoucing Apple as the Devil! 😁

I was finding, using the iBooks app, that playing ANY part of an audiobook for ANY duration would result in it being marked as "played". This would mean it would then dissapear from my library (even before syncing to iTunes) and wouldn't show up in any app, not just iBooks.

I have moved the iBooks app to a page on my phone well away from the front so I won't start it even accidentally and have been using the Audiobooks & Podcast Player app for playback. As before the lowest level chapter names are not listed, but at least the individual segments are there.

but why don’t you split the two stories?

they are on one cd just on grounds of cost.

if i rip a cd with two or more stories, i split

them afterwards. so every story can have

an indvidual artwork and is much easier to find.

Thats kind-of the problem.

Here's an example. A company call Big Finish do a monthly release of Doctor Who full cast dramas. Each release usually consists of one story split into 4 episodes on 2 cds, so I use Audiobook Maker to rip and combine the relavent tracks into a 4-chaptered m4b file. Thsi is added to iTunes where the album art is added (can't let Audiobook Maker do it any more as the new iBooks doesn't like those files) and also in the tagging I would add a disc number (we are up to 201!) track number (usually 1of 1 but sometimes there are 2 or more stories on the discs if it is a special release) the overall title of the series (Doctor Who Monthly Releases) and finally the author and artist data.

In the past you could view the list of overall story titles (Doctor Who Monthly Releases), in there would be a list if the story titles which, when played, had Episode 1,2,3 & 4 as chapters. Now all you see under Doctor Who Monthly is Track 1, Track 2 Track 3 etc.

You are right in that if I abandoned the system I have been using for 16 years and completly re-tagged all of the audio drama's I have in my library I could possibly make the new software work. However at last count I have 300 or so TITLES consisting of around 4500 audio files, so I'd prefer it if Apple just made the playback system work like it used to. I don't care which app I use to play the files, I just want my drama's back!

http://freshmowed.com/bookmower.html

It is the audiobook-only player from the same guy who created Bookmobile. It uses the same interface and works in the same way. The difference is that bookmobile can play podcast's as well. He seems a good guy and responds to support request very quickly. I haven't approached him yet about this issue we are suffering from until I can write it down and explain it concisely.

Help for audiobook aficionados, iBooks and iOS 8.04. For those of you using Audiobook Builder to rip CDs or digital files, the software creator - Splasm software is very aware of the issues, and is working with Apple to resolve them. You can follow the discussions on their forum support page:

http://www.splasm.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=13&sid=aecc90a898b3c4b9186220799d3f4 385

The same issue that is causing a problem for Audiobook Builder users is more than likely a similar issue for all of you out there having the same problems, so it is worth checking in to see their take on the cause, and what Apple is doing to resolve it. The culprit (at the moment) appears to be the way images are assigned to audiobooks and how that is handled (or mishandled) by iOS 8.04 and iBooks.

My audiobook nightmare began after I recently updated to iOS 9 beta. I'm an audiobook addict. I am constantly listening to books. For years, I have listened using the music app on my iPhone. The beta update changed the native audiobook app from music to iBooks. I will write a detailed list of all the problems later today, but here are a few of my biggest issues/annoyances:

- It crashes ALL THE TIME!

- It constantly starts my audiobooks at the wrong time (usually way before my stop time). It does this so often that I've started taking screenshots of my current position every time I pause/stop play. Of course this doesn't help if it's paused unexpectedly due to a phone call or frequent iBooks app crash.

- For some strange reason, it displays the words "chapter title" and "book title" instead of the actual track number and audiobook title. It crashes several times a day.

- Sometimes, it stops playing if I simply leave the app (auto-lock, homescreen, switch to another app, etc.). I have to restart iBooks for it to work normal again.

I know it's a beta release and I should expect some bugs, but it's currently unusable and very irritating. I'm looking for an alternative. I've tried audible's app, but it doesn't let you jump forward/back from the lock screen- that's a deal-breaker for me. Any suggestions?

Hopefully they will fix these problems with the official iOS 9 release.

I share your pain, but the problem is quite a bit bigger than podcasts and audiobooks. Photos.app for example - especially for Aperture users. State synchronization failures when content is managed in both iTunes and iOS. An 8.4 bug with iOS photo sync to Aperture (iPhoto?) Libraries causes iTunes to fail prior to the Audiobook update step. A ridiculously ineffective matching algorithm with Apple's new Music app. Classical music metadata regressions...

Over the past 3-4 years Apple's hardware quality has actually improved, but their software quality and usability has fallen off a cliff. I think that awareness is slowly reaching the mainstream, though it hasn't made it to the NYT yet.

After looking at it some more I've discovered something (I think) I noticed I could see the tracks (though they say tracks I think they're chapters? at least they were in one book I was reading) and that turned out to be helpful because I'll listen to a book while I'm driving but then pick up the book and want to get back to that spot or vice versa. So if "tracks" turn out to consistently be chapters that won't be so bad. I'm past the "I don't know how far along in the book I am anymore" part of my rant.

The part I'm not okay with is the lag. It's CRAZY how long this app takes to start up. It's CRAZY how it sometimes becomes unresponsive while playing. Let's say you missed a part and you want to back up a couple of minutes...you hit the button to go back 30 seconds (I have mine set for 30 seconds as opposed to 15) and the key presses don't register for at least 30 seconds. It's really frustrating. What the **** is wrong with this app? Sometimes it hangs to the point where I can't even close it. Something really needs to be done.

The thing just behaves in such a buggy manner.

I have a 2012 Audi S5 and connect my iPhone so that it plays like an iPod. iBooks has made it almost impossible to play my audiobooks. I have to tinker, and tinker and tinker, pulling off the road, etc. In the end, the app no longer remembers where I left off.

I am due for an upgrade with my service provider. I will not upgrade with a iPhone if this is not fixed by then.

. I have hundreds of audio books from the teaching company now all jumbled up. I can choose where I was or even the track I was previously listening to. I don't know if Apple people actually have iPhones. Because they mess everything up when they update. They don't test what will happen and it seems they don't listen to audio books for sure. this is a travesty beyond any mistake they have made. They messed up iTunes, iBooks, voice memos. I mean how easy is it to record a voice memo and save it with a date stamp that never changes. Not with Apple everything changes, the date, the name, the order. I don't know where my voice memos are anymore This is wrong.

I have created an app called Undulib specifically for people like us that collect audiodramas in addition to audiobooks.

I think you might enjoy it 😉

Undulib - The audiobook player for audiodrama enthusiasts.

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