Anybody else wondering why they made the changes they did to the ipod app in ios5

[mbarista]

I read that the app Downcast is good for podcast management, without iTunes. I've not used it, but it's $1.99, with good reviews.

Grabbed Downcast, really good app. Thanks for the tip!!!

 

[bblazie]

I like OS5, but the new music player is terrible. I use it primarily for podcasts, but now it doesn't even show what I have payed, and it remived the "get more podcasts" feature, making me have to search on the store every time I want a new episode. Unless there is a subscribe option I am missing, this is just a downgrade. And is there a reason they make the scrubbing slider so bloody small???

Is there a way to go back or a decent app I can replace the default player with?

I agree, this new player is awful for podcasts. I like to listen to a lot of the podcasts at the 2x rate and now that. Is gone. Some of the readers speak so slowly I daydream and miss content. As a student this is a real problem. I have looked at a couple players but can not figure out an easy way to get my content moved from the new music app to the new players, apple needs a podcast app with specific features for rate, rewinding, bookmarking, and note making. I am sure others have other good ideas. I hope they are paying attention to customers comments, I have come to count on this device and this downgrade is a killer right in the middle of the semester.
Bblazie

 

[ctthorne]

Well, they allow for lyrics for the iPhone still, that is SOME consolation. I may not be able to see the lyrics on my ipad. I guess I don't understand that they gave it to us as an option. If people did not want it, all they had to do was turn it off. But now, because of the iCloud, they are trying to control the music aspect, I guess. By the way, I don't sink my music to the iCloud, because I don't want to loose my lyrics!

 

[richsadams]

Eliminated Smart Playlists

FWIW the Music App on my iPad began acting up again when I accessed the Playlists area. It would take forever to open a Smart Playlist after touching one of the nine I had. The more files in the Playlist, the longer it would take to open it. At one point it began to crash/close when I tried opening my "Rock" Smart Playlist - which had about 3200 songs. After some repeated deleting and syncing it became apparent that size matters. The larger the Playlist the more trouble the Music App had in dealing with it and at some number (unknown what that might be, but apparently greater than 2,000 songs) it can fail.

Sooooo, I went ahead and deleted all of the music on my iPad (Unchecked "Sync Music" in iTunes - "Apply"). I then reloaded it using the "Genres" (Rock, Jazz, Pop, etc.) checklist for the music I wanted. It's fairly close to my Smart Playlists anyway as that's mainly how they were broken out...but that means I now have no Playlists. That's not how this app is supposed to work, and not how the old iPod App worked...which worked perfectly with my Smart Playlists.

FWIW I have too much music to fit it all on my 64GB iPad (even at 128 kbps AAC) and I have to believe there are plenty of others in the same boat. Bottom line, Playlists are really useful and they should just work!

After cruising the Interwebs I see that there are a LOT of complaints about this sort of problem as well as the UI, no lyrics allowed, etc. The Music App on the iPad s/b the flagship...that it works better on my iPhone is sad to say the least. Hopefully Apple has gotten enough grief about it that they are busily working on an update.

On the upside the Music App, although a tad slow IMO, works fine now. Still wish they hadn't messed with a good thing.

 

[Munky]

My main issues with the app are I don't want to see the store button there at all.... I don't buy music on iTunes....EVER. A bigger issue is the tiny art and the light color text on the light back ground. Another thing I wish they would do is when you have shuffle on, when you change songs it should make the list jump to where that song is.

 

[richsadams]

Groove for iPad

I've just downloaded an alternative music player called "Groove for iPad" from the App Store. So far it's pretty impressive. I'm going to wipe and reload my music library to see how it deals with playlists and such. It has a Pandora-like learning ability and some other bells and whistles as well, but I'm more interested in a stable music player that handles Smart Playlists well at the moment. I'm hoping the iOS 5.0.1 addresses some of the Music App issues, but I'm not holding my breath because it appears that they're focused on the issue with the battery life on the iPhone 4S but we'll see. In the meantime I'm willing to spend $3.99 to have a music player that works.

 

[Munky]

I just gave it a look, a bit too "busy" for my taste.

 

[richsadams]

I just gave it a look, a bit too "busy" for my taste.

I agree...it's not the ideal UI, but so far it does seem to be handling everything I can throw at it. It recognizes my Smart Playlists. Still need to play with it a bit more. At least it doesn't choke like the Music App...so far so good.

 

[carl 11]

yup, thx KW, me too, just discovered that by accident myself. I don't recall seeing it on the 50 page OS bible that came out, maybe I missed it?

I am glad its there but the nice easy to find and press 30 second rewind was the best way to go, I did my own 'experiment', pressing and holding either the rewind or back button and it takes 18 seconds to either advance/go back 30 seconds, they could have added a 30 second fast forward feature, if they like, had someone doing it that appeared to care/was really interested in the music app.

I am sorry if I sound jaded but this is the ipad version of the ipod, and its a mess.

It takes 3-4 more taps than before to get you places or activate items in the app. than it did before, there is little to no intuitiveness in its meandering functionality flow, the design coloring of the interface(s) is totally drab, there is NO way to see INSIDE a podcast, i.e. guests/information listed in the description when you have it ON your computer before syncing ( which is a change from the prior OS) and it locks up on me, oh every other day and I only have about 3 gigs of music downloaded.

I am going to wait another 2 weeks, if its not patched, ( hello, here we go), then I will dig out my 4 year old Nano............ So, in effect, I get to go back 4 years for a functioning music app. that Apple created and added to a device I paid 600 bucks for. I cannot think of a more ridiculous state of affairs, seriously.

 

[richsadams]

yup, thx KW, me too, just discovered that by accident myself. I don't recall seeing it on the 50 page OS bible that came out, maybe I missed it?

I am glad its there but the nice easy to find and press 30 second rewind was the best way to go, I did my own 'experiment', pressing and holding either the rewind or back button and it takes 18 seconds to either advance/go back 30 seconds, they could have added a 30 second fast forward feature, if they like, had someone doing it that appeared to care/was really interested in the music app.

I am sorry if I sound jaded but this is the ipad version of the ipod, and its a mess.

It takes 3-4 more taps than before to get you places or activate items in the app. than it did before, there is little to no intuitiveness in its meandering functionality flow, the design coloring of the interface(s) is totally drab, there is NO way to see INSIDE a podcast, i.e. guests/information listed in the description when you have it ON your computer before syncing ( which is a change from the prior OS) and it locks up on me, oh every other day and I only have about 3 gigs of music downloaded.

I am going to wait another 2 weeks, if its not patched, ( hello, here we go), then I will dig out my 4 year old Nano............ So, in effect, I get to go back 4 years for a functioning music app. that Apple created and added to a device I paid 600 bucks for. I cannot think of a more ridiculous state of affairs, seriously.

Agreed. I know Apple's folks are enthralled with the minimalist/gray design now, and I don't like the "circus" designs of some apps, but surely there is a happy medium...particularly for small icons like shuffle, etc. I think the blue on, white off mix was really useful. Seems like every time they try to eliminate colors someone figures out a way to bring them back...and don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to change, but it should be positive and make using the device easier, not harder.

iOS 5.0.1 is due to be released in a "few weeks". Although it's mainly aimed at improving the iPhone 4S' battery life, I'm hoping Apple will have listened to the masses and we'll be pleasantly surprised by some improvements for the Music App as well. Guess we'll have to wait and see.

 

[richsadams]

Just a quick follow up to my earlier post about the Groove for iPad App I posted about yesterday. I've had a chance to use it for a while now, and I have to admit that it's really growing on me. It's a lot more versatile than I first thought and has a pretty wide variety of features. I have about 4,000 songs on my iPad now and it catalogued all of the details, works with my Smart Playlists and does a good deal more than even the old iPod App would do. A couple of things that would be nice would be lyrics and the ability to crossfade, but I can live with that.

I'm going to leave the native Music App in a folder to collect dust until Apple cleans it up. In the meantime here's a little demo of Groove if anyone's interested in an alternative to the somewhat buggy iPad Music App...

Now if they'll give me a cut for this promo...

 

[carl 11]

Just a quick follow up to my earlier post about the Groove for iPad App I posted about yesterday. I've had a chance to use it for a while now, and I have to admit that it's really growing on me. It's a lot more versatile than I first thought and has a pretty wide variety of features. I have about 4,000 songs on my iPad now and it catalogued all of the details, works with my Smart Playlists and does a good deal more than even the old iPod App would do. A couple of things that would be nice would be lyrics and the ability to crossfade, but I can live with that.

I'm going to leave the native Music App in a folder to collect dust until Apple cleans it up. In the meantime here's a little demo of Groove if anyone's interested in an alternative to the somewhat buggy iPad Music App...

Now if they'll give me a cut for this promo...

thx Rich....have you podcasted with it?

 

[richsadams]

thx Rich....have you podcasted with it?

Great question! I added a Ricky Gevais podcast and searched high and low and Groove does not list it anywhere. It showed up in the Music App fine though. So I'd say if you're looking for something that plays more than your music library, this isn't the app for you...or you could just switch to the Music App for podcasts I suppose...but it doesn't handle those too well either. Ugh.

 

[Hayles66]

Okay A good thing and a bad thing

I pre-ordered a cd and voila! It arrived over night on both phone and iPad. Magic!!!

When I play an album and have the cover art enlarged it gets stuck there and I have to reset the iPad to get the other songs back. This has happened twice to me now. I really do hope that there are changes afoot for the music app. I refuse to restore this iPad for this app. Or get another app to do the same job. Grrr!

Sent from my one and only original iPad using iPF

 

[richsadams]

Okay A good thing and a bad thing

I pre-ordered a cd and voila! It arrived over night on both phone and iPad. Magic!!!

When I play an album and have the cover art enlarged it gets stuck there and I have to reset the iPad to get the other songs back. This has happened twice to me now. I really do hope that there are changes afoot for the music app. I refuse to restore this iPad for this app. Or get another app to do the same job. Grrr!

Sent from my one and only original iPad using iPF

Cover art does seem to be a big part of the problems with the Music App. If I didn't have a lot of obscure cover art for my library I'd be tempted to delete the iTunes file and let it rebuild everything, but I spent a lot of time searching high and low for some of the artwork for CD's I ripped from days gone by and I don't want to go through that again.

You could try deleting the cover art (via iTunes) for that particular album and re-syncing with your iPad to see if that will clear up the problem. You can always get it back so it might be worth a try. Let us know if you do and if it helped.