I purchased this program so I could listen to "books-on-tape" in a similar fashion that I read books on my Kindle. My public library allows me to download digital books. The books are in MP3 format. They have to be loaded onto the iPad or iPhone via iTunes. When you load them this way, iTunes treats them as MUSIC instead of BOOKS. That is correct, they show up mixed in with your music instead of in their own little area. As a work-a-round you can create a playlist called AUDIO BOOKS and then create folders within that to accept all your books. Now, on the computer, everything is nice and neat.
The problem arises when you want to listen to your book on your iPad / iPhone for a while, then listen to your music collection. When you go back to your book, it goes to the BEGINNING of the book (or beginning of section if the book is broken-down into multiple sections for easier downloading). Within the iPod player, there is no way of "bookmarking" the audiobook. This is because iTunes doesn't see the AUDIOBOOK as a book at all, but rather as a very, very long song.
I purchased AUDIOBOOK PLAYER expecting it to solve the problem.
Here is how AUDIOBOOK PLAYER behaves:
It mirrors whatever is happening in iTunes. If you choose music (or books) in the AUDIOBOOK PLAYER program and then later go to your IPOD application, the changes you make on the IPOD are reflected in the AUDIOBOOK PLAYER.
It gives you BIG buttons with SMALL text. They should have called it BIG BUTTON IPOD instead of AUDIOBOOK PLAYER.
Here is what I was EXPECTING:
1) Click on a button called LIBRARY and choose a book I want to listen to. (note, I would expect to be able to load up to 10 books at a time in the library, also, the book would already have to have been transferred to the device through iTunes...not expecting miracles here!!)
2) If the books have an DUTE DATE recorded in their meta-data, I expect to see that displayed next to, or beneath the title so I know when books are no longer valid.
3) When I click on PLAY, I expect the book to start playing from where I left off.
4) When I click PAUSE, I expect the program to insert a BOOKMARK for me.
5) When I click on PLAY, I expect the book to start to play from where I left off.
6) If I go back to my library button, and select a different book, I expect the identical behavior. I expect the program to keep track of each of my ten books and resume play from exactly where I left off in that particular book.
That is the MINIMUM LEVEL of functionality I would expect from a program called AUDIOBOOK PLAYER. Some additional functions that would be nice additions:
1) Show me a nice graphic of the front and back covers.
2) Show me other stuff available in the book's metadata
3) Keep track of my bookmarks and make them transfer when the iPad / iPhone are sync'd. That way if you start listening on one device, and move to another, the bookmarks are in the latest place. Kindle does this over a 3G network for all the devices listed on your account. That is an awesome feature when you have kids on a road trip and their Kindle's battery dies, they can just borrow somebody else's kindle and continue reading right where they left off!
4) Clock showing how much time has elapsed since the beginning of the book and how much is remaining.
5) Sleep timer. Let me set a timer, when the timer expires pause playback (and insert bookmark)
6) Build in functionality similar to the iTired app. This program plays a pleasant sound every few minutes, if you don't double tap the screen or shake the device, the program stops iTunes playback. Their functionality could be improved with better integration with bluetooth headsets. For example, if the "are-you-still-awake" chime is sounding, accept any button press on the bluetooth headset as a YES answer, but don't act on the button press until the chime quits sounding. This way, you could just tap any button on the bluetooth headset to keep the book playing without having to worry about it skipping tracks or pausing or anything annoying like that. If no button is pressed or no action is taken the iPad / iPhone pauses playback, inserts a bookmark, and goes into sleep mode. In either case, the iPad / iPhone should NOT light up the screen as this might wake the person.
Developers, please make your product relevant, or change its name.
Sincerely,
SWB - Lexington, KY
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Dingpop
mr_tonyp
SWB - Lexington, KY