iOS 17.1 Trouble, Pt 2

This is a continuation on a post I had done last week, on iOS 17.1 and my troubles with it and the affects on certain apps, which used to work together. I will review the problems I had and I will go into detail on what kind of hell I went through this week, because of this screw up by Apple.

To review, I had said that my albums were broken up in my music library and they still are. I now know the reason is because they have not been synced using the TV app as a companion, or the iTunes app as the same. Normally, when I receive a new song, or download a new album, what happens is I would go to the TV app, go to an episode of The Simpsons, delete it then re-downloaded again and we’re all good from there. With iOS 17, I had to do something similar, by going to the TV app, delete an episode of The Simpsons, then go to the iTunes app and find the episode in question, redownload it and everything is all right again. This syncs up everything and all albums are as they should be, with all TV show episodes, available in downloads, ready to be watched once and again. The reason I do not download episodes from the TV app is that I have to babysit the download, where is in the past I did not have to do that. I had learned this when closing the app and then reopen it and an alert would pop up and tell me that my episodes could not be downloaded. I would tap on “okay” and I could continue with normal operations of my device. With the new more complicated way of downloading episodes of TV shows and if you really want, the entire seasons of episodes or an entire series, you don’t have to babysit the downloads. However, you can only down one episode at a time and you can download as you go, which is the only plus for this generation of Apple’s iOS software.

With iOS 17.1, no syncing has occurred and obviously, this is bad. For one thing, if you have two versions of an album they become one in the same thing and you don’t want your deluxe and Standard version of for example: The Game by Queen to be combined. Do you? In case you ask, that didn’t happen with any recent purchases and it did happen in 2020, with a couple of classic Def Leppard albums, which have more than one version on iTunes currently.

So, what can we do about this? On the Apple Support app, they only allow for a 100 character description, which is not enough to explain this problem as it is not as easy as making a sandwich. Clearly, this seems to be a bug with the TV app, but nobody wants to acknowledge it at Apple, or nobody is even trying to report this issue, other than me. I am obviously not happy with what has happened and I will get into how I had discovered what I had explained earlier.

My original thought was that to fix the original problem was to reset the iPhone and redo it, as a new device, with my Apple ID information intact. Well, it seemed to work at first, but I later realized that nothing was sinking. Why is that? Even after everything was synced up in my music, TV and movie libraries and everything was moved around the way I want, it’s still broken with no way of sinking insight. Apples solution is to subscribe to Apple TV and I tried that, with the same result. So, this is clearly in Apple’s court now and they have to do something or else people who actually use their phones for everything, are going to start to rage. I am one of them and I don’t like to rage, but I guess this blog is my way of venting so, that is how I will rage.

I can’t just drop the iPhone completely and go android, because that wouldn’t be possible for me, or even practical. I had explained the situation to Apple and the solution I was given about subscribing to Apple TV just didn’t cut the mustard and I knew it wouldn’t. Why is Apple separating the TV app and the iTunes app, as well as the music app from each other in stages? When it comes to the downloads, you shouldn’t do that because it makes a mess of people’s music libraries if they have a mast a collection of thousands of songs, as well as a bunch of TV shows and complete seasons of said shows. In my case, it is The Simpsons as my default show and is it the problem? Yes and no. Yes, because of this non-syncing issue, I can not watch any episodes in my downloads. No, because having explained what I had done when purchasing new music helps me to know what is going on and I can pass it along to you. So, maybe Apple should have done a deeper dive, into whether iOS 17 and its plans for the TV app and Music app could cause potential chaos. Simply deleting my data and settings and starting all over again doesn’t fix anything, as I had done that twice this week and the result is the same. Hopefully with iOS 17.1.1, this may be addressed, but I am not getting my hopes up, because there are apparently more important issues than having an organized music library and being able to watch all episodes of all TV programs, in your TV app. I wish I could tell Apple this directly, but I know the answer they will give and I understand why they do this, but this just will not do. I keep repeating myself, because I am at a loss as to what I can do, other than trying an older device on iOS 16 and seeing if it can somehow make this pain in the ass go away. I am hopeful, but not exactly holding my breath that this will work.

Postscript

On November 7 there was an update to iOS 17.1.1 and it fixed issues, but not the ones I have been having. Also, after the update I checked through all the options in the Music app and I found that there was one missing (well actually two), but one which really does count when it comes to music listening and sorting things out in the Music app the options appear in the following order: Playlists, Artists, Albums, Songs, Music Videos, Genres, Compilations and Composers. After that there is an option calledTV & Movies which I hadn’t noticed before and I’ve never been able to unhide this option, or expand this option (if you will) in the edit field. Compilations is also hidden and it shouldn’t be, even though it has not been collapsed and with all of the options, you can re-order them including compilations. Why is compilations missing in action? I believe that everything I’ve touched on with both the music and the TV app, combined with what I just said has provided the headache I have gone through with iOS 17.1 and the latest update to it. Hopefully Apple gets off their ass and does something to fix this and I hope that others notice the same thing I do, because if not then things will continue to go downhill for those who wish to purchase and listen to music as well as purchase and watch movies and TV shows on our phones, from iTunes. I don’t mind the option of favouriting music, but I shouldn’t have to favourite an entire album in order so I can listen to it properly and there are many examples of classic and non classic albums in my collection, which have this problem of being split up in a random manner. Again, I hope Apple sees this, or reads all of the comments on the Support application, or at the very least reads comments from Youtubers who do regular videos on their devices and take them all seriously, no matter how little people may have issues with certain applications and in my case, applications not working together due to options missing in action.