iOS 17.4

Well, I’ve just downloaded iOS 17.4 more than 12 hours ago and so far, I like it. I have many things to be happy about along with some new things for my iPhone and the latest generation of iPhones as of September 2023.

The new arrangement for battery health and charging is interesting and now that I think of it, that is the way it should have been done since iOS 11 or 12… when ever battery health was first introduced. I am glad that I knew about this change before the software was released and unfortunately, it is only for my generation of iPhones. Hopefully this can be extended to all older devices using iOS 17, to as recent as the iPhones 12, 13 and 14 at least.

Something else which makes me happy is the return of the tag “Apple Digital Master” for albums in my music library, which have that tag attached to them. This is a guarantee, that the sound quality is as close to CD quality as possible with no degradation with quiet parts or during fadeout. An example of what I am talking about is some of the 1980s albums by Judas Priest having this same thing happen, at the end of songs which do not have the natural end, or end cold. A classic like You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’ has a fade and as it does, the sound quality degrades. Why? Because it was probably mastered before 2014 and it does not have the “Digital Master” tag attached. Another song off of the same album has a similar problem, but as it appears on the compilation Reflections: 50 Heavy Metal Years of Music, Fever sounds much better and much closer to CD quality, if you adjust the EQ to hip-hop. That is the secret that people should know, if you want to hear music much better on your iPhone or through your EarPods or AirPods, make that simple adjustment in the EQ. Otherwise, is going to sound rather flat and I don’t know about you, but I like to hear my music sounding as good as it does on CD.

Something new is transcripts for podcasts and as the following article says, it will be helpful for everyone who uses an iPhone or any device with this feature being added to it. I haven’t explored it as yet, but I like what the article says and it could be a great way, to improve writing and if you are learning a new language, this feature is for you. Anyway, here is the article on this innovative new feature for iOS. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/03/apple-introduces-transcripts-for-apple-podcasts/

So far, nothing to complain about and I hope that the “Apple Digital Master” tag sticks around for everyone and let’s hope, that any future iOS 17 updates are as good as this.

iOS 17.3 Is Still Buggy

It seems that iOS 17 still has some odd bugs in it and this brief post is all about iOS 17.3 and a feature which has been with us, since iOS 17.21 or 2. On Thursday, I had to purchase all 3 volumes of a Queen compilation called Deep Cuts again, because of something which had happened while I was using my iPhone and iOS 17.3.

There is an option where you can favourite a song, or an album and I had been making songs favourites and then unfavouriting them soon after. I had no problem with it until I had come across Dead On Time by Queen from the second volume of Deep Cuts. If you haven’t heard the song, it is a great banger and it has some of the fastest guitar and most ferocious drumming on it, along with Rapid Fire vocals from Freddie Mercury. Why this version? I don’t know, but it wouldn’t let me favourite it at first. However, after I had favourited the same song from Jazz, I unfavourited it as usual after not needing it anymore in my favourites, while going down to check my mail. The Jazz version went, but the Deep Cuts version came and it decided to stay and it wouldn’t leave, even by unfavouriting it a number of times.

So, I had to make the hard decision, to delete the song from my library and I did that and it was a success. Dead On Time was no longer a favourite, but now I had a song which I had deleted from my library, which I could get back quite easily. However, do I want to have it as it was, especially if I had to redo my entire phone for software bug reasons? The obvious answer, no. So, I made an even tougher decision to delete all three volumes of Deep Cuts from the music library and purchase them again, on iTunes. No problem, except for having to purchase Machines (Or Back to Humans) again and everything was all right again. So, the lesson is not to play with favourites anymore and I will no longer touch that option to favourite any song, after what I went through. I might report it to Apple, but I’m not sure and I might talk about this on a YouTube community pole for a channel I subscribe to, but I’m not sure. I might, but I don’t know yet how I’m going to approach it. I’m not going to tell the whole story chapter and verse like I am here, but I might say something about that somewhere.

My Refreshing Solution To iOS 17

Hi folks. In past Poasts I have talked about iOS 17.1 and .2 having this issue with sinking with two apps, namely the music and the TV app. Since iOS 17.1, Apple has decided to forget about that (for some reason) and naturally, this annoys me. I’ve been using the iPhone since 2012 and discovered the issue with syncing in 2017, quite by accident when trying to update apps to not just my current iPhone at the time, but also an iPod touch 6th Generation. I will get into how I resolved the issue and was able to update my apps in the App Store, on my iPod touch.

My solution for this problem is simply an option to refresh both TV and Music apps, in order to knock everything back into place when there may be issues with something which may be out of place. For example: a TV series not showing in downloads and only appearing as just a Button, in the TV app, when you are in the library going over every single TV show or movie you have purchased. Also, even if you have every single episode downloaded. This has happened to me with The Simpsons and I hope that with my recommendation, this will stop.

This is so simple and I do not understand why Apple has not even considered adding this little feature to both apps. We can refresh the Podcast app, so why not Music and TV? In the past when purchasing or receiving new music from iTunes, if I went into the main music app (showing me everything including downloaded music) there would be only the “More” option and not “Downloaded” when I have tapped on the latest addition to my music library. That was when downloading a TV episode, or a movie from the TV app fixed everything and made it alright again. With iOS 17.2, we can’t fix any potential issues like this on our own and fortunately, this scenario I had talked about before, is no longer present in the music app. I have purchased music in the past few days and I went into my new releases without going to downloaded music and fortunately, the “Downloaded” was beside my newly purchased albums by Matthew Good Band and that shows progress there. However, we still need an way to fix any syncing issues on our own, instead of having to run to the Apple Store and get a genius to do this for us. Most of the time, the solution proposes to basically throw everything away and start again. We can’t be doing that all the time because most of us have a large collection of music and TV shows, as well as movies and it takes days to get everything back. This issue also extends to downloading things onto a new device, or our current iPhone when starting again. Some songs will not download at all for a couple of days and it takes a while to get everything back anyway anyway. However, this issue needs to be nipped in the bud and that’s where refreshing comes in handy.

In order to refresh the Music and TV apps, it should be the same easy as pie process in refreshing the Podcast app and in the case of VoiceOver users, we just do a Three finger swipe down the screen, in order to do a refresh. Yes, we can also scroll up, but you can also refresh the Podcast app and we should also be able to do the same, with both the Music and TV apps alike. I also believe that the Mail app needs the same option as sometimes, it takes time to get a new message in the inbox and a good refresh may speed things up.

So, I believe that Apple should consider this simple and rather small option before the next iOS update for 17.3. It would be a nice change and would help everyone with everything and we would have to rely less on the experts and we can fix any syncing issues ourselves. I pride myself on being independent and I do not wish to lose that. This goes from my iPhone and any issues which may arise and have arisen, with iOS 17. I hope that if anyone reading this who writes articles about Apple will help me by providing the same solution to them and by all means, use this post in a future blog post or article. This needs to be talked about in the mainstream, as well as in minority communities who use accessibility features VoiceOver for those of us who are blind, such as myself. We need to get people talking and not just let this issue die so, if you are reading this please consider showing this post and my past posts on iOS 17 and hopefully, others will understand where I’m coming from and how Apple has dropped the ball and needs to be given a nudge, in order to get back to the way things were, before iOS 17 came along. Many thanks in advance.

iOS 17.2, After A Few Days

Hi folks. This is a post about my love and hate relationship with iOS 17.2. I had said that the update was a piece of shit, but I have changed my tune as time has gone on and I had adapted to at least one change in particular.

First of all, the battery life is improved for me and the software doesn’t overheat my iPhone all that much, except when I am charging it to 80 percent at the limit, for a few hours. I am trying this experiment in order to trick the battery into aging slower, while eventually switching the charging setting to optimize charging, bringing it up to 100%. Otherwise, the phone has been at a normal temperature everywhere I go, including while in my apartment when charging past 80 percent and using a power bank.

Next, I’m so happy that the album sorting option in the Music app has been brought back to the way it was (sort of) before iOS 17.1 came along. We now have “Recently Added” back again and I like that, as if and when I’m downloading music onto my iPhone and a new device, all I have to do is go through the recently added albums one by one and download to my hearts content, provided that the album will actually download. For some reason, some albums in my library will not download from the Music app and I need the iTunes Store to do that from my purchases. Again, I have no idea why and this is obviously very weird. Hopefully with iOS 17.3, we will get compilations back in the Music app as I will be a nice touch too.

Now, I have to talk about the elephant in the room for me, which is a switch for the TV app. I do not like it because for me it is way too compact and in some cases, it only shows what I haven’t purchased, as it sees it. For example: my phone thinks that I haven’t purchased a few seasons of The Simpsons, when I actually have every single episode so far. It doesn’t show what you have purchased except in the library, which is not necessarily good. For one thing you can’t control whether you get high definition or standard definition downloads when purchasing new episodes or new seasons of TV shows. In fact, I don’t believe that I’m guaranteed to get standard definition of any new TV show I purchase in the future, because of this change. However, I am willing to give it a chance and I am not going to declare this change with the TV app bad, for the sake of slagging it off as something we didn’t need. However, we were given no warning about the change. The exception is Youtubers, whose main focus is on technology and Apple. They had talked about it and I knew what was going to happen and unfortunately, others are probably happy with the iTunes Store no longer allowing for TV and movie purchases from the store app itself. I think we need that back as the iTunes store is kinda important, to help us keep tabs on what we have and have not purchased without going back to iOS 17.1.3 or earlier. The store and what was Purchased” in the “More” extention is needed, in order to give everything a backbone. By removing TV and movies the backbone is gone and all we have is the skin and when something goes wrong, there’s nothing to knock things back into place, with either TV or music. All we had to do is delete a download of our choice in the TV or Movies and redownload them again and everything was alright again. With the removal of the bone, you no longer have structure and with the Books app, you cold do this, but not with TV or Music. I also used the iTunes Store and my purchases to help me with one of my blogs, so I knew that a new episode was certainly on the way to me, when checking out the latest season of The Simpsons.

I have a solution for this problem with what I’ve discussed in past posts with syncing downloads. This applies to both the music and the TV apps as there are some albums in my music library which are broken up into pieces and with the TV app, The Simpsons doesn’t show in my downloads. There shoule be an option to refresh both apps, in order to knock everything back into place. It is so simple and I do not know why Apple has not even considered adding this little feature to both apps. We can refresh the Podcast app, so why not Music and TV?

If you are wondering how this can be done, it is the same way you can refresh the Podcast app and in the case of VoiceOver users, we just do a Three finger swipe down in order to do a refresh. Yes, we can also scroll up, but you can also refresh the Podcast app and we should also be able to do the same, with both the Music and TV apps too, along with mail as it needs it sometimes, with new messages taking time to upload, or download. So, Apple should consider it before the next iOS update for 17.3.

Anyway, that is my feelings on the update and unfortunately, nobody is going to actually hear about it from a dissenting view, making Apple think twice about going too fast and too soon with changes. As I said earlier, we were given no warning about this change with the TV app and right in the middle of the current iOS software year? Sorry, but I feel that Apple needs to hear about it from not just the user, but someone like a Youtuber who has many followers and I hope that at least one such person makes some sort of mention of my comment, even if I am not acknowledged during the comments section of a weekly video. I sincerely hope that somebody says something out loud on YouTube and not just me writing about it in a blog.

iOS 17.2, Piece Of Shit

Hi folks. iOS 17.2 is out and it sucks. Like Bart Simpson once said, “this both sucks and blows”. That is how I feel about iOS 17.2, as it has progressed from iOS 17.1. I have some very good reasons for my bitching about this update and why this is potentially bad for Apple and they don’t seem to care about it.

Like I have said in past posts, the Music app is missing “Compilations” as a sorting option in plain sight. We have: playlist, artist, albums, songs, music videos, genres, composers and in between genres and composers, we should see compilations. However, it has ben hidden and frankly, this is dumb. It is dumb as there are all sorts of greatest hits albums out and they are categorized as… … you guessed it: compilations and not a studio or live album. Why is Apple doing this? Are they trying to direct us to eventually stream and forget about buying music altogether in the future? This could be one step towards this and I do not like it and I am going to complain, until people actually wake up and take a look at their music apps. Stop downloading songs and playlists and start downloading albums of all kinds. Then you will see why an album such as a greatest hits package belongs in Compilations and the same for tribute and movie soundtrack albums.

With the TV app, I guet what they are trying to do, to streamline everything and move TV shows and movies to one app. However, there is a problem with that and that is, iTunes as a link to everything from music, to books, to TV shows and movies, as well as anything we may purchase in the App Store. Putting everything in one place makes some things more difficult to find and in the case of the TV and movie app, it has eliminated compilations of TV shows and I can tell you that any of the compilations of The Simpsons I had purchased in the past, are in my library, but not in the store. The store is two messy and with the iTunes Store, everything was a lot neater and was categorized. By moving TV shows and movies to the TV app, things are harder to find and there is something not enough real estate on iPhone screens, to accommodate this change and make it as simple, as it was with the iTunes Store. I know there are people who don’t like iTunes, but it is an essential link to everything and removing TV shows and movies from there is a mistake. Retiring the iTunes Store will be a bad move, when it does happen and when it goes, there will be no iTunes anymore. Won’t be able to buy music anymore from one store which also accommodates TV shows, books, movies and apps and if it is in Apple’s plans, everything will have their own individual stores, without iTunes as a link to payment for purchases. This could possibly require us to have multiple Apple IDs and money in different accounts. I hope I’m wrong, but I have a bad feeling that this can happen if Apple gets their way and destroys the iTunes Store completely.

The bright spot with this update is the ability to change the default ringtones. Frankly, I did not like rebound because it’s too quiet and because of tradition, I went back to the old ringtone which I usedwhen I got my first iPhone back in 2012. Even when iOS 7 got new alert and ringtones, I still stuck with Marimba and Tri-tone as my default ringtone and text tone respectively. Yes, I went back to Tri-tone for my default tone and as I said, I’m all about tradition here. This goes with how I configure my screen with phone, mail, safari and music all on the bottom from left to right. I put Messages at the top left because that is how it was back then and Settings always has to be the last app before the doc and page option.

If you enjoy the new iOS update, that is fine and I will continue to piss on it because nothing has changed for the better and it has only gotten worse. I am not looking forward to the next updates and I am considering removing music and TV shows from my iPhone, thus cancelling the majority of my blogs. However, I’m not going to do that yet unless things get so bad that they are no longer tolerable to my liking. Funny, that the Books app hasn’t been all that bad with updates and such, while Music and TV has been a royal pain in the ass. If anyone who works for Apple sees this, I am sorry, but I am not happy with what has gone on with iOS 17. It has created a mess with two important apps for those of us who like to be entertained and who may also have an inclination, to play a musical instrument and or sing. I am and having my music library in pieces does not suit me fine at all. It is a mess and this must stop, or people will eventually become so frustrated that they may consider removing the Music app from their iPhones. I won’t, but this simply must not continue and I can not standby and watch the world burn. If I don’t say anything, nobody else will and frankly, nobody else has as they are too happy and frankly too stupid, to explore everything and how it works. That’s we’re having multiple devices comes in handy which may be on various software updates. For example: if you have an iPhone on iOS 16, compare that to what you have on your newer device with iOS 17 or newer. There is a difference and if you have enough music, movies and TV shows to experiment with, download a bunch of each and watch what happens with either the iTunes app, or the TV app and Books app. With the ladder, you have the babysit and with the former, you could do the downloads and close the app if you want and walk away, or do something else on your iPhone while things are being downloaded. Yes, I close my apps because I don’t leave my toys on the floor and my drawers open. I treat the apps like drawers and closing them is equivalent to either putting things away, or closing the closet door, or dresser or desk drawer. That is what Apple do not understand, when they tell you not to close apps. If by doing this the iPhone takes away 20% of battery power (even with a new battery) then I might consider keeping apps open and letting them sleep in the background. In the meantime, I put my toys away and close the drawer so I don’t walk by it and accidentally hurt myself by banging into it. Anyway, enough of my bitching and I hope you enjoy iOS 17.2, the shittiest update so far.

iPhone 15 Pro, Accentuating The Positives

Hi folks. Since I have upgraded to the iPhone 15 Pro, I thought I would talk about what I like about the new phone, after that cautionary comment on the potential danger I found. Any comments you see here are strictly my own and not end all be all for everyone.

The new action button replaces the ring and silent mode switch on the Pro and Pro-Max models and I find a fun to play with sometimes. Besides it being a convenient button to toggle on and off ring and silent mode, it can be mapped to do the same with other features like: focus, shortcuts and there is an option for no action. I keep it on the traditional setting because I like to stay within tradition as much as I can, when it comes to the iPhone. This even goes down to how I configure the home screen. On a similar note, we can turn mute on and off through Control Center and scroll down to where you can toggle mute mode on and off, like you can do with the action button. Pretty cool huh?

I also discovered that VoiceOver even says that I am plugged into EARPODS, when toggling on and off SOUND CHANNELS, for both audio and phone sounds. Besides, now I know for sure how the word “EarPods” is spelled, altho in this case it is in all caps. What I am getting at is that what I like is that it is letting you know what you are listening through, as it may or may not be a third-party accessory. I expect the same thing with a Bluetooth speaker, AirPods, or any other headphones so that doesn’t bother me either way.

For those of us who care, we can also see the cycle count when it comes to battery charging and to be honest, I don’t look at the cycle count regularly and I don’t feel the need to do so. Speaking of charging, in the battery setting, there is optimized charging and there is an 80% limit setting, which I haven’t tried yet and I will do so today. I don’t expected to work right away, because the way optimized battery charging works doesn’t always work immediately anyway.

Also for those who were interested, there is always on display and because I’m blind, I don’t need that so I turned that off and all the features. I found that the phone burns through battery packs faster with it on and battery life is also affected with it on , even with screen brightness at 0% and auto brightness being turned off, as well as standby being turned off so, to make sure that this does not continue I turn everything off which has to do with display and brightness. Don’t forget, I’m totally blind so I don’t need it anyway.

Also, a faster chip helps when it comes to downloads and on the other side of that it also burns through the battery faster than my previous iPhone did so, now you understand why I turn off everything which has to do with brightness except for screen curtain. I keep that off because It’s rather redundant when keeping my iPhone in dark mode and with no screen brightness whatsoever. I take care of that when I’m show me my shopping list and that’s that, as well as turning off true tone and anything else which has to do with display and brightness.

There is also a matter of USB-C, replacing lightning for the charging port and I was at first reticent, but now I don’t mind it. I do miss lightning in a way, but not all that much. No, lightning isn’t bad, but if USB-C helps with Pushing data through faster than I have no problem with the switch. My only question is what is the use of the dynamic island? So far the only plus for me with that is with checking the timer when it comes to doing laundry, or charging my shaver every week so I can shave myself every morning when I wake up. I love having two timers on my phone so I can have one for each task With one for my shaver and one for the dryer, when doing my laundry.

So far, I love the new phone regardless of my last post and the issue I had and I hope I have it around for a couple of years and maybe even more than that with the same battery. I will be of course monitoring future iPhones and if anything stands out That I should know about in the future, I will consider upgrading in 2025 and until then, this is my new iPhone for a while and I’m loving living with it so far. I just hope that iOS 17.2 and beyond are better than iOS 17.1. If you don’t know why I say that, just scroll down through my past posts and it’s all there as to why I am going to be saying good riddance to this current update to this generation of iOS software.

iOS 17.1 And What I Like

Hi folks. Enough of my whining and now I’m going to tell you what I actually like about iOS 17.1. In my postscript to my last post I mentioned that I like the fact that you can favourite songs in your music library and recently, I started playing around with that to see what it was like. Well, I think it’s great that we can do this now and I hear that iOS 17.2 there will be an option to create a playlist called Favourites and to be honest, I think that should’ve been the plan all along for this particular aspect of the software. Besides, there should’ve been a Favourites playlist by default, instead of being an untitled playlist if one chooses not to put their own title to a list. I keep my list small, because I know that they can take up potentially megabytes and possibly gigabytes if they are large enough.

I like Favourites because I have some compilations which are actually collections of band’s albums, such as Van Halen, Deftones, Metallica and LINKIN PARK who are among those with studio album collection boxed sets on iTunes over the years. Even Disturbed and Slipknot are not immune to this trend, but I didn’t snap up studio album collections for every band because I wanted individual albums by the majority of my artists. With Van Halen, I chose them because I know the albums from the David Lee Roth era well enough, that I can listen to an individual album from it as I please. With Favourites, it is much easier to cherry pic for example: the entirety of Van Halen I, or 1984. I did both albums, during the summer on my album listening kick and it felt good, to go back to younger days.

Other things which make me happy about iOS 17.1 is that with emails, I can move messages with known email addresses right to the intended mailbox I created for example: I have one just for Alan Cross and all my emails to him, when I have a question, comment or I am giving him a link to look at, potentially for his website. With iOS 17, I had to manually go to the mailbox, but with iOS 17.1, it has the old option from the past saying “Move to” so-and-so after I decide to move the message, rather than delete it.

I am happy to have more of a choice back, when it comes to assigning ringtones and text tones to people again. With iOS 17, you could only assign ringtones as ringtones and text tones, as text tones. Thankfully, we got half of that back from how it was before in that we can assign text tones from both ringtones and text tones, but not all of the same freedom with ringtones. In a way, it makes sense because these new text tones are too short to be used as a ringtone anyway, but others may not be such as the classic ringtones from way back in the day before 2013. However, I’m not going to knock this one because I’m just happy to have that option back.

About my postscript in the last post, I had discovered that in the music app, compilations are hidden, even if they are unhidden as an option for listening and sorting, by Apple and I wonder if this may be a part of the reason I had gone through all this trouble and upset, with my music library, which is still kinda messy and looks like it had been trampled upon by software bullies. But seriously, my library is still a mess with albums still broken up and no syncing with iTunes, when it comes to downloading new music or TV show episodes as of iOS 17.1. I had reported my issues with the option for compilations being awol to Apple Support in the app and I hope that there are tech experts working on this problem. Right now, I am just happy to be able to favourite songs I want to hear if I am in the mood, even though I am an album person at heart. That is why I had been bitching about this issue, in my last two posts and I will not let go of albums that easily. I am guilty of cherry picking songs, but I’m trying to fix that in my iTunes library as much as I can. Unfortunately, I can’t do that with every single album because not all albums are available in the iTunes Store right now. For example: Flash Harry by Harry Nilsson is not available now, but it was in early 2019. I only purchased and downloaded the song Harry, because I am a Monty Python fan and because it is sung and written by Eric Idle, with help from his friend Charlie Dore. I hope that some day this will come back so I can purchase the remainder of the album, as apposed to running to Youtube to listen to the whole thing, without the option of picking songs on my own time, to listen to again and again. I used to do this as far back as CDs and favourites gives me that option again, without having to create a playlist. There are countless examples of this from back in the day, so I won’t attempt to go through them all. Anyway, I hope that you are enjoying iOS 17.1, even with its flaws I had pointed out and especially the ones in the Music app, which are no less important than anything else on our iPhones and iPads.

One thing I’ve been wishing for and which has not happened yet with iOS or iPadOS, is that we should be allowed to choose the sounds for all applications, besides Mail and Calendar. For example: I have sounds which will be great for the Weather app or any Weather app which I use which has Push notifications as a part of what they offer. The native weather app is obviously one of them, but I have others which do not have their own sound and use the default sound, chosen by Apple. The other reason I mentioned this is because I don’t like the current sound which is used for iOS 17, as it gets away from tradition as for the past 16 years, the default sound for a third-party apps and some native apps outside of Mail and Calendar has been Tri-tone and we have all grown used to it. Now, the default is Rebound, which sounds nice and is not too jarring. However, the fact that it doesn’t make you start like Tri-tone is rather counterintuitive, when it comes to alerting people to my mind, none of the new ringtones or alert tones for iOS 17 are especially outstanding and the fact that the default is changed, it’s not great. As similar sentiment with Siri and its classic tone being replaced by the quieter tune, rather than tone.

For one thing, these new alerts are hard to hear in noisy environments and the classic alerts are perfect for that, so why screw something up like this and have people miss alerts, which could be related to business or something else important, such as a Transit application Alerting one to their bus arriving, or a critical weather alert such as rain headed our way in the next 10 minutes. I mean, not everyone uses their iPhone the same way and Apple should know this, but it seems that some people who work there and who make decisions as to how the latest iOS software is constructed, have forgotten. So, my hope is that someday either with future iOS 17 or iOS 18 updates, we will get The option of assigning a sound to all applications, besides Mail, phone, messages, reminder and Calendar. I use certain sounds for certain reasons, some of which I cannot explain in this blog. Others I leave alone because they just don’t suit me and they are simply too quiet. Hopefully something will give and will be allowed this option in the future. Otherwise, besides my problems with iOS 17 I think it is pretty good so far. Let’s hope that things get patched up and fixed soon, so that future updates will be more or less like they were, before iOS 17 came along with no missing options and as little bugs as possible.

iOS 17 So Far, Continued

Here is another post on the newest generation of iOS and a flaw, which had been detected in it, relating to media apps. I had gone into detail in my last post on the software, but here it is again, with words about what had clinched it for me.

This particular and much unexpected and unwelcome flaw with iOS 17, has everything to do with music and TV and how they sync up when you purchase new music, or new TV shows and episodes of TV shows and not the alert or ringtones. Before iOS 17, I would purchase either new music, movies or TV shows and I would download a previously deleted episode of The Simpsons, in order to help sync both the music and TV apps up with each other. For some odd reason, The Simpsons is my go-to TV show for syncing up my music with TV and everything in both apps and respective libraries. I don’t know why, but that is just how it is. Something else which is odd, sometimes I seem to lose all of my Simpsons episodes in the downloaded episodes. I obviously haven’t lost them, because things hadn’t been synced up with the new album purchase.

In the past, I would download from the TV app and yesterday, I purchased an album on iTunes, which relates to one of my favourite bands, namely Queen and a Freddie Mercury compilation from 2019. I tried the usual thing, but for some reason things did not sync up. The first clue I had that something was wrong was when I would do the download of the episode I had deleted, get out of it by closing the TV app, come back and it said that it could not download the episode. What happened? I don’t know, but I had tried deleting an entire season and redownloading it and the same thing happened again, unless I had stayed and babysat the download. So, I tried deleting again and this time, downloading from the iTunes Store app and it worked from there. Why?

The clincher for me was when I went into my Settings app, general, iPhone storage and then review TV downloads. This includes both TV and movies including anything I may have purchased from the Classic Albums series. I tested this out on the A Night At The Opera Classic Albums documentary and the same thing happened. What was that same thing you may ask? Well, when reviewing TV downloads, those Simpsons episodes and the documentary were missing from there when I had re-downloaded them onto my phone from the TV app. When going into the iTunes app, I found them under TV and movies respectively, then downloaded them again and when I did that, everything showed up as if nothing was wrong and my TV seasons and movies were all there, in the TV app and when reviewing TV and movies in iPhone storage.

Just a note of warning, when you go into the iTunes app, go to more, then purchased and either music, TV shows or movies, then download either a movie or TV episode or episodes, it will probably say “Play” when you wish to do the download back onto your phone or maybe even your iPad. This may confuse some of us so, now you know why that is, if you have an iPhone 15 and had noticed that some things haven’t come back in the transfer. However, if you tap the “Play” button in the iTunes app, it will download everything as is and it will all be back and everything will match, with both the TV app and with iPhone storage. The catch is that you can only download each episode one at a time, but at least you can start the download and not have to babysit it. The other thing is that while downloading episodes one by one by one, you can just keep moving along while movies and episodes are redownloading and in my case, when I hear the words “cancel download” I know that the download has started and I can move on to the next one and so it goes. I had tested this out with my movies, seasons of TV shows and an entire HBO special from 2014. Yes, I have the Foo Fighters: Sonic Highways special on my phone as of June 2022 and there are a lot of episodes to download, including bonus material and interviews with various musicians and even Barack Obama. When I did the test I had found I had missed the episode on Washington DC and the track The Feast and the Famine and I had to go back and get it again, after closing the iTunes app. Yes, I close my apps when I know I won’t be needing them for a while because they do not need to stay open.

Can you imagine if you have a lot of TV episodes, seasons of shows and a bunch of movies to download onto your iPhone 15, if and when you upgrade to it? For some reason, both books, TV shows and movies do not come back by themselves when doing the transfer of data and the upgrade to a newer phone. I do not expect this to change any time soon and now, I hope I will not have to upgrade for a while, because of this flaw. By the way, isn’t this kind of a disincentive for those who have a mast a collection of music, books, movies and TV shows to upgrade with something like this going on with iOS 17? By the way, the music app allows you to download music and you can download it from the iTunes app and everything shows up in all appropriate places, including iPhone storage.

Otherwise, iOS 17 works just fine… … unless there is something else hiding in there which needs attention and needs to be talked about, to Apple and to other users. I hope that this will certainly get attention from not just myself, but others who still purchase music, movies and TV shows on their phones, rather than only streaming.

iOS 17, So Far

Hi folks. It’s September 19th and today, I am going to talk about iOS 17. This newest generation of Apple’s iOS software came out yesterday (10 years to the day) as iOS 7 and they both have parallels to each other. First of all, both updates came with new ringtones and a newly enhanced voice for two of (what were) the English speaking Siri voices. Oh yeah, there were also new voices for French Canada and such too! However, iOS 17 is far superior than the predecessor by 10 Years in that there are many other additions over that time and of course, we have many new voices, all be it different versions of them from when they had first appeared on iOS 10. For those who use the Weather Gods app, there are new lock screen widgets, as we find out in this link. I don’t use any widgets (besides battery), but I know there are others who may so I am putting this here for those who do and enjoy navigating them, stacked or not. Personally, I don’t like them on my phone . https://www.applevis.com/forum/ios-ipados/weather-gods-lock-screen-widgets-configuration

One thing I should mention is that for those of us who use VoiceOver, we tend to use a single voice as a default voice and that is exactly what it is. However, sometimes it gets screwed up and we hear other things which we aren’t supposed to hear, when navigating websites. Sometimes, a foreign language shows up, even if you have “Detect Languages” set to off. So, to remedy this problem, add the same voice using “Add New Language” which matches the country you live in. For example: if you are using a US voice, then you simply add US and add the voice you are using and switch the rotor to languages and go either up or down, to US. Then, the voice will behave as it should, with no strange languages or unintelligible words being spoken. This is one thing that blind people who use the iPhone don’t understand and they figure that something is wrong with their device. In fact, nothing is wrong and that’s just how the default voice works, because the language detection feature works from there, no matter whether you speak English, or any other language throughout the world.

With VoiceOver, I find the new per-voice settings to be kinda fun to play with, depending on the voice. Not every voice is created equally and as such, options are different depending on the voice you want to change either: WPM minimum or maximum, pitch range, sentence pause, or Timbre. With the latter, it either makes the specific voice sound either like a robotic chipmunk, or a demon. With other voices you can set roughness, breathiness and other things, but you can’t go back to a previous version of a voice. Like I said, not all voices were created the same and as such, have their own unique options and idiosyncrasies to them. Just explore and if you don’t like what you had set up, just reset the voice back to default. To further drive the point of my statement at the beginning of this paragraph Home, here’s a link to an episode of a podcast which discusses three of the voices which have all the settings I have touched on. https://www.applevis.com/podcasts/finely-tune-voiceover-speech-best-suit-your-needs-preferences-ios-voice-settings

As for the ringtones, there are plenty of new ones to choose from and the same with text tones. However, with this new generation of iOS we cannot use one for the other, meaning we cannot use a ringtone as a text tone and vice versa. However, if you have set up Ringtones and text tones for either default or for people in your contacts, they will stay the same, unless you change them today. You haven’t lost anything, it’s just that you cannot confuse one with the other so to speak. Basically, Apple is saying this is for this and that is for that. If you’re going to explore both the ring and text tones, I suggest doing so outside of that in the sounds and haptics settings such as: voicemail, mail, new mail, etc. if you do that, you will not run into that problem and a friend of mine had, when she explored the ringtones and the text tones and by doing so, accidentally changed her default tone and has to find a new one, rather than the one she likes. By the way, I noticed that the new text tones are quieter than the ringtones! Huh!!! on the plus side, if you are making a Phone your new one it is faster to download the ringtones and alert tones you had purchased as they are not all trying to go to every single option.

With Apple Books, there was an issue with the audiobooks which was fixed with this update in that two of my books which had chapters, didn’t allow me to access them individually and if I wanted to go to a specific chapter, I had to go through the entire book by skipping ahead through each chapter until I found the one I wanted to hear. Like I said, that was fixed and I am happy and I hope this is not broken again in future iOS 17 updates.

With the Music app, I actually like the new Crossfade feature (in and of itself), but I don’t like how it works on streaming services. It does not sound like it does on Radio when songs are mixed into each other from the end to the beginning and in fact, the beginning fades in and that really gets my blood boiling. However, if it is set just right, it sounds closer to how it would if you were listening to a radio station, or a live stream of one. The obvious differences there is no station ID and all the music is from your library, whether you have a mast a collection or collected songs through Apple Music. Either way, I believe that if you wanna listen to an entire album listen to it properly and not use Crossfade. It would ruin the entire experience of hearing an entire album from front to back. If you’re listening to songs in a random order according to genre, that’s a different story and the same with the playlist. I have my Crossfade set to 3 seconds, 1s, 12s 3 seconds (whatever that means). Either way, it sounds the best for me under the circumstances.

Clock has received a welcome upgrade, and that we can now set multiple timers. This is great especially if you’re using more than one washing machine or dryer, when doing laundry. Or, if you are doing many tasks which requires you to set a time for each one of them individually. The best thing is that you can run them at the same time and you can create a new timer when you launch the app, unless you have one or more timers going already. In that case, create a new timer first and then if you have another one which you need at the moment as a recent timer, go ahead and use it at the same time and they will both go off with the alarm you set for them. You can even change your alarm by tapping on a timer and going to where the alarm can be set and you can make the change as if you are setting up a new timer. So, no problem. Right?

There is however one flaw with iOS 17 so far which has nothing to do with the ringtones or the alert tones. It has everything to do with music and TV and how they sync up when you purchase new music, or new TV shows and episodes of TV shows. Before iOS 17, I would purchase either new music, movies or TV shows and I would download a previous episode of The Simpsons. For some odd reason, The Simpsons is my go-to TV show for syncing up my music with TV and everything in both apps and respective libraries. I don’t know why, but that is just how it is. In the past, I would download from the TV app and today, I purchased an album on iTunes. I tried the usual thing, but for some reason things did not sync up. What happened? I don’t know, but I had tried deleting an entire season and redownloading it and nothing worked. So, I tried deleting again and this time, downloading from the iTunes Store app and it worked from there. Why? There seems to be some sort of disconnect between apps in iOS 17 and I hope that Apple learns about this. I will be talking about that on some platforms like Youtube and for various Youtube channels, whose main focus is Apple in the coming days. My guess however, is that this may not be fixed until iOS 17.1 or later. However, I will be mentioning what I have put here, somewhere else on the internet including Youtube, if and when the opportunity presents itself if the YouTuber asks how iOS 17 is going for you.

Everything else I use works just fine and even composing blog posts like this has been no problem, as you may no doubt have noticed as this is my third post today. I hope that if you are blind and you have the newer iPhones, you will update to iOS 17 and consider my suggestion about adding on the additional voice, consistent with where you live or the language of the voice you use. I am a seasoned user, but even those who are also seasoned users and teachers may have had problems such as what I had outlined above. Happy downloading and enjoy the new generation of Apple’s iOS software.