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blairh

macrumors 603
Original poster
Dec 11, 2007
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Did 4.1 return the ability to control your entire music collection?
 
No. I suspect you probably might be able to do it via Siri but I for one would cringe with embarrassment at talking to a watch - nobody in England says ‘hey’ unless you’ve been bumped into by somebody....

Apple have seemingly no intention of restoring basic functionality that they stole from us with the 4.0 update. Guess they consider that we all live in their fantasy land of unlimited disposable income and unlimited data plans and universal connections.
 
No. I suspect you probably might be able to do it via Siri but I for one would cringe with embarrassment at talking to a watch - nobody in England says ‘hey’ unless you’ve been bumped into by somebody....

Apple have seemingly no intention of restoring basic functionality that they stole from us with the 4.0 update. Guess they consider that we all live in their fantasy land of unlimited disposable income and unlimited data plans and universal connections.
This is utterly ridiculous. I can’t believe more of an outcry has not been made online. They removed this feature from all series 0/1/2 AW’s with 4.0 and if I understand correctly the only way to get it back is to get a S3 and then you either need LTE service ($$$$) or WiFi. And even then I’m still not clear if you need an LTE S3 just to stream from iCloud Music (even without LTE service).
 
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So I think I finally figured this out.

4.1 did not bring back the ability to control your music on the 0/1/2 AW. And that really is ridiculous.

AW S3 GPS can stream from iCloud Music on WiFi regardless if your iPhone is connected to the AW. However even with this you cannot control your music when your iPhone or AW is not connected to WiFi. And that sucks.
 
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So I think I finally figured this out.

4.1 did not bring back the ability to control your music on the 0/1/2 AW. And that really is ridiculous.

AW S3 GPS can stream from iCloud Music on WiFi regardless if your iPhone is connected to the AW. However even with this you cannot control your music when your iPhone or AW is not connected to WiFi. And that sucks.

It´s true. The whole Music experience since watchOS4 is abysmal. I´ve got a Series 3 Gps 3 weeks ago and really miss watchOS3. Since 4.1 i can stream with the Apple Watch via connected BT-Headphones with and without my iPhone being paired. But now comes the dumb part. When i stream with my iPhone connected and the title is saved offline on the iPhone it will still stream the song with cellular. So instead of just loading the song from the iPhone to the AW it is downloading/streaming it with cellular connection ot the iPhone and then the iPhone transfers the data with BT to the AW. What a waste of battery and cellular data.
 
Apple has not at all made this clear, but you CAN browse through and stream your entire icloud music library on AW 4.1, as well as asking siri to play anything else in Apple Music. Anything not synced already will stream (via BT data, wifi, or LTE).

If you are an Apple Music subscriber, this is like having all your Music on the phone back again... IF playing through the watch.

The Now Playing app will control music and whatever (podcasts) coming directly from iPhone that are or are not part of Apple Music, but you can't browse anything.

And if you don't have Apple Music, and just use the "Music" app on your iPhone to store your own stuff, you're out of luck. It will only show in "now playing".

Point is you KIND of get what you used to now with 4.1 on the AW Music wise, except the AW is the "client" to Apple Music now, not the phone. It works well, and you get all the music you want.

The problem is if you want to listen and play explicitly through the PHONE, but browse and control on the watch - you can't. You can only control whatever is playing on the phone that moment via Now Playing.

To fix this, the Music app needs to change. Apple just should have had a toggle like before... watch or phone, in Music on AW. "Watch" mode would be what it is today, which is a fully watch based Apple Music client, and "phone" would be the same, but browsing and playing via the phone (like a remote control).

Essentially, what Apple did instead in 4.x is remove the browse & remote control to music on the phone, relegating it to only control in Now Playing, and made Music on the AW a fully functional streaming Apple Music client.

Nice, and 4.1 is much better than 4.0 in that regard, but it's a very confusing paradigm. Let's hope they fix it, by adding in what was there before (in 3.x) on TOP of the new 4.1 AW-based Apple Music streaming client.
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...But now comes the dumb part. When i stream with my iPhone connected and the title is saved offline on the iPhone it will still stream the song with cellular. So instead of just loading the song from the iPhone to the AW it is downloading/streaming it with cellular connection ot the iPhone and then the iPhone transfers the data with BT to the AW. What a waste of battery and cellular data.

I'm not seeing that. If I am playing music via the phone and now playing, it plays via the phone. The AW music app isn't involved. If I am playing via BT to headphones connected to the WATCH, then yes it's an independent Apple Music client, and it will do whatever via the watch depending on what has been synced to the watch or not. This is regardless of where it is getting its data from - wifi, LTE, or yes, the iPhone that has that song on it. The iPhone is just the data connection for the watch in this case.

Only "Now Playing", for better or worse, controls the phone's Music from the Watch. This can sometimes set up a bizarre case where the watch AND phone are toggles in Now Playing, each playing different music. Or even the same track!

They need to do what I suggested above and add the browsable iPhone remote control mode back to Music on AW.
 
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You do have to wonder who makes these decisions. Clearly the same people who thought it would be a killer app to have animated **** emojis.

I’ve spent thousands of pounds on Apple kit over the last ten years but this crippling of the Watch has really pissed me off. They aren’t getting a penny more from me until this is fixed.

It’s so nauseating hearing Cook and the gang witter on about great products and how they want everybody to be able to use their products. How about not stealing functionality from your installed user base. Especially those who have supported the Watch from day one.

Every time they demo the Watch I think to myself how irrelevant their “solutions to problems I don’t have” are. Basic bread and butter functionality seems beyond them.

Tim, I couldn’t be less delighted or pleased with Apple than I am at the moment.
 
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