Apple Books, Audiobooks and you

[Ion Tichy]

After recently upgrading to Catalina, Apple forced me to move my extensive audiobook collection to Books. I have tons of audiobooks ripped from CDs and some swapped with people since the 90s. Some of the files had wonky naming, like different capitalisation here and there. This was no problem in iTunes, as you simply associated them with the same album and there was no problem.

In f*cking Books, those were imported as different books. That being bad enough, I was thinking to simple re-edit the titles and albums as I was used to from iTunes. Well ... turns out you CAN NOT EDIT ANYTHING in this piece of **** called Books. NOTHING!!!

It seems every design decision Apple has made in the UI department lately turns out to be a disaster for the user. I am so mad right now. Years of grooming a collection gone down the f*cking drain.

Anyone have a viable solution that I can use to get rid of Books while keeping my ability to synch with iPod/iPhone etc? I would be up for a collective law suit as well. This amount of interference with MY DATA is unacceptable.

 

[b.kind]

Why would they do that?

I also observe that Books FINALLY allows you to change the playback speed (yay), but only by 25% increments (sigh).

 

[Wayfarer]

I have the same gripes and am forced to sync my devices on a second older computer on High Sierra that has my proper audiobook library. Such a hassle.

Let's leave feedback! Hopefully this will be fixed in Big Sur.

Edit: For greater visibility, I also summarized and reposted this at the Big Sur forum.

Here's the link:

Audiobooks in Big Sur - Still broken?

As some of you are aware, syncing Audiobooks is still broken in Catalina. With Big Sur on the horizon, do any beta testers know if this is being fixed? I would like parrot what previous users said in this thread, and also this thread regarding the broken state of audiobooks in Catalina... 💬...

forums.macrumors.com

Maybe if we all send feedback requests, someone will take notice? This is my #1 top feature request and would make Big Sur a HUGE update for me.

 

[phillyman]

I sadly just moved my dad to Catalina, I might see if I can do a downgrade . He doesn't really need the upgrade (last for his system) and Catalina is only causing headaches. I've tried to find a different solution to manage audiobooks and sync to iPhone and iPods. I saw the plex option. Anyone have another suggestion?

As most parents my dad is not the savviest of tech users. Solid, basic user who could nicely manage iTunes for his needs.
I get that Apple wanted to spilt out different media (TV,Movie, Podcasts, etc) but ripping AUDIObooks out of iTunes was Apple being Apple. Not a single audiobook listener can like Books. To say it is a disaster would be polite to disasters. As always I sent a couple of requests in early.

Shame on me forgetting about this issue 15 months later...

So if anyone has an audiobook manager (audible compatible), I'd love to know about it.