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Apple Releases iTunes 12.7 With Major Changes, Including No Built-In App Store
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Wait, what is this people are saying about audiobooks? I'm confused. If I downloaded audiobooks from audible then imported them to iTunes, or created my own from CDs etc, surely they are all still there to play and manage in iTunes, right?!
(needless to say I have not installed 12.7 yet!)
(needless to say I have not installed 12.7 yet!)
Sorry, but I do not know the answer to the first paragraph.
For the second one, yes or no, depending on how you like to work. For example, if you have several devices that use a particular app, you can download an update for that app directly into each device, or you can download the update into Configurator 2 and then push it to each device from Configurator 2, provided that the device is attached to the computer. It reduces the amount of data to download.
Anyone know if there is still an easy and convenient way to add a song(s) to a playlist from the new 12.7 iTunes update? That option no longer seems to exist under the Playlist name when it's opened or from the Edit or File drop down menu at top of page. ???
If I right click on a song, I'm getting the add to playlist option - the same option is in the drop down menu in the top.
iTunes 12.7 also breaks syncing.
First, it turns auto-syncing back on when you're turned this asinine feature off, so when you plug a device in, iTunes will launch and begin syncing without permission.
Even worse, iTunes no longer detects that your device is synced to another computer... so it proceeds to wipe out your device contents with the wrong ones. Combined with the above-mentioned defect, your phone may be wiped before you even notice it's happening.
First, it turns auto-syncing back on when you're turned this asinine feature off, so when you plug a device in, iTunes will launch and begin syncing without permission.
Even worse, iTunes no longer detects that your device is synced to another computer... so it proceeds to wipe out your device contents with the wrong ones. Combined with the above-mentioned defect, your phone may be wiped before you even notice it's happening.
The point here, is not just to save up cellular data plan, but also to utilize unlimited cellular data plan.I think this whole thing is an awful unholy mess for a variety of reasons, but I don't understand your particular issue unless I am missing something... can you not just download apps over your home wifi like you would have used for the mac, no?
If you have automatic app updates on your iPhone, turn them off (sounds like you probably have already anyway), then manually check for updates when you are on your home wifi... and you won't be using any more data for downloading apps on your cellular data plan.
For me, I have unlimited data 8Mbps ADSL and 6GB/mo cellular. I turn off every bit of auto download across the iOS. Then, I am fine to use my cellular knowing nothing will happen regarding auto download.
For people who have unlimited cellular however, they are screwed. WiFi in iOS is always considered unlimited regardless but not always the case in real scenario.
Hmm, you know, “capped data (1TB or 500GB or something)”.
What if the only Network access is from their cellular phone, with an unlimited data plan? What if the WiFi network is capped?
App thinning is next to nothing when everything downloaded later on is NOT from Apple. I have played so many of such games which downloads data when you play the game. These data can also be enormous in size and app thinning cannot help even a little bit.
Even though many games are including all resources in the package, I still doubt thinning would work well. The ultimate solution still is increasing local storage (64GB? No, we need 512GB), not just “removing the resources won’t be used on a certain device”.
So they'll stay in iTunes but not be synced to iOS devices via iTunes?
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How is testing it going to demonstrate whether or not Apple will remove it in an subsequent update?
The point was, the apps folder remained in 12.7, but until post #825, no one had checked to see if iOS apps were still being locally backed up via iTunes.
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I'm dubious about the above. You didn't even get a pop-up warning that the iOS device was new to the computer?
Thank you for posting that. Ugh. Two ughs!
Maybe we need a pinned post at top this thread with "all the little details" fished out and listed in this swell release like they do with the threads on a new OS...
Maybe the 12.7.1 release will fix some of these things. Like that reset on autosync, at the very least. I always figured that should be an opt-in since a lot of people have way more stuff in an iTunes library than they want on their iOS devices.
Because Apple has made it a practice to rush releases that don't have all bugs removed and clean up bad programming in order to make release deadlines.
In case anyone missed it: THEY FIXED THE MISSING ABILITY TO UNHIDE APP PURCASES
Now under View My Account > Manage Hidden Purchases:
Looks like they updated it on their end. No iTunes update needed. You may now (mostly) cease panicking.
Just quoting you to make you aware.
Where is that? I quit iTunes and relaunched it. And I restarted my iMac. I do no see that. I do not see "Mange Hidden Purchases" anywhere.
Exactly. While I don't mind the App Store not being a part of iTunes anymore, requiring iOS device owners to re-download every apps every single time for all their devices is ridiculous.
Something like moving all the apps from my old iPhone to the new one that used to take only a few minutes will now take several hours.
And this is not even taking into account people who have user accounts from different App Stores; now we'll have to log in and log out into each App Store on our iPhone to re-download or update that specific app.
Here is a link giving you the steps: https://ios.gadgethacks.com/how-to/unhide-app-purchases-your-iphone-ios-11-0180023/
I had to sign up just to comment on this issue!!
It seems that some people in Apple have some mental issues, I still don't get it, so many things that are just plain common sense, they don't seem to get it through their thick skull!
I also have an unlimited cellular data plan, and I got it, so that I DO NOT need to pay for WIFI at home since I tether from my mobile to my laptop for anything and everything, so why should I now have to go and find public WIFI to download Apps larger than 100MB????
This is S T U P I D!!
First of all, aren't they capable of having all devices set up with a capped limit by default, and then giving the smart people the option to change a setting to unlimited???? Is that really that difficult????
And besides, another reason why that 100MB limit is stupid is because updating 5 Apps with 200MB each, is going to always be less data than updating 50 Apps with 90MB each; so in reality having it capped at 100MB DOES NOT prevent dumb people from using too much data! And how about streaming video or other stuff????
So PLEASE, GIVE US THE OPTION TO CHOOSE how much data to use!!
And if that is too difficult for you, how about at least inventing a system where when you pause whichever audio you are playing on your phone from your music, like an audio of a radio program that is 4 hours long, or a language course or whatever, that the paused spot actually remains in the same place like it happens in "videos", even if your device is re started or if you choose to listen to another audio and then want to get back to the same spot were you were with the previous audio file instead of having to search through 4 hours of audio to find the place where you left off??
I really don't want to switch to Android, so please, do something!
And since you are at it, how about also giving us the option to be able to change a setting to prevent in Macs, the screen jumping to the App that is opening instead of being able to continue working on whichever other App we are using or looking at, like a movie, a browser or whatever. Some Apps take a long time to load and interrupting what you are doing several times while you have to keep swiping to get back to where you were all the time, it's not a really smart way to manage your time. That doesn't seem that difficult either!
Thank you.
The article states that the unhide feature is available only on iTunes 12.6 an lower. I understood the poster to mean that it was applicable to iTunes 12.7.
complaining about people's "fantastic cell service" being the issue and then revealing they haven't even got the basics of broadband shows they don't really understand things themselves.
plus, many of the things they refuse to do would help with their limited bandwidth in many cases.
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then why would they say they have wifi?
For help in that particular case, see below.
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You have a Mac, right? It won't ease your data limit frustrations (which yeah, does make sense. even if apple had to make you sign some kind of disclaimer to confirm you had unlimited data and wouldn't blame them for the costs, or something... they should do it) but if you download Configurator 2 from the Mac App store you'll be able to do everything you could in iTunes with the exception of buying the apps in the first place... it'll help you get around any large file download restrictions though.
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For a company that like to operates with a high level of secrecy, and software ambiguity that can be detrimental to its users, the warning contained in 12.7's release notes and the dialog box illustrated in post #1 is as about as unequivocal as an announcement from Apple can be. The word has come down from the top of the mountain.
"The new iTunes focuses on music, movies, TV shows, podcasts, and audiobooks.
If you previously used iTunes to sync apps or ringtones to your iOS device, use the new App Store or Sounds Settings on iOS to redownload them without your Mac."
If Apple surreptitiously removed users' files (iTunes library) as part of a software update, it would create a feces-storm that would dwarf this one. Even they aren't stupid enough to cross that line and actually delete peoples' purchases, even if they are restoreable from the cloud (which not all are).
Ironically, this situation is a perfect illustration of why some users treat automatic updates with caution, and contempt.
At least with a Mac, it's possible, with some work, to restore 12.6 if a user's preferences were set to automatic updates, and they unknowingly received the crippled 12.7.
With iOS apps, there is often no such recourse for an undesirable new version if the user has not carefully preserved an older version in their iTunes library. The removal of the App Store from iTunes is just one step further toward removing that capability altogether. The drag and drop workaround noted in the support note is almost certain to disappear in a future version, and when the support note is updated, as they often are, there will be no trace left.
El Cap's Disk Utility is another illustration of how Apple's software managers think now -- take a useful tool, rewrite it in to a less-capable, lobotomized version (that can't even have its window resized!), and cause a serious disruption in user workflows in the process.
Apple's hardware group (esp. the SoC team) still has a lot of talented people doing good work. The software side seems to be filled with people who don't remember, or don't know what made Apple's products attractive, and eventually, successful again.
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Even though I sorta share the sentiment on the first phrase there, I seriously doubt any of the details of this are in Cook's bailiwick in practice, even if he has the perfect right to step into any Apple lab and ask people what the heck they're working on. This really boils down to a heavy-handed maintenance release of an old program, and was meant as a sprucing up, bloat removal, etc., -- and has been received that way with gratitude by some people for sure.
If the changes were discussed with Tim Cook at all, I would think the new version of iTunes would just have been presented as a result of further steps to unencumber iTunes of "other stuff" --like apps and the app store.
"We're making it run snappier,,,, like Safari..."
The changes may have been pitched to the development team in terms of "most people just download apps off the mobiles anyway" and they might even have the statistics to prove it. It's not like they don't know what kind of device requests a download. They have to, since as others have pointed out, it makes a difference what gets downloaded whether the update request is coming through iTunes or a mobile device.
That still doesn't resolve the issues raised in this thread for people who don't update via their mobile devices, and who have relied on iTunes' app sync option to afford some flexibility on how to deal with different mobile gear running different iOS versions and different app versions as well.
Customers who use iTunes and avail themselves of iOS apps, music, movies, podcasts etc., are generally customers not only of the software but some hardware too. It's not cheap and it does last a long time and Apple does recognize that, i.e. it supports stuff for a fairly decent period of time. They bother to put security updates into older iOS and so forth, and most of us do appreciate that.
So.... this move with iTunes was pretty klutzy in that regard, because it flies in the face of the fact that Apple does usually offer generous support of somewhat older gear and associated apps and operating systems.
That support has been why a lot of people are willing to put up with the price points: we know we can run older versions of apps, iOS on older devices for awhile until we can afford an upgrade. Now suddenly it feels like all that it's being called into question, when we can't assure ourselves of simple ways to hang onto older apps that are not available for re-download and not sold any more; and we cannot, even with current apps, just keep it simple and download an app once and then distribute it via iTunes sync to our mobiles as we have done before.
This is some brouhaha being stirred up here, so it's possible the next version of iTunes will get some scrutiny by Tim Cook. That's probably clear to everyone at Apple right about now.
Yes, but I wasn't talking about syncing; I'm taking about backing up. And the average Mac user has no idea how to locate iOS apps on their HD.
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Leaving the Mobile Applications folder in the iTunes folder after purportedly removing apps from iTunes wouldn't merely be a "bug." It remains unclear why Apple did it, but there's no way it was simply an oversight by Apple.
No way I am able to read all these posts, so someone help me out here: I've used managing apps on my mac as a way to maintain a version history of downloaded apps (via Time Machine). This allows me to install an older version of an app if needed. With the removal of the app store from iTunes, how can I still maintain an archive of future app versions? Or will that simply no longer be possible??
Configurator 2. The ipas can be extracted from a specific folder, search back through this thread for Configurator 2.
Where do all my backups go now? How do I get my app data? I don't mind re downloading the apps. I just care about my app backups and the photos/videos within them, that I can't get off and relied on the app backup feature to restore these.
This was not thought through. Having to potentially download any app multiple times to cover all devices is neither cost effective for those with data caps and/or slower internet speeds. Even more costly for same peeps who need to restore a device requiring a full download from the iTunes Store rather than their computer. The sane thing to do would have been create a separate standalone desktop app (for Windows users) or for Mac Users add the IOS store to the current App Store application.
Otherwise is this really what Apple considers progress???
Otherwise is this really what Apple considers progress???
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