Audible Re-Authorization - The Solution

Hey, maybe I'm the only one who runs his Mac from a standard user account and thus this issue never or very infrequently pops up for other folks but ...

For the past month or so I have been highly annoyed that each time I sync my iPod, iTunes would delete all the audible books from the mp3 player. This was happening because iTunes incorrectly believed it was not authorized to play DRMed ".AA" audible files. I found that if I attempted to play the files in iTunes I'd get the authorization prompt AGAIN, and I could re-enter my username and password. After that, the sync would commence and the DRMed crap would move over to the iPod. The problem was, if I shut down iTunes, the authorization would disappear. I was working around this by keeping iTunes running 24/7 and, if I happened to remember it, whenever I did start up iTunes I'd play an audible book and then enter the reauthorize codes into it. A process that was painful to say the least.

Well, this situation nearly caused Audible to lose a customer. I just started with them in December of 2007 and I was getting really annoyed with this problem. There are three things about this I was seriously hating.

1. DRM in general seriously angers me. And, each reminder that I'm a crook about to steal the lights out of Audible just pisses me off no end. I own exactly one DRMed Apple ITMS song purchased as a protest, everything else is ripped from CDs I own or purchased from Amazon (2 songs so far :-)
2. I'm using an iPod Touch now so ... there is a limited read/write (mostly write) cycle to flash memory. I was deleting a gigabyte of data one minute, then uploading the exact same gigabyte of data the next. If a solution hadn't been found I would have dumped Audible or possible gone totally criminal and analog holed the AA files into MP3s.
3. Each time I synced my iPod with new podcasts, usually a hundred or so megabytes, I'd have to resync the iPod immediately afterwards with all the audible books after I'd discover that iTunes had deleted them. When you're in a hurry this becomes phenomenally irritating to totally unacceptable.

I was looking and looking for a solution to this problem. I obviously was using the entirely wrong keyword set. But after searching for perhaps a total of 2 or 3 hours (distributed over the previous month)I and came across the solution at last:

Audible Resolution

In case that link fails in the future, this is a simple solution.

Briefly, only an administrator account can enter Audible username and password information into iTunes and have it stick permanently.

The process detailed:

1. If you're like me all your music and Audible stuff is in your standard user account, so copy one Audible audio book file to your public file area of your standard user account before Step 2
2. Fire up an administrator account, NOT a standard user account.
3. Fire up iTunes.
4. Play an Audible Book. If you don't have one installed copy the one you placed in your standard user public folder into the administrator account copy of the itunes library (drag the file to itunes).
5. You will be asked for your username and password.
6. iTunes consults with Audible via the net and ... your book starts playing (assuming your account at audible is fine).
7. Ok, shut down (log out) your admin account.
8. Go back to your standard user account.
9. Fire up iTunes and try and play a book. It should work just fine.

In 100% of the cases where I previously entered my username and password for Audible in my standard user account, that info was lost when iTunes was shutdown and then restarted.

So far the username and password entered into iTunes running in an administrator account has stuck and continued to authorize Audible books 100% of the time in all accounts (admin and standard user).

Begin Rant

I don't know who to blame for this but I would submit that Audible accounts should be able to live permanently on each user's account whether standard or admin. And, that info should be restricted to that account. What if I want to have separate audible accounts for my kids and me? Why have to carry authorization info into every copy of iTunes via an administrator entered password/username?

Also, I think some thought should be put into how to prevent this from happening in the first place. If I plug my iPod into the computer, and iTunes determines that some music or Audible or other DRM crap isn't authorized, it should alert me before deleting stuff that I need to re-enter my authorization codes, not just delete everything without warning.

I used to laugh at folks who squirmed about their flash thumbdrives and how they were going to wear out. But I was only dumping a minimal amount of stuff on my thumbs and couldn't believe that this would actually ever become an issue. But now I'm using flash in an iPod and I am dumping hundreds of megabytes in a week onto and off of my iPod. So all of a sudden this wear and tear issue starts to loom larger. After all, I've got perhaps 12 GB of music on the ipod (16gb ipod) , that means I have maybe 2 GB to play with for podcasts and I'm writing and rewriting that 2 GB fairly frequently, maybe as often as once every 2 months or so. So point is ... I shouldn't be exposed to physically damaging processes via iTunes unless absolutely necessary. Ok, if they flash up a you need to re-authorize and I don't have a valid code, they can pull stuff off my ipod but they shouldn't do it first then announce, after the fact, they've removed all of my books. Lets get a bit smarter on how this is done and, perhaps the solution is really to allow Audible username and passwords to be sticky when entered into a standard user account. That way, I'd never have discovered this problem and placed all that unnecessary stress on my Touch.

Rant over

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