Axis 360 App Reviews

*another update- still the worst app ever. Now audiobooks stop After every chapter and then when you reopen it you have to force close the app, then when it starts back up it looses your spot. *new update- still awful, when one chapter is finished it may jump ahead multiple ones. *update- crashing even more often now, when will this get updated?* Crashes 3-4 times a day making me re-enter my library information. Shoots errors constantly. Cannot put holds on books. And half the time you have to flip through all the chapters to get back to where you left off because the quick chapter select will take you to the wrong chapter. Good content, awful way to consume the content.

This app is fraught with problems. Here are a few helpful suggestions to make this better, or at the very least, not terrible. These are based on my audiobook experiences. The app crashes every time I try to read an e-book, so I can’t really offer any suggestions there. 1) Improve your standby mode. When you shift over to another app, say to take a phone call or something, Axis 360 seems to reset itself. This is not uncommon for apps to do this. When the phone runs out of memory for a task, it frees up some memory by essentially clearing the memory of an inactive app in the multitasking queue. You often times don’t notice this because the inactive app stores where you left off. Even if the app has to reload, it knows what you were doing before. Axis 360 seems to do a hard reboot of the app, every time it does this memory dump. It seems to do this constantly, regardless of how much memory is available in the phone. You have to wait for a few seconds for Axis to “configure my library wall,” whatever that means. It seems like it has to load my library and my checked out books from the cloud somewhere, despite the fact that my audiobooks are downloaded to the phone. Its memory allocation is just terrible, which is probably why it crashes whenever I try to read an e-book. Anyway, if your audiobook isn’t playing, chances are it will reset itself completely. Which brings us to... 2) Improve your bookmarking. This app never seems to remember where I left off. I’m half way through an audiobook right now, and Axis still seems to think I’m at the prologue. That wouldn’t be a problem if the app wasn’t constantly reseting itself. If I didnt manually bookmark my progress, I would have given up a long time ago. The app should be constantly keeping track of my progress, and if it has to dump the memory and reset itself, then it should know where I left off. 3) Make bookmarks available from the play screen. When listening to an audiobook, there is a play screen that has all the playback buttons (play, pause, rewind and ff 30 sec., etc.) You have a button that makes bookmarks, but not one that takes you to those bookmarks once you make them. You have to leave this screen and go out to the book summary page and tap over to the bookmarks. 4) Make the playback controls on the lock screen and the quick launch menu customizable. Right now, these playback controls are play/pause and the chapter forward/back buttons (track advance/back). I think these chapter buttons ought to be customizable so that you can switch it to the “30 second” rewind and fast forward buttons. I think that it is reasonable to assume that from these locations, most people would want to navigate through their books with the 30 second buttons, rather than jumping back an entire chapter. 5) Make the 30 second buttons customizable. Sometimes you want to jump back 30 seconds, sometimes 10 seconds may be more reasonable. It depends on the user and the book being listened to. Make this customizable, and you’ll have a lot of happy listeners. That’s it for now. You guys could have a great app on your hands here if you just took the time to clean it up. Personally, as a developer, I’d be embarrassed to release something like this into the public.

The way this business is supposed to work is that low scores are supposed to make the supplier work to improve the app. Unfortunately, it looks like the business model here prevents the model from working because Baker & Taylor locks in the library and then you are stuck with this cruddy app, and since they are making money from the library, they dont need to pay attention to the app. This can be countered by complaining to your library and suggesting alternatives, although they arent that great, either, for the same reason - the models are the same. Overdrive is a little better, but the business models differentiate on their backlists, not the quality of the reading app. So B&T has a cruddy app, their backlist has stuff that Overdrive doesnt, goes the thinking. Among the many lousy UX deficits is the constant need for these guys to take you back to their main page just because they need to validate your drm. This should be easily fixable, unless the basic architecture of the program prevents it- which is probably why they havent fixed it. Im sure its among the top 10 complaints. Really unprofessional. Also, why on earth dont they supply basic navigation features like TOC? These guys just dont seem to care.

App rarely works. Consistently says username and password are wrong even though theyre right and worked previously. Looks like Im not the only person with this error message. Wont even load the app most of the time

How can you get an ebook from Sussex County Library System when this library is not found in the app???? It does not let me search for the library by name of library, country, or state! For Axis the library does not exist. I would rate it a minus 5 stars if I could. I am an avid reader and cannot believe the library does not want me to read! Great job whom ever chose this system.

This app is literally the worst. The number of steps and time it takes to get back to where you left off is infuriating and recently it has stopped even letting me get in. It just says its loading my wall, and then goes to a message that says my password and Id are wrong, but doesnt let me retype it in. Fix this app it is TERRIBLE.

Its great when you get it to work. It freezes a lot or is very slow. I even deleted it and downloaded again.

Hard to read on iPhone. Why do we need 50 apps just to read an eBook? iBooks, Kindle, Adobe Digital Edition, and now this substandard junk axis 360. I will have to thank my library for its stupidity.

This app has crashed for the last two days. There is no way to contact the company. Overdrive lets me use as many libraries as I have cards for. This lets me use one. Every time I do something else with my iPad I have to start the app from the beginning. I can not sync between iPads. Until yesterday I was only mildly upset. Now I can not get to my book at all. I keep getting error 5000. My library gave up overdrive for this piece of junk.

So, take note, you can only use this app if you are connected to WiFi. Cellular internet doesnt cut it. So, great concept but W*F are you guys thinking? Guess the poor people dont qualify. On a train or plane? Forget it. I was so disappointed. Kindle app for me. Nice try libraries of America.

This worked the first day and every day since has been "unable to connect to server". Plus the bookmark feature is incredibly unreliable. What a disappointment! Update: I deleted and downloaded the app again and that fixed the "unable to connect to server issue". The app worked well enough for months, but now my latest issue is that it kicked me out of my login and wont accept my correct library card number to log in again. I am baffled at how this app is so terrible! I wish the developers would get it together and fix these issues.

Cant download audiobooks to PC. Cant use with older Apple products. Cant use on Windows Phone. This product has no value for me.

This app is a useless piece of crap.

Use this app everyday. Had basically stopped reading before I discovered this app because all the book stores are closing and going to the library is not convenient if you work. I could have bought books at iTunes but just didnt. I like that it remembers the last page you were on without a bookmark. And being able to adjust the font size and page color makes eBooks way better than paper books in my opinion. The only improvement would be when you open the app for the page to open My Stuff instead of My Library which for some reason showcases a lot of romance novels.

App worked great 2 days ago, then it updated this morning.. Now it crashes every time I try to access my book. What a downer.

This is a terrible app. I miss Overdrive. I have had to reinstall this app 3 times and have only had it for a few months. SLOW. I want to go straight to my books when I start it. I Dont Want to See that Library Wall -- it takes toooooo long to display it. Just installed the update-books still missing that should be there, at least according to the library people. Still have to see the library wall first. Still a YUCKY app.

I used to like this app, now it keeps closing. I can’t access my book. I hate that it doesn’t remember where I was in the book unless I place a book mark. Over drive remembered where I was. I see others have complained about the crashing - what is being done to fix it.

I am so frusterated over this app. I loved my libraries previous app. I use it mostly for audio books. First, The selection is junk. Second, Audio books rarely load and when the do it takes 2-3 hrs vs 15 minutes on previous. Often the app does not remember the last place where you stop. It takes at least a couple of minuntes just to get to your books, load them, and them start them. Its junk but I guess pretty typical of tax dollars at work. I could go on but in the Im just frustrated at something that should work but doesnt.

Bring back the old app. Should go straight to current book. Apple - you make writing a review a pain.

Warning! Do not install this update!!! This is one of the most frustrating apps I have every used and I only use it because my library offers the newest audiobooks via this app. Overdrive is so much better than this app. After this update I can’t listen to any audiobooks since it keeps crashing. I updated with great hopes that I would finally be able to start and stop audiobooks using my Apple earbuds, but not only does it not fix that surprising lack of functionality it is so bad I can’t listen to anything due to crashing issue. axis360 please fix this to make it as good as Overdrive.