NHman

I have an (sort-of) old iPhone 6s that I use for my music jukebox when driving my S4. It is connected to the USB port. I will play the song on it and show the song art on the MMI. However, when I filter by playlist, artist or album the message of "Preparing Media Center...Please Wait" appears and I cannot access that specific music. The iPhone works fine in other vehicles and on my two home sound systems. The iPhone is current firmware but the problems were present on the previous release as well. My initial thought was for time needed to read all of the (music) files but the message remains through 25-30 minutes of driving. There is roughly 3,300 songs/files on the device.

I also use an iPhone 8S for strictly phone calls and do not transfer music via BT. I've tried both with and without the phone in the car. Same result.

Image of message:

daniel1113

Did you ever figure this out? I'm running into the same problem with my iPod Touch (6th gen). It's got about 7,700 tracks, and I can play them fine and see the Now Playing info if I control them with the iPod, but I can't get past the "Preparing media center" message when browsing through MMI.

NHman

Unfortunately, there message is still present. I had cleared all of the files and reinstalled via iTunes. At that point I was able to search by playlist, artist or album. However, yesterday I added several songs to my iPhone (only using as a player). Now the message is back. Otherwise it works as excepted in my wife's XC90 and my two home theater systems.

daniel1113

Well this is certainly disappointing. It sounds like you have a similar setup to me: an iPhone connected via BT, with a separate iPod/iPhone strictly for music playback which stays in the car at all times. For years I used an iPod Classic for this purpose, but iPod Classics are no longer supported by MMI, so I upgraded to an iPod Touch. It will be a real shame if it doesn't work consistently.

I'm at the dealer now mounting winter wheels, so I'll probe them and see if they have any ideas.

NHman

I would be interested to hear if your dealer has any feedback on this issue.

daniel1113

Unfortunately, they didn't have an answer or solution. They believe that there is something preventing iOS from sending the music library information to MMI (and I think that makes sense given what I know). Of course, they think it is an Apple iOS issue, not an MMI problem. That doesn't seem right to me, as Apple doesn't change the iPod Accessory Protocol on a whim, and I don't think it has changed in a long time. But it does seem to be an issue tied to iOS 11. I may downgrade my iPod Touch to iOS 10 and see how that works.

daniel1113

It looks like there are some known developer issues in iOS 11 with the iPod Accessory Protocol (iAP2), both over bluetooth and lightning connectors:

https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/79395

https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/87451

https://forums.developer.apple.com/m.../252801#252801

Some of the posts mention fixes implemented in iOS 11.2 beta, so hopefully when it is released, it will resolve these issues.

NHman

I installed v11.2 onto my iPhone 6S. Unfortunately, no change in the results. I was going to roll it back to v10 but I cannot locate a file to be installed via iTunes or another means.

daniel1113

I did the same thing this morning and tried public beta 4 also with no luck. I'll let you know if I try iOS 10.

millersntx

Not that I ever use it, but does it exhibit the same behavior when using car play?