Frustrated with Music and iBooks on iOS

I am frustrated with Music and iBooks on iOS 8.  There have quietly been some fixes in iOS 8.4.1. Note:  I am not using Apple's new Apple Music service.  I do, however, happen to have and use iTunes Match.

I'll start with iBooks:

• Peeve 1:  Until the recent fix, my iTunes server on OS X 10.7.5 was recently changed by Apple to no-longer know about Audiobooks.  It would import them, and then hide them.  No syncing of new audiobooks for users to iOS devices.  Thankfully, that has been fixed!
• Peeve 2: iBooks does not remember my place in audiobooks reliably at all.  I am not the only one experiencing this problem.  Often iBooks puts me back at the start of a book.  
• Peeve 3: iBooks often does not allow me to scan through to a point in a chapter - instead always showing that I am at 0.00 until the next chapter starts.  This is very frustrating.

Now on to Music:

• The horizontal view in music went from cover flow (a while ago) to some other cover view, which was not at all useful, to no longer having a horizontal view.  Where did the horizontal view go?  Why can I not have a useful horizontal view?
•  I never know what I'm going to get when I open the music app.  For example, I'm listening to a music playlist, and my iPhone was locked.  I unlocked and opened the music app, and the Radio choice is showing.  Why is Radio showing?  I'm not using radio at this time.
• How do I see what I am listening to - i.e. a playlist I previously selected?  There is a tiny three-dots "button" to the right of the tiny line near the bottom that... doesn't get me back to the playlist.  It lets me "Start Station" - a radio station based on the current song.  Miracle of miracles, this time, when I clicked on My Music, I am back in my playlist.  I wonder if there was a fix in 8.4.1?  Usually I'm back in my music somewhere and have to re-select playlists and then reselect the playlist as the only way to get back to it.
• How do I play the playlist over and over?  I see no controls for this in music any longer!  The controls are available when selecting the current playing song only, as a tiny icon in 2nd from the right.  It has the same 3 options as it always had - it just isn't available on the playlist screen any longer
• Is it on my iPhone or not?  I'm getting on a plane... Ah a fix with 8.4.1 - I can see with a tiny icon on the right next to the song now. 
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Bonus peeve: outages in the Apple Store - I tried to redeem a free song on a Starbucks card from Apple - but I cannot as the store is unavailable.  Adding insult to injury, I had to retype my AppleID password to check every time.  Not fun Apple.

I have been known by some for watching news about Apple and information from Apple with a large amount of attention.  Apple feels much less transparent about these kinds of problems and changes now.  That greatly disappoints me.  It feels more like what I hear from Android users, frankly.

I reveled in being able to get an elderly relative to use an iPhone when not familiar with using the internet.  Now these items are getting less self-explanatory, quietly having new major feature problems, and videos and manuals are needed to know how to use them.  It is not what I expect.