Garindan

Q: Not impressed! No edit info, no library management!

I really hope these can be fixed soon. As others have said, not having the ability to edit book info, which was so easy in iTunes, is terrible! And that iBooks moves all your books to a hard to find folder on your internal drive, and renames the files, equally bad.

 

It's great being able to read books on the mac for the first time, but everything else is a step backwards. In iTunes the books were stored neatly in the media folder and could be moved anywhere you wished with the rest of the library, and you could easily edit info, covers etc. Now it's all been taken away and we're stuck with having little to no options again.

 

I hope it can all be fixed soon!

iBook, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Oct 23, 2013 1:46 AM

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Q: Not impressed! No edit info, no library management!

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  • by Lawrence Winkler,

    Lawrence Winkler Lawrence Winkler Nov 5, 2013 2:58 PM in response to Garindan
    Level 1 (55 points)
    Nov 5, 2013 2:58 PM in response to Garindan

    I agree. Mac iBooks as a big disappointment in loss of ability to edit meta data. They should have at least told us. But, unlike a number of commenters, I will not be taking matters into my own hands yet.

     

    Some time ago, requested changes to iTunes to define a different meta file format for books from music. I'm hopeful Apple will do this soon. In the meantime, it think it a big mistake to fiddle with what Apple has done with the meta data.

     

    My guess is Apple has hidden the meta data from iTunes and prevented us changing the meta data it converted to allow them to migrate to a book-defined meta data format. Fiddle with it and you my be screwing yourself.

     

    But, Apple needs to come clean on plans and schedule. They need to alter their policy of secrecy. Customers need to know.

  • by John-Francis Kinsler,

    John-Francis Kinsler John-Francis Kinsler Nov 5, 2013 7:26 PM in response to Doug Holm1
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Nov 5, 2013 7:26 PM in response to Doug Holm1

    I'm still reeling from the iBooks fiasco... Although I reverted iTunes to the pre-mavericks state and recovered most metadata for PDFs I can't synch my iPad as there are recent files I was unable to recover that I can't afford to lose... I will try after this important conference in London... But I must say it was an unnecessary shock and inconvenience to endure with any warning... There are still issues with personally encoded audio files I've saved and organized as podcasts or iTunes U files that are not synching properly even when changed to an audiobook. As some with Gigs worth of academic books and various files of poetry and educational content... Apple has caused me tremendous headaches...

     

    In terms of the iBooks update I am very wary... "Fool me once........."

  • by Nicolas Online,

    Nicolas Online Nicolas Online Nov 7, 2013 3:20 PM in response to Garindan
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Nov 7, 2013 3:20 PM in response to Garindan

    Guys,

     

    Anyone have an update, apparentley Apple updated its iBooks for Mac application today. What did they fix? Any changes to the original problem? How do we get iBooks back if we deleted it to test this new release out?

     

    http://9to5mac.com/2013/11/07/apple-releases-ibooks-for-mac-1-0-1-with-bug-fixes -and-stabilty-improvements/

     

    Nick

  • by Kevin Edgecomb,

    Kevin Edgecomb Kevin Edgecomb Nov 7, 2013 7:24 PM in response to Nicolas Online
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Nov 7, 2013 7:24 PM in response to Nicolas Online

    I haven't heard any details. And iBooks isn't in the App Store (yet). Maybe it will be, eventually. I can't imagine much has changed, though.  There's always Bookle, which will unfortunately cease development because if iBooks. Calibre and Sigil are two other good ones. I won't have my books hijacked by iBooks again, though. That was completely without warning and equally completely unacceptable.

  • by StoneSoup,

    StoneSoup StoneSoup Nov 7, 2013 8:27 PM in response to Kevin Edgecomb
    Level 1 (45 points)
    Nov 7, 2013 8:27 PM in response to Kevin Edgecomb

    Agreed, Kevin.  If the iBooks team reads this thread, they should feel deeply ashamed about releasing a product so far below Apple's usual standards.  I hope this has taught them not to rush buggy and feature-deficient software to market.

     

    And in case anyone's a little gun-shy about applying new updates after the initial fiasco:  I had removed the bookstoreagent and uninstalled iBooks, which reverted successfully back to managing my books in iTunes. 

     

    I just installed iTunes 11.1.3 and my books are still manageable within iTunes and still sync with my iDevices.  No sign of iBooks anywhere.  What a relief.

     

    Steven

  • by DomPom,

    DomPom DomPom Nov 7, 2013 9:19 PM in response to StoneSoup
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 7, 2013 9:19 PM in response to StoneSoup

    Hi StoneSoup,

     

    Seems like the thing to do until Apple gets its act together.

    Could you outline the steps to remove bookstoreagent and uninstall iBooks?

    Also my 11.1.3 itunes does not list Books any more, so are the steps above recreating a Books tab in itunes?

     

    Thanks.

     

    D

  • by Bill M.,

    Bill M. Bill M. Nov 7, 2013 9:43 PM in response to StoneSoup
    Level 1 (35 points)
    Nov 7, 2013 9:43 PM in response to StoneSoup

    I've been Apple since 1979 when I started an Apple II lab in the school I taught in; I was there for 36 years.  I was either the Tech Team Leader (twice for 15 years total) or just on the Tech Team especially as I was moving to retire in 2009.  I'm Apple through and through.  I've been an Apple Demo Person and the Mac Resource Person at my local Micro Center.   I've been a member of my MUG and UserGroup Alliance officer teams. 

     

    Mavericks is almost as bad as 7.5.4 was (it was out for about 3 hours until it was descovered it 'killed' the system files).   There are more user controls deleted than in any other OS that I can recall; all, I suspect, in the name of unifying iOS and Mac OS.  From the inability to modify the info fields (and delete unwanted downloads) in iBooks to iTunes no longer importing Safri Bookmarks, Contacts, e-mail, etc. unless we use iCloud, this is one big smack in the face. When I asked Apple at the 1-800# why the Bookmarks, Contacts, etc. weren't in iTunes anymore, the person (the 3rd one I was switched to for finally getting an answer which I hope is not an indication of the expertise now available) told me it was because technology was moving forward.  No kidding. 

     

    The Apple management team; Tim, Phil, Jonny, Eddie & Craig; should take a long, hard look at the issues those of us who have been loyal Apple users through the decades are complaining about and make this software work.   Aiming to make iOS and Mac OS one big happy OS?  Not at this rate.  Software not workable or awkward to use?  That's Android and Windows; NOT Apple.

     

    Mavericks?  Bret, Bart, Beau and especially Pappy are ashamed.

  • by StoneSoup,

    StoneSoup StoneSoup Nov 7, 2013 11:07 PM in response to DomPom
    Level 1 (45 points)
    Nov 7, 2013 11:07 PM in response to DomPom

    Hi, D,

     

    The solutions are now buried in very long threads.  I started a fresh thread to highlight them more clearly:

     

    https://discussions.apple.com/message/23542460#23542460

  • by shylocxs,

    shylocxs shylocxs Nov 11, 2013 3:14 AM in response to Doctor Ron
    Level 1 (21 points)
    Nov 11, 2013 3:14 AM in response to Doctor Ron

    I totally agree. Sync has always been a strange thing, especially for books, and I much prefer to manually manage my content. Has anyone figured out a way to do that with iBooks?

  • by Nicolas Online,

    Nicolas Online Nicolas Online Nov 11, 2013 3:57 AM in response to Garindan
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Nov 11, 2013 3:57 AM in response to Garindan
  • by Xyzzy42,

    Xyzzy42 Xyzzy42 Nov 12, 2013 9:36 AM in response to Kevin Edgecomb
    Level 1 (50 points)
    Nov 12, 2013 9:36 AM in response to Kevin Edgecomb

    I tried your method and some of the others linked to it, to no avail. When I got to the point of adding my books back to iTunes, most of them ended up under the Music tab with all the metadata and other information stripped. Attempting to add epub files one at a time completely failed.

     

    Thought I would share what DID work for me, and I really don't know why it did work:

     

    • Stopped the bookstoreagent process as Kevin/others mentioned. Located that program file at

                   (/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CommerceKit.framework/Versions

      /A/Resources/bookstoreagent) and moved it to my Docs folder.

    • Used AppZapper to delete the iBooks app.
    • Deleted all the new iBook Book folders under

                   ~/Library/Containers/com.apple/BKAgentService/Data

      /Documents/iBooks/Books.

    • Restored my iTunes Media Library (had a backup before Mavericks install).
    • Upgraded iTunes to 11.1.3.
    • Dragged a copy of my original Books folder back to ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media (where it was originally stored).
    • Launched iTunes and all my books were back.
    • Deleted the bookstoreagent file from Docs folder.

     

    Obviously this won't work for you if you don't have a complete backup of your books from the iTunes Media folder, but it may help you if future Mavericks updates include changes to iTunes that starts the whole set of shenanigans again.

     

    --edited paths to avoid awkward wraps

  • by Badger3k,

    Badger3k Badger3k Nov 17, 2013 8:45 PM in response to Nicolas Online
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Nov 17, 2013 8:45 PM in response to Nicolas Online

    It took two restarts, but his system worked for me as well.  What a shame that Apple is going downhill fast.

  • by ParryDemetriou,

    ParryDemetriou ParryDemetriou Nov 18, 2013 3:44 AM in response to Garindan
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 18, 2013 3:44 AM in response to Garindan

    Today I carried out the latest updates and magic happened again. I lost most of my pdf's from my Document folder (and not the itunes folder)

     

    That's the way to go Apple. Well done!

     

    Any solution?

  • by MUSEquera,

    MUSEquera MUSEquera Nov 18, 2013 8:10 AM in response to Andy Epprecht
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 18, 2013 8:10 AM in response to Andy Epprecht

    THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!!

     

    You have my eternal gratitude. Seriously man, THANK YOU!!!

  • by Dirk,

    Dirk Dirk Nov 27, 2013 12:48 PM in response to Kevin Edgecomb
    Level 2 (335 points)
    Nov 27, 2013 12:48 PM in response to Kevin Edgecomb

    Thank You ! Kevin!

     

    Worked like a charm...

     

    ....puuh makes me happy to edit and organize my books in iTunes AGAIN!

     

    Greetings

    Dirk

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