Nicolas Online

Q: Every Single Problem with iBooks for Mac

Hello,

 

It is disappointing that as Apple users we are used to doing things a certain way for years, and Apple's way forward results in less functionality and flexibility.

 

Here is a list of all the problems I have been facing with iBooks for Mac:

 

1. Transfer of Books to iPad or iPhone from iBooks is non-existant. If I create or download a DRM-free epub and or PDF and add it to iBooks for Mac (i.e. it wasn't downloaded from the iBooks Store), there is no direct way to transfer them to your iOS device through iBooks. Even books downloaded from the iBooks Store, since iBooks itself doesn't allow the transfer of files to the iOS device.

 

2. iBooks doesn't allow us to Edit metadata. Many PDFs come without metadata. And to organize them into the library as was previously possible in iTunes, we could add Author, Genre, Year, etc... Also even for books we actually download from the iBooks Store maybe we want to change the Genre or Category the book is in or simplify the Author's name.

 

3. iBooks essentially duplicates any PDF or ePub we drag to it into it's own library. Acting like iTunes "Copy files to iTunes Media Library when adding to library". If I have hundreds of PDF's that are hundreds of Megabytes in size, I don't want them duplicated again, especially when it's duplicated on my default Macintosh HD whom many people have as SSDs nowadays.

 

4. iBooks doesn't allow us to create or choose multiple libraries and have them in any destination we want (like it is possible with iTunes, iPhoto, Aperture, etc). By Option-Clicking on iBooks we should have that option.

 

5. The ability to delete Collections in iBooks for Mac.

 

All the above problems are surprising, as what essentially Apple has done is a book reader, and not a book library management tool. With books becoming more and more digital and more and more people using them, so does the amount of books in one's collection grow. It is virtually impossible to manage any book collection with such a lack of features.

 

Should anyone have solutions to the aformentioned problems or ideas on how to overcome them, please feel free to post them here.

 

Should anyone have other problems they encountered in this initial version of iBooks, please feel free to post them here, as this would be a good place to sythesize all that's bothering a lot of people with this new phase into Apple's ecosystem of iBooks.

 

Thank you,

 

Nick

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Oct 24, 2013 3:24 AM

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Q: Every Single Problem with iBooks for Mac

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  • by bluevoice,

    bluevoice bluevoice Nov 21, 2013 3:02 AM in response to S_eye
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 21, 2013 3:02 AM in response to S_eye

    I was actually reffering to the UI elements and not the functions. Apple is not consistent. Apple uses the same layout for Calendar in iOS and Mac OS X but other applications don't share the same visual language.

     

    What I meant is that some Mac OS X parts and apps were modified in concordance with the new flat design of iOS 7 but not all of them and not system wide. Some apps and menu's still have the old skeuomorphic elements. Take a look at the Mail (or Safari) icon in Mavericks, iCloud web interface and iOS 7. They should be consistent (the same).

     

    So don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Apple should make a hybrid OS that works on both but only that Apple should be consistent in the visual (UI) language in all her services. Furthermore, I think iTunes is a mess and Apple should split the sync side of it an make it a dedicated Mac OS X App (service) made only for this purpose (syncing) like it once was (iSync) and let iTunes do only what it's best in, in my opinion managing and playing music. To achieve consistency Apple should also make dedicated apps for all parts of iTunes (like they did with iBooks), so a dedicated app for each category: Podcastst, iOS apps, Movies and TV Shows. Each of those 4 dedicated apps would have access to their own store just like iBooks only displays the iBookstore. At this moment I personally think it's a mess browsing all those diferent stores from within iTunes.  

     

    Mac-OS-X-10-7-Lion-Missing-iSync-Application-2.jpg

  • by Nicolas Online,

    Nicolas Online Nicolas Online Nov 21, 2013 3:37 AM in response to bluevoice
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Nov 21, 2013 3:37 AM in response to bluevoice

    I wish apple would hire me.

     

    Im one of the most organized and visually clear people out of everyone I know. I'm obsessive.

     

    I see the big picture. And sometimes it takes a lot of work to realize it.

     

    But ultimately good design is asking yourself why when you're using something, it's one way instead of the other.

     

    The iTunes management system dates from the early 2000s. Some things just don't make sense. Like constantly adding new features rather than perfecting and constantly rethinking what is already there.

     

    What is amazing with the deep software engineering team includes everything from the transition to full 64 but architectures as well as all the deep OS changes regarding power and system management. Whereas the user end and interface as well as management of media and apps do leave a lot to be desired. They were revolutionary in their day. But not anymore.

     

    I always fantasize of working with Apple...

  • by S_eye,

    S_eye S_eye Nov 21, 2013 6:05 AM in response to bluevoice
    Level 1 (2 points)
    Nov 21, 2013 6:05 AM in response to bluevoice

    Hi bluevoice,

    Your comment is spot on and I totally agree with it. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

  • by bluevoice,

    bluevoice bluevoice Nov 21, 2013 6:17 AM in response to S_eye
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 21, 2013 6:17 AM in response to S_eye

    @S-eye: no problem and thanks! I really hope Apple will solve some of those problems in an upcoming update or the new Mac OS X 10.10 release next year. But Mac OS X is clearly not Apple's focus at this moment otherwise they'd put the necessary resources in getting Mavericks to the next level.

     

    As I see it Mavericks is Apple's Windows Vista visually, an in between operating system that visually is only half ready. I'm also under the impression that Apple changes things gradually to let users adapt to the new flat interface. Otherwise users might complain, just like the iOS 7 users that want the wooden bookshelf back in the iOS iBooks app because they can't adapt to the clean interface.

     

    I do appreciate the fact that that Mavericks is a very fast operating system, and that it runs well even on older hardware which is a plus. 

  • by Franco Franchi,

    Franco Franchi Franco Franchi Nov 21, 2013 3:10 PM in response to Nicolas Online
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Nov 21, 2013 3:10 PM in response to Nicolas Online

    I subscribe all of your commnts... and have more additional ones! To be as clear as possible, iBooks for Mac is the worst application ever seen being issued by Apple. A complete horrible disaster.

    For example:

     

    1. the size of the files created by ibooks for mac are 2.5 times larger than the home-made epubs (i.e.: not bought from the store). My collection (more than 4,300 books ALL carefully crafted by myself went from 1.8 gigabytes up to 2.9!).

     

    2. the "iBooks library" identifies every book by a crypted numerical code. I bet anyone to be able search and find one of his or her book with the usual search by filename. And the larger the collection, the greater the unsuccess.

     

    3. not being able to add/delete/modify metadata makes the organization of a collection just impossible. Using system tags to that purpose is noe equal and effective. The personal organization ot the user's files is a firm right of the user, it cannot be delegated to an "automatic" uncontrolled process (which iis anyway badly thought).

     

    4. altough I would desire to spin off iTunes into separate specific applications, one for each type of media managed through it, in the wait for Apple to consider/realize that change (hopelessly?), I do not see any reason for iTunes to drop out Books library, which at least permitted to solve some of the points here mentioned, although partially.

     

    5. the increase in size mentioned in point 1 replicates also in the iPad devices... whose total capability is only a small fraction of a medium-sized Mac, so its impact is much, much greater. Why was it necessary? Unknown.

     

    6. the design of iBook for both Mac and IPad is now a flat anonymous window: the look and feel of a virtual book of the previous iPad version is lost. Look and feel is very important for readers used to red fro printed paper to move to digital editions, and the current issue makes extremely less attractive the use of the new issue... just when that was one of the main reason for using the Apple reader other that one produced by other. Does Apple remember that "a picture is worth a thousand words"?

     

    Parallel to the bad change in the iBooks arena, even Pages as been "upgraded" to something which lost its look and feel and - more important - lost several functions very simple and intuitive to use when creating a book. I went back and reinstalled iWork 9. Pages 5 had is rightful end into my waste basket.

     

    MY REACTIONS

     

    Well, having been badly driven to install Mavericks by the magic of "upgrading" (I moved from Mountain Lion to Mavericks JUST FOR THE PROPAGANDA ON THE BOOKS) I am now trying to understand to what extent and how is it possible to "downgrade" to mountain Lion, not being so certain that it would be a painless move, and similarly if and how downgrade be possible for the iPad  I WAS USED for reading my boos.

     

    Meantime, I made a limited number of changes to Mavericks by which a small fraction of my comments were cured (to a certain extent):

    1. Killed the "agent" who causes the move of the iTunes library to the iBooks library.

    2. Completely deleted iBooks for Mac and its supporting files with AppDelete. Cleaned all system and application caches with Onyx. Restarted my Mac.

    3. A Books setion reappears in itunes (Magic? no, iTunes did not find the killer iBooks application.)

    4. Repopulated iTunes Books library with the most recent backup of books library preceding the infamous Maverick. Fortune: not one lost. Previous metadata posted by me still present

    5. Found in AppStore a reader for Mac approaching to a certain extent the previuos iPad iBooKs look and feel. I found the one called "BookReader". If anybody knows a better one, I would be happy to test it.

     

    CONCLUSION:

    It's evident that my fight against those so-called upgrades isn't finished. I blame Apple for betraying its own guidelines and philosophy (do you remenber "think different"? Do you remeber "back to my Mac"? Where are your visionary lessons, Steve?). A moltitude of protest are rising from mac users. Does Apple listen? It seems the answer is "no".

     

    Aving said all that, my appreciation of these products is:

    five BLACK stars to IBooks for Mac    

    five to iPage 5    

    five to iPad IOS 7    

     

    THE REAL QUESTION

    who did decide to implement the f.... change? Has him/her been fired for the image and commercial damage procured to the company? Who authorized the change? Was him Bill Gates? Was the change a test to measure the faithfullness of Mac people?

     

    I apologize for the lenght of this post (and for my imperfect english) but I am really very, very, very... ****** off (oops! excuse me!).

  • by S_eye,

    S_eye S_eye Nov 21, 2013 7:18 PM in response to Franco Franchi
    Level 1 (2 points)
    Nov 21, 2013 7:18 PM in response to Franco Franchi

    @Franco,

     

    The agent that you killed, was it the "bookstoreagent"? No matter how I kill the process and rename the file for this service, itunes forces me to migrate to iBooks after I restore the library.

     

    Please let me know

  • by Franco Franchi,

    Franco Franchi Franco Franchi Nov 21, 2013 9:28 PM in response to S_eye
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Nov 21, 2013 9:28 PM in response to S_eye

    @ S_eye, Yes, that is the agent to kill. However, it will be re-created, if you leave iBooks for Mac application and its library sitting in your Mac; it seems likely that iTunes searches for them when lauched. Hence, the trick is to convince iTunes those files are not available. You should completely delete both application and supporting files. There are several shareware utlilities around capable to do that, such as TinkerTool System, AppCleaner and other.

    Assuming you have a pre-Mavericks backup of your books (and, if applicable, for each username), follow this method:

     

    1. Prepre the mac for cleaning: rebuild permissions, run periodic maintenace scripts, rebuild file links, delete system cache, applications cache and user caches, etc... the free Onyx utility will do all of these for you in a bunch of minutes.
    2. Kill the process via Activity Monitor.
    3. Delete completely the iBooks library, including its folder (is an invisible and protected folder, deep inside each user folde. The library includes all books converted Y iBooks for Mac... but you have your bacups available, am I right?. If your Mac has more than one registered user, points 1 to 7 must be repeated for each user; you might use FindAnyFile (shareware, at Apple AppStore) to locate file to delete; if so, select them, right-click on selection, choose immediate deletion; don't launch iTunes and/or iBooks (see point 4). Keep curiosity out of you.
    4. Logoff & logon back to make sure that the agent is no longer under your username. Search for it, to confirm it has not been recreated (this happens every time you launch iTunes and/or iBooks) If so, start over again.
    5. Restart your Mac.
    6. Launch iTunes: a "Books" library should re-appear in the leftiest column, provided your iTunes preferences are set up to do so.
    7. Copy your pre-Mavricks backup files into the iTunes Books library.
    8. When copying is finished, restart your Mac: voilà, your books are listed as they were before the DOWNgrade to Mavericks, included the metadata you originally defined for each book, visible in the information menu for each selected file.. Syncing to iPad is back available in Itunes. Now you better resync to your devices, since the procedure outlined before has changed the modification date of every ebook file.
    9. Now you cannot read your books from Mac. Use a specific application to do so (I choose BookReader, see AppStore). Double-cliking on the file in iTunes library will not open it. Sorry, you should follow the tedious way: select a file, right-click it, choose "show in finder". In Finder view select the file, right-click, choose get info, open with... or use Automator to make a complete action.

     

    What if you (mmmpf) do not have the valuable backups? Well, before cleaning your mac you can at least recover those recorded in your iPad. ICopyBot is one of the utilities which permits to copy a selected content from iPad to elsewhere. If not all books are in your iPad, you better sync all of them to iPad before getting rid of it to be able to copy then in human readable format back to Mac in a folder of your choice. It would take a considerable patience to reconstruct File by file the Ibook mess but if you have no other  chance...

     

    All that worked for me; it takes more explaining than doing but I tought a detailed explanation might be useful to other angry mac users. My best wishes: good luck!

  • by adougall,

    adougall adougall Nov 26, 2013 12:34 PM in response to Nicolas Online
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 26, 2013 12:34 PM in response to Nicolas Online

    Hi All,

     

    While I agree the fact that iBooks for Mac has killed the syncing of externally sourced EPub / PDFs to the iPad stinks, it is not all doom and gloom.  (Warning: this is not the prefect synced solution, but it gets the books on the iPad.)

     

    I am using the following method, which works for me:

     

    Firstly, you need to have the EPub / PDFs backed up independently from the iBooks folder.  (You have backed them up, haven't you?  If not, time travel your machine back to a previous date to restore the directory where your files are located.)

     

    Secondly, you need to have a sftp type app on your target device, be it the iPad or iPhone.  I use iTransfer from ComcSoft. 

     

    Thirdly, you need to enable Remote Login on your Mac.

     

    So, I did the following:

     

    1.     Create a folder on the Mac where I have all my EPub / PDFs stored

    2.     Turn on remote log in via Sharing in System Preferences

    3.     On the iPad, open the iTransfer App and open a connection to the Mac

    4.     Navigate to the Book folder, and transfer the required books to the iPad

    5.     Once transfered, and it is very quick over WiFi, go to the Local Files list

    6.     Select the book and select Open In and select iBooks

     

    iBooks open and your book is ready to read.

     

    Yes, not perfect, but if you use iBooks to store work PDFs or have Open Source books from Project Gutenberg, then this works reasonably well.

     

    Alasdair

  • by IanWilliamGalloway,

    IanWilliamGalloway IanWilliamGalloway Nov 27, 2013 5:47 AM in response to Nicolas Online
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 27, 2013 5:47 AM in response to Nicolas Online

    New one to add (I think).

     

    - We know that when copying PDFs, eBooks, etc to iBooks, iBooks copies them to it's 'Books' folder (Library/Containers/etcetc/iBooks/Books), however, if you then attempt to consolidate your files in iTunes, the iTunes app decides that they should actually be in the 'Downloads' folder ((Library/Containers/etcetc/iBooks/Downloads) and copies them all over, doubling the space they take on the hard drive.

     

    It doesn't actually update the registry in the iBooks app, though, which still uses the ones in the 'Books' folder. iTunes just wants them to exist in Downloads as well.

     

     

  • by bluevoice,

    bluevoice bluevoice Nov 27, 2013 5:53 AM in response to IanWilliamGalloway
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 27, 2013 5:53 AM in response to IanWilliamGalloway

    Yes and if you attempt to consolidate the files again it copies them for a second time inside the Downloads folder. As often you use this function, as many duplicates it creates on your hard disk. This must be a bug, I reported it to Apple through the web feedback form for iBooks but feel free to also give feedback by using the link below:

     

    https://www.apple.com/feedback/ibooks.html

     

    More feedback means it gets to a higher priority on Apple's to do list.

  • by Doug Holm1,

    Doug Holm1 Doug Holm1 Nov 28, 2013 11:11 PM in response to bluevoice
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Nov 28, 2013 11:11 PM in response to bluevoice

    After having a disastrous and confusing time with iBooks I followed the procedures listed here and elsewhere and deleted the app and reverted back to iTunes. Then the latest edition of iBooks for iPad came along, and when I installed that I lost my huge list of hundreds of folders. They are still there, just not visible. I have to search for titles and then they come up under their folder name. Today I returned home and added a few books to iTunes and in turn the iPad (what a long, complicated process it is to add stuff to an iPad or iPhone!), and discovered that for some reason the computer or system, in my absence, had unchecked all my books ... so I had to laboriously go through – for what seems like the 10th time in a month – and recheck books I want on my device. What a nightmare. 

  • by Franco Franchi,

    Franco Franchi Franco Franchi Nov 28, 2013 11:33 PM in response to Doug Holm1
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Nov 28, 2013 11:33 PM in response to Doug Holm1

    Doug, did you kill the ibook agent? If you don't, iTunes still believes you are usimg that "wonderFOOL" piece of rubbish sofware, even if you deleted such application!

  • by Doug Holm1,

    Doug Holm1 Doug Holm1 Nov 29, 2013 8:46 AM in response to Franco Franchi
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Nov 29, 2013 8:46 AM in response to Franco Franchi

    Yes, I did kill the iBook agent. The "automatic" unchecking of most of my content may have been due to some hidden system process that kicks in when the iPad is near full ... I only had 2 GBs free. In addition, all the books that were uncheck were not considered books but "other" in the color-coded sorting thermostat at the bottom of the iTunes window! Perhaps that means that I did miss a step in deleting iBooks. Like several others on this and other threads, I have downloaded Marvin and activated it in Calibre, and may switch entirely to that app until if and when Apple fixes iBooks.

  • by connie184,

    connie184 connie184 Nov 30, 2013 9:32 AM in response to Doug Holm1
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Mac OS X
    Nov 30, 2013 9:32 AM in response to Doug Holm1

    I haven't even tried to fix iBooks, makes my head spin to think about it.  However, I did download Marvin and tried to load a couple of PDF ebooks through DropBox, which I don't like either.  I could not get them to load into Marvin, I can't find anywhere where it states it does not handle PDF's, have sent them a note.

     

    Has anyone found a good PDF reader since about 160 of my eBooks are PDF format and although they did finally load in iBooks on the iPad they, as you know, can't be sorted.  In addition every book has a different format for the titles and authors, and not being able to add the meta data makes everything a mess. It is like taking a pile of books and magazines and throwing them on the floor and trying to find a specfic detail, 52 card pick-up style.

  • by Doug Holm1,

    Doug Holm1 Doug Holm1 Nov 30, 2013 9:36 AM in response to connie184
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Nov 30, 2013 9:36 AM in response to connie184

    I just grabbed Marvin recently myself ... it doesn't take PDFs for some reason. To add them, you have to convert them to ePub in Calibre.

     

    And yes, trying workarounds for the disfunctional iBooks is a head spinner.

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