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 S_eye,

    S_eye S_eye Dec 25, 2013 8:37 AM in response to tincha
    Level 1 (2 points)
    Dec 25, 2013 8:37 AM in response to tincha

    Hi Tincha,

    thank you for you answer. I manage my book library manually, therefore syncing the books will eventually overwrite what I have on the iPad. I could use dropbox or GoodReader, but it's a library with around 3000 pdf files. Transferring each file manually is simply not practical.

     

    I remember few years ago there was a specific OS X application that was enabling to copy the iOS device media to a Mac, without losing file names and metadata. Unfortunaltely I cannot remember the name.

     

    Cheers

    Luca

  • by Franco Franchi,

    Franco Franchi Franco Franchi Dec 25, 2013 12:28 PM in response to S_eye
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Dec 25, 2013 12:28 PM in response to S_eye

    S_eye, from your posts I assume you use the highly criticized iBook for Mac. Besides many other serious problems, its handling of PDFs is the worst I've ever seen.

    Two apps can transfer files from iPad to Mac: "iCopyBot" and "File Transfer". Search for them in Macupdate. I prefer the first, easier to use. However, I can't be certain they will keep "your" metadata safe since there is no standard for them. You might try whith one or two files and see what happens. If this works for you, I would suggest to copy back to mac your files, then remove PDFs from iBook both in iPad and iBook for Mac, and reverse them to an iPad app (there are many, I use BookMan) capable to be synced via iTunes in the "App" section of the iTunes sync page. Old way, but certainly much better than iBook so-called book management.

    If this doesn't work, I've painfully learned by experience NOT TO USE AT ALL iBook for Mac that I deleted from my system. If you do it carefully, your files will reappear in iTunes, which will again show them in a Book section as they were.


  • by tincha,

    tincha tincha Dec 26, 2013 7:26 AM in response to Franco Franchi
    Level 1 (57 points)
    iOS Apps
    Dec 26, 2013 7:26 AM in response to Franco Franchi

    If this is just a one-time transfer of 3000 files, you could temporarily turn off manually managing for a one-time synch of your iPad. This will transfer the files to your Mac. You can verify they are there by clicking on the Books tab and the PDF's should show up there. Then when you are done, turn manually manage back on.

  • by S_eye,

    S_eye S_eye Dec 26, 2013 8:55 AM in response to Franco Franchi
    Level 1 (2 points)
    Dec 26, 2013 8:55 AM in response to Franco Franchi

    Hi Franco,

     

    Yes, it was iCopyBot that I was looking for. I eradicated iBooks from my mac few hours after testing it.

    I still use iBooks on iOS devices. It's easier to do better than iBooks, but there is no real way to sync the metadata from iTunes, to third party apps. This is why I am stuck with iOS iBooks.

     

    The ideal thing would be to find an app that shares the books database with iBooks. I guess this is impossible since apps are living in their own sandbox and cannot share data.

     

    Thanks again

    Cheers

    Luca

  • by joho260,

    joho260 joho260 Jan 17, 2014 12:06 PM in response to S_eye
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 17, 2014 12:06 PM in response to S_eye

    Is there any way to sync books from iBooks to an iPad without having to sync music and photos as well.  When I select sync books in iTunes on my Mac, the warning pop-up tells me it's going to erase and re-sync all of my 3200 songs and 4700 photos. 

     

    Unfortunately, there seems no other way to move a book from my Mac to my iPad without resorting to some thrid-party software. 

     

    I can drag a pdf from a folder on my Mac to the iPad in the sidebar of iTunes and it will show up in my iPad iBooks library but not in the iPad library on my Mac.

  • by Franco Borgo,

    Franco Borgo Franco Borgo Jan 17, 2014 1:25 PM in response to joho260
    Level 1 (65 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 17, 2014 1:25 PM in response to joho260

    If you have alreay tried to uncheck Music and Photo, It would seem that your iPad was sync with another library before.

     

    Because it is the first time you sync with This library, iTunes has to erase everything from the old library,

     

  • by Dong Su,

    Dong Su Dong Su Jan 18, 2014 11:04 AM in response to Nicolas Online
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 18, 2014 11:04 AM in response to Nicolas Online

    I have problem with this. I used to do exactly what you said; but now when I open the "books" tab on my iOS device in iTunes, the books are not updating with the libraries of the iBooks for Mac. It is supposed to but unfortunately, it is not. I wonder why? This iBooks is seriously full of holes. All I need is to transfer my epub books from iBooks for Mac to my iPod Touch/iPad, as simple as that and this simple and essential function is  made impossible.

     

    Dong

  • by KAS7,Helpful

    KAS7 KAS7 Jan 28, 2014 7:58 PM in response to Nicolas Online
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Jan 28, 2014 7:58 PM in response to Nicolas Online

    I don't know if this has been posted before or not, but I found a simple solution to ditching iBooks and returning iTunes to it's proper behavior.

     

    Go -> Applications

    1. Find the iBooks app.
    2. Select "Show Package Contents"
    3. Rename "Contents" to "old.Contents"
    4. Reboot -- iBooks won't start and iTunes appears to be normal again.

     

    Now when I open iTunes and my iPad is connected, I can simply drag and drop a new book as before.

     

    I hope this helps somebody

  • by Michael Lesser1,

    Michael Lesser1 Michael Lesser1 Feb 4, 2014 3:55 PM in response to KAS7
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Feb 4, 2014 3:55 PM in response to KAS7

    Has anybody heard any news about the 10.9.2 Mavericks upgrade re iBooks? I'm not sure how much longer I can stand this mess.

  • by eeyores2,

    eeyores2 eeyores2 Feb 6, 2014 2:10 PM in response to KAS7
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 6, 2014 2:10 PM in response to KAS7

    OMG!  thank you KAS7!  worked perfectly.  so much easier than stopping services and all that other baloney!  now if only apple could fix ibooks, i'd be happy.  this works for me, though!

  • by Michael Allbritton,

    Michael Allbritton Michael Allbritton Feb 7, 2014 10:09 PM in response to Michael Lesser1
    Level 6 (16,831 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Feb 7, 2014 10:09 PM in response to Michael Lesser1

    Michael Lesser1 wrote:

     

    Has anybody heard any news about the 10.9.2 Mavericks upgrade re iBooks? I'm not sure how much longer I can stand this mess.

    Since OS X 10.9.2 hasn't been released yet we cannot discuss it here, per the support community TOS.

  • by walidsoliman,

    walidsoliman walidsoliman Feb 25, 2014 4:26 PM in response to Nicolas Online
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 25, 2014 4:26 PM in response to Nicolas Online

    Hey guys, syncios is the solution to all your problems, and please download and enjoy it! This is guaranteed

     

    Regards,

  • by MacPedras,

    MacPedras MacPedras Feb 26, 2014 1:14 AM in response to Michael Allbritton
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Feb 26, 2014 1:14 AM in response to Michael Allbritton

    Don't bother. The update didn't bring anything new. iBooks still *****...

    Honnestly Apple... You're becoming more like windows...

  • by Nicolas Online,

    Nicolas Online Nicolas Online Mar 10, 2014 7:00 AM in response to KAS7
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mar 10, 2014 7:00 AM in response to KAS7

    Hi Guys,

     

    So OS X Mavericks 10.9.2 was out and I did a clean Install.

     

    I came to delete iBooks and go through the whole process of removing iBooks manually, unfortunately apple has now disable manual removal and gives the:

     

    Basically the "Books" category is now appearing in iTunes and it seems like iBooks is disable along with all its processes. Is the old.Contents thing something we can do with any native OS X application.

     

    "iBooks cannot be deleted or modified because it is part of OS X" message.

     

    So I checked back this forum to see if there were any solutions and saw KAS7's solution:

     

    1. Find the iBooks app.
    2. Select "Show Package Contents"
    3. Rename "Contents" to "old.Contents"
    4. Reboot -- iBooks won't start and iTunes appears to be normal again.

     

    So from now on this should be the official solution of disabling and not removing iBooks, since from 10.9.2 Apple has removed the removing functionality.

     

    This is for anyone who finds this thread who has installed or gotten a mac with 10.9.2 or above installed.

     

    My questions if someone can answer is:

     

    1. Does the Mac App Store still see iBooks as installed and will it push updates to it?

    2. If so, will the new iBooks updates potentially break the old.Contents solution or is this a permanent OS X command of disabling an app?

     

    In other words should I be worried about the future or not?

     

    Thanks again KAS7!

     

    Apple FIX IBOOKS! Geez, just give it library management like iTunes!

  • by MacChris42,

    MacChris42 MacChris42 Mar 21, 2014 11:27 AM in response to Nicolas Online
    Level 1 (45 points)
    Mar 21, 2014 11:27 AM in response to Nicolas Online

    You may be interested in this problem I came across. I initially posted it in the iTunes section but it relates to iBooks as well. After a lot of trial and error, I've just found the solution:

     

    Problem: PDFs in iBooks for Mac that had the same author as an artist in iTunes (i.e. sheet music) were showing up as album art in the Artist column and in the wrong place (under their first name, despite all music being sorted by surname). The PDFs are nowhere to be found in iTunes, save on the Books tab when syncing an iOS device.

     

    Solution: Search the name of the artist in iTunes and the PDF will show up in the results as an Unknown Album. It can't be opened so drag it to a playlist, go to that playlist, right-click the PDF and Get info. Then populate the artist sort-by field to match the music metadata and click OK. Finally, delete the PDF from the playlist and quit iTunes. Relaunch and the artist is column-sorted in the right place with the correct album art. (And the PDF is still located in iBooks.)

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