Reading iBooks on macBook Pro??

liamodugan wrote:

My point is we want a seamless way of reading on iphone, ipad, macbook

Yes! If Apple fails to announce a version of iBooks for OS X at that event (or some other way to read their stuff on laptop/desktop), it would seem a bit crazy.....

My bad, I guess I have never tried to read an ebook from ibooks on Calibre, thank you for clearing that up. I would wonder though what the point of this thread is? If this is a forum for ibooks why talk about any other ebook readers or forms. If you have an ipad, you can buy and read from the itunes store, if you don't like it go somewhere else

I agree and don't understand why there is not a better for Mac/ipad/iphone users to sync ebooks between systems.

kemgreen wrote:

I would wonder though what the point of this thread is?

Well, way back in May 2010 when iBooks came out, everyone expected they should be able to read their iBooks on their laptop/desktop, and they came here then to ask how to do it. Mostly the thread has been telling people it's not possible, suggesting where they should buy their books if they want to read them on their laptop/desktop, and correcting those who try to tell everyone Calibre or Adobe Digital Editions will solve their problem. Plus of course it serves as a good place to complain about Apple failing to provide a version of iBooks for OS X (going on 18 months now already).

You can read any unencrypted eBooks on Calibre. Unfortunately, most publishers require that Apple and Amazon only publish encrypted ePub and mobi format books. These are not readable by Calibre. A significant difference is that Amazon has created reader apps on many platforms, including the Mac and PC, which will work with encrypted (DRM) kindle books. So far, Apple has not created an iBook app that runs on the Mac or PC so DRMed books from Apple cannot be read on the vast array of Macs and PCs of the world. This is a serious oversight. I am hoping that it will be addressed in the Apple event that is being held in NYC later this month.

I would bet that there will be a new version of Preview that handles iBooks on the Mac. For those who may not have noticed, Preview is already an impressive reader app for pdf files. In full screen mode I prefer it to Adobe Acrobat. Gathering book reading capability in a single app makes sense. I have no idea if this idea is correct but I read it somewhere and it makes a lot of sense to me.

not true calibre does not work with snow leopard

Amazon eats the price difference for market share, they have done this from the beginning of kindle/ebooks. Prices are still set by publisher, amazon loses money on most books, they offset the loss with their gains in their eCommerce, and other initiatives.

All their $9.99 books are actually $14.99 at cost, so they lose $5 on every book, but they do it in hopes that you become invested in Amazon & Kindle and build a collection of books making you more likely to stay loyal and buy more stuff overall from them.

Amazon did the same thing with products for many years, offering free shipping, etc. at a loss to Amazon but getting you to use Amazon for purchases rather than brick and morter. That's why they posted significant losses for the first 5-7 years. It's their strategy across the board, same with EC2, they offered a year for free (with some limitations) at their own cost so you get comfortable with using their EC2 Cloud servers.

Apple didn't feel they needed to use that strategy to make iBooks successful, and overall I think they were correct. Although I don't know their market share numbers, I think that Amazon was projecting having 50% market share on books by end of 2012.

As a thought experiment.

What's to keep someone from buying an ebook from Amazon, removing the DRM, converting it to Epub and adding it to iBooks through iTunes or Dropbox?

Epub readers are available for Android for free, and Firefox has a plugin that reads them, so that covers Windows XP/Vista/7, MaxOSX and Linux.

That's about as clean and native on all platforms as you can get.

Apples made a good ecosystem that supports everyone.

The message is just a little fuzzy.

After all that, do you understand that there is no way to read paid-for ibooks on an OS X device? That is what this thread is about.

Your right the initial purchase through iBooks would mean that book would not be available on MacOSX.

It probably means purchasing ebooks elsewhere might have its advantages.

Even if the target reader is an iOS device.

Then you could read them on MacOSX.

Why would you post something if you have nothing relevant to add to the discussion? We are talking about reading iBooks on other platforms, I could care less about reading other books formats in this worthless app.

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Ok so going on 2 years on the thread and no vestige of any interest by Apple in even hinting that they might take this seriously. I stopped by the Apple Store near me and asked the staff there for a response and the response I got was yes I can understand how that is frustrating but no- we have no plans at all to do anything about it. I let them know all my book purchases will be Kindle until they fix it, and seriously- why would we look back? I love my Apple products but am very frustrated with my recent Macbook Air purchase. So few apps for it, and the ones that are there are much more costly than their equivalent iphone or Ipad app. Not to stray too far off topic, but I love reading magazines with the Zinio app on the ipad- and found that Zinio has a port for it available on the Macbook Air, although not from Apple, from their own website. It is an inferior product to the Ipad Zinio app but it allows me to get at ALL of my magazines whereas on the Ipad I can only store a subset due to limited space (I have 64 gb Ipad but still have to constantly unload music and other media to continue downloading new music, magazines etc.)

So, bottom line, we should I suppose keep up the outcry about the ibook issue- but I suggest you take every opportunity to relay it in person in the store since it appears no one at Apple is reading the forum here.

Well, I sent an e-mail to Eddy Cue a few weeks back, complaining... FWIW.

jasdeepjaitla - that's not actually true. The Kindle hardware is a loss-leader approach, but Amazon DOES make money on many (most?) of the books published through the Kindle bookstore (as does Apple). Amazon only increased that gain by offering readers on other devices (notably iOS devices, Mac, and PC). With many publishers, they still stand to profit with the same margins (or higher) while reducing the retail price of the book because a) they don't have printing costs, and b) there are lower middleman fees (Amazon can take a smaller cut than a brick-and-mortar business, and still be profitable).

As for an iBook reader on Mac (and PC, presumably), I would be tremendously shocked if something wasn't announced this year. With iBooks 2 bringing a lot to the table, esepcially with textbook sales, Apple would be daft to not move to this approach.

I am a writer and I was really excited when iBooks Author was released for MAC OSX, but now I find myself asking "Why?" Doesn't it seem strange that Apple lets us write iBooks, but unless you have an iPod, iPad, or i Phone, a MAC user can't use the product that uses our media? There are alot of great iPAD apps out there, that need a home on MAC too. Why not create an emulator that allows MAC users to use other Apple based APPS?