The writing was on the wall and I was a fraud that the days was coming, but now it is here.
Another great Apple product is discontinued. No more iBooks Author.
I just received the email this morning and here s the official statement
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211136
I used iBooks Author since it came out in 2012 and have release so far 28 book, with one exception, all in the Enhanced iBooks format. The last title just a few weeks ago
What I find disturbing in today's announcement is that there is no mention about the Enhanced iBooks format. They pretend that you can just import your iba files into Pages and everything is fine. However, EVERYTHING IS NOT FINE !
Does Apple pretend that there is no Enhanced iBooks format? They just ignore it? This interactive multi-touch iBooks format was one of Apple's great invention that set it apart from Kindle. It pushed the limits and gave authors, especially self-published authors to create these amazing books. There is no other tool that can do that. Yes it was time consuming, but that's the challenge for Apple to make it better and easier and not just cancel it.
The format was rolled out with big fanfare and great titles in 2012 that showed the capability of that format. Teachers used it in their classrooms, students could use it, and there are amazing titles out there. And now they pretend that it didn't exist.
Instead, the announcement brags about amazing design features like "drop caps" that Pages brings to the table. Really? That is an insult.
This is not the first time that Apple discontinues a great product without any proper replacement (iWeb, anybody?). Why? Just because it cannot be used on an iPhone?
In understand, sometimes you have to kill a product to come out with a better product. It never happened with iWeb, and for iBooks Author, Pages is not a replacement, unless it provides the capability to create Enhanced iBooks.
Although the sad headline is
"Apple Discontinues iBooks Author",
it seems that they hide behind the even bigger and more devastating news
"Apple Discontinues the Enhanced iBooks Format"
Maybe I overlooked something, and if so, please let me know.
Edgar Rothermich
Completely agree!
As far as i understand we lose Scrolling View and now your book may be only LANDSCAPE or PORTRAIT orientation and NEVER BOTH. This is terrible… I produced only one book, but I chose iBook Author exactly cause it had this option. This was not fixed layout like a PDF and not floating layout like EPUB. And this was very cool and very useful for many people.
I'm very impressed by Apple… ;-(
PS: By the way, Catalina already don't support iBooks Author in fact…
iBooks Author discontinued
