How can I read my iBooks on my PC?

BrianForbesColgate wrote:

I had heard that more iOS apps were going to be added in Mountain Lion, such as the pre-released Messages.

Yes, they've published some info about new features, e.g.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/mountain-lion/features.html

without any mention of ibooks. I suspect it would probably be a separate app to download rather than an integral part of the OS.

drowningindata wrote:

Interesting to hear that iBooks Author exports PDF, I wonder how that works with the interactive, video and audio content.

I'm sure it all disappears, as noted in

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/ibooks-author-for-dummies-cheat-sheet.html

The iBookstore also doesn't host pdf books, if I remember right.

Apple has supposedly updated iBooks to support epub3 and makes specific reference to it in the latest iTunes Producer Guide

http://m10lmac.blogspot.com/2012/10/ibookstore-adds-language-support.html

By the way, the forum for iBooks Author discussions is at

https://discussions.apple.com/community/books/ibooks_author

and other forums for people producing books are at

https://discussions.apple.com/community/books

With the number of posts on this board with people saying they have iMac, MacBook, Mac Mini, or Mac Pro, with iOS in the signature, I don't know how much that requirement is going to help. It appears at least some people never pay attention to which Mac OS they are using, and only pay attention to which iOS they are using. If you are someone who does not know the difference between iOS and Mac OS, please give the iTunes store feedback at this link http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunes.html that the requirements should say "Does not work on Windows, Linux, or Macs."

Actually, with the Amazon Kindle books, you can use your Mac as well - you don't have to go to your "Windows side." You just us the Kindle Cloud Reader. Sign-in at a secure SSL site: https://www.read.amazon.com with a supported browser:

1. Google Chrome 11 and higher on Linux, MacOS X, and Windows.
2. Mozilla Firefox 6 and higher on Linux, MacOS X, and Windows.
3. Safari 5 and higher on MacOS X and Windows.
4. Safari on iPad with iOS 4.2 and Higher

and.........voila!....there are all of your book covers. You can keep all of your notes, bookmarks, highlights, etc.

I was looking for something similar for iBooks and have discovered it's a no go. Not even an app for the Mac or PC.

Unfortunateley it's not possible to read iBooks on a computer since they come with DRM on them. This DRM prevents the books from being opened on anything other than iPads, iPhones and iPod Touches with the iBooks application and your Apple ID. It seems unlikely that Apple would release such an application to read iBooks on a computer but so far they've made no announcements so it's still a possibility.

shadowhawk2008 wrote:

It seems unlikely that Apple would release such an application to read iBooks on a computer but so far they've made no announcements so it's still a possibility.

Actually it is highly surprising that Apple has not yet released iBooks for Mac laptops/desktops, since all the competing ereaders have done so, which makes buying books from them much more attractive. So I would think that a future release for OS X is very likely. A release for Windows seems a lot less so...

So, to be clear.

I CANNOT read an iBook purchased from iTunes on my 27 iMac?

However, I could download a book from amazon and read it on the Windows side of my Mac?

Could I download a book from amazon and read it on a Mac?

Thanks.

a c0mputer guru wrote:

so I'm thinking that maybe Apple's DRM is supported by a freeware ePub reader?

You are thinking wrong. When you have actually bought a book from the ibookstore with drm and read it with your Firefox or anything else on your Mac or PC, do come back here and tell us the name of the book.

Why do you think that you "purchased" the "free public domain stuff" you downloaded, or that it has DRM?

guru is correct, minus the supposition around "DRM' and "purchased" and "free domain stuff" which is not relevant ala correct or incorrect. the solution works and that is what the original post was requesting "can i read my iBook downloads on my PC"

btw- Tom Every book i have "purchased" has been opened by my firefox add-on... Acceptance is the answer to your problems

< Edited by Host >

crs Stanley wrote:

Every book i have "purchased" has been opened by my firefox add-on... Acceptance is the answer to your problems

Thanks for that info! Please provide the title of one of them so that I can try to duplicate your experience on my machine.

_PK_ wrote:

Every time I try to do what you are suggesting with one of my Purchased books I get the error message of

Your ePub-book is protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM). For this reason it can unfortunately not be opened.

That is what I see and that is the expected behavior. Someone who claims otherwise is either a) reading a free book, or b) reading books from one of the very few publishers who don't do DRM, like O'Reilly, or c) removing the DRM before trying to open the book.

karenfromtaipei county wrote:

If you use the Chrome browser, you can try their MagicScroll eBook Reader:

But that is useless for reading anything from the iBookstore that you pay for, which almost always have DRM, and that is what everyone wants to do here. It really only reads free books.

Yes, I see the problem. This is so typical of any of Apple's products - they simply do not mesh well with anything Microsoft or pc. I am now struggling with a similar problem accessing and updating Excel files on my iPad. Have you contacted Apple directly and asked for help? I think at this point they're the only ones who could do anything about this.

karenfromtaipei county wrote:

Yes, I see the problem. This is so typical of any of Apple's products - they simply do not mesh well with anything Microsoft or pc.

This particular problem is not really connected to Windows. You can't read paid-for iBooks on a Mac running OS X either. Only on an iOS device. Until Apple gets around to producing the necessary ereader software, the fix is to use other apps, like Kindle, Nook, Kobo, or Googlebooks.