how can i read ibooks on my mac

MacinFan1 wrote:

There is a FREE solution that allows you to read your iBooks purchases on an OS X device (MacBook Air), the application "BookReaderLight" is in the Apple App Store and it works great!

No, neither this nor any other app will let you read books purchased from the iBookstore with DRM, which is what most people want to do and why this discussion thread exists. There has never been any problem reading books without DRM on OS X.

As it says on the BookReaderLight page in the app store:

coachNtrack wrote:

No one could have told me that I would not be able to read books i purchased for ibooks on my mac book pro !

Apple does try to inform buyers of this limitation via a "requirements" notice that appears on every purchase page in the iBookstore, but in practice it is not that effective....

First off, I completely and utterly agree with the general consensus here that Apple really needs to produce an iBooks app for the Mac (and Windows).

I have never bought any books from the iBookstore and never plan to because of DRM. I choose not to support DRM if at all possible. I absolutely despise DRM restricted content. Back when Amazon started offering DRM free MP3s I switched to buying only from them (as did many others, I'm sure), and I think Apple got the message and quickly followed suit. Now practically all of iTunes store music is DRM free, and I have since switched back to buying music from Apple for convenience sake.

So even though my books are DRM free, and I can use Adobe Digital Editions to read my epubs (bought from O'Reilly.com, etc.) I don't really want to because I prefer the features of iBooks. I have an iPad which I use for reading (among other things), and I like how I can highlight text and bookmark pages, and those stay synced to my iPhone as well. It's probably just a matter of time before they add this functionality to the Mac too.

I'm going to head over to: http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html and submit my feedback to let them know this is important to me. Since Apple doesn't read these forums, but (presumably) does read their feedback, I ask everyone who has taken the time to post (or read) here, to also go and submit their feedback to Apple.

aquariusrick wrote:

Back when Amazon started offering DRM free MP3s I switched to buying only from them (as did many others, I'm sure), and I think Apple got the message and quickly followed suit.

Bear in mind that DRM itself exists because the publishers demand it, not Apple. Even as an individual, when you put your book in the iBookstore, it is up to you to tell Apple whether you want DRM or not. So getting DRM free content means convincing the major publishers to go that route, like O'Reilly has.

In the case of music, Apple was in fact a strong advocate for DRM-free content:

http://www.apple.com/fr/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/

Of course Apple's unwillingness to license its particular DRM scheme to others does mean that nobody can create an app to read DRM'd iBooks on non-iOS platforms.

I don't see, why if there are so many people who would rather read an iBook on their Mac, why can't they write their favorite author, and pay them to make the book in a format that can be readable using iBook Author itself? It runs on Mac OS X, and is used to create the iBooks. Surely if it is that much of an issue that you want the book, that might not be available in a Mac OS X format, you'd be willing to pay the author to make it available that way. The easiest way for them to do this, is release to book "source code" if you like to call it that, and let anyone willing to pay for it read it directly on iBook Author. The author wouldn't have to reformat the file at all, could send you a zipped copy that you agree not to distribute, and you can read it. Why make life harder on the author to make multiple formatted copies, when they have a working format they can distribute it as.

a brody wrote:

I don't see, why if there are so many people who would rather read an iBook on their Mac, why can't they write their favorite author, and pay them to make the book in a format that can be readable using iBook Author itself?

One reason is that the license conditions for using iBooks Author with its special formats require you to sell via the iBookstore if you are going to charge for your book.

Have you tried reading an .ibooks format book in its .iba form and found that a good substitute?

Tom Gewecke wrote:

aquariusrick wrote:

I truly believe we will see it within the next year or two.

Yes, no problem when our laptops and desktops switch over to iOS:-)

Called it!

http://www.apple.com/osx/preview/?cid=wwa-us-kwg-mac#ibooks

I have an iPhone, iPad and iMac. As I noted in a posting on http://www.apple.com/feedbak, it makes no sense that I can read Kindle and Nook books on all of these platforms but cannot read iBooks on my iMac. I simply do not buy the "not technologically feasible" argument. If Amazon and Barnes & Noble (!!) can figure this out then you know that Apple can too. It is just a matter of putting some resources into it. As a commercial matter what they are doing is also stupid. I would be happy to buy books on iBooks just as I buy music on iTunes, but until they fix this problem the only books I am "purchasing" from Apple are the free ones. All the other books (you know, the ones I actually pay money for) are bought from Amazon or B&N. Arrogant and stupid on the part of Apple - and a great way to lose loyal customers. Looking at the latest data on market share Android is going up and up. It would be a terrible shame for Apple arrogance to lead them to oblivion the same way as RIM arrogance (remember the days of "Crackberry") did the trick for BlackBerry. At some point, such as very likely is the case for the former RIM, now BlackBerry, it will be too late to recover. Apple is NO where near that now - but this should not even be something anyone remotely thinks of.

Apple - you are idiots. Let us read a book on our Macs too. Arrogance reigns

Unfortunately, it's true. There isn't an iBook reader for OS X than can open DRMs paid-for books from the iBookstore. You would think Apple would fix this oversight. 😟 You can download them and pay for them on your Mac, but you can't read them.

I think the problem lies in the difference between the iDevices and Mac. Macs don't have touch screens. (even though they have touch pads. So, there would have to be some way to provide the same level of interface on the Mac (using the touch pad, maybe?) as is available on iDevices. If Apple would produce such an application it would be a great thing since I have a Macbook Pro as well as a Mac Pro with a touch pad. So, I have hardware that _should_ enable an app to use gestures.

But until Apple produces said app (which probably takes a sales incentive from the iDevices which they also want to sell) for Macs, I guess we're stuck. I don't have an iPad and my iPhone screen just isn't something I want to try viewing full pages of text on. I'm not going to buy an iPad just to read iBooks. No matter what Apple thinks.

With Steve Jobs gone, I fear Apple is going to lose its way again by letting Wall Street run the company into the ground. Most business people have no clue how to run technology companies. Especially not one like Apple. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. More for Apple than for hopes of being able to read iBooks on my Mac/Macbook.

Yep. The same here. I was googling for an answer and got here. Oh well, it looks like the choice is easy - to buy ebooks via Amazon. I already got the Kindle App and was a bit hesitant to buy books because I did not like the scrolling in the Kindle App. The same books that I wanted were available in iTunes, albeit at about 20-40% more than what Amazon wanted. I would likely have paid that if I could read them on my Macbook Air. Without that, my money goes to Amazon (buying 2 Agile/Scrum books at $19.95-$24.95 each. iTunes lists them at $35.99).

Why, oh why?! I really do not like the Kindle app. Why would they push their users toward a flawed competitor product on their own devices? I would like to be coding as well as reading on my glorious 27" iMac. I do not want to have to switch over to reading or looking up references on a separate device. I, too, would pay more for publications on iTunes vs Amazon. This smells like a fiscal decision - I'd love to see the justification for this. What ever happened to the Application Ecosystem concept? I want my data in the cloud and accessible by ALL my devices, which includes my iMac. <sigh>

Hi Elin,

I have just purchased an ibook and have Adobe Digital Editions, I think I downloaded this for free from Adobe quite a while back. I dragged and dropped from itunes the book I purchased into Adobe Digital Editions which I have on my dock and it opened fine and is readable. I hope this helps all those out there having trouble. So yes you can read ibooks purchased on your Mac 🙂

nicsta.J wrote:

I have just purchased an ibook and have Adobe Digital Editions

Neither Adobe Digital Editions nor any other app can be used to read paid-for books from the iBookstore with DRM, which is what most people want to do and why these discussion threads exist.