how can i read ibooks on my mac

Like everyone else in the forums, I am just a user like yourself, but having followed this particular issue for over 2 years, I am very familiar with it. In all that time Apple has never explained why they could not release an iBooks app for OS X, despite countless postings here and via feedback asking for it. So nobody really knows why.

Perhaps they feel strongly that only the iPad/iphone is suitable for this function. But personally I would never recommend that a serious HS or College student rely on such a device rather than a laptop/desktop for general purpose computing. So I think they are dead wrong.

In general its a mistake to expect all Apple devices to be the same. There are lots of very important things OS X can do which I never expect to see on an iPad, because of the way Apple insists on limiting user access to iOS.

Greetings again Tom G.

Your wealth of knowlege on is subject very helpful. To have been following this issue for years now tells me that you've done your research and homework on this subject. Having said that I guess along with you and a host of others who want to be able to read their purchased digital books through what would no doubt be simple for Apple to release. I'll stand in line and wait too.

Thanks for your help on this subject. You've been a huge help, to me in not waisting time trying to find out if I missed something. If anything changes keep us posted 🙂

In the meantime, of course, we buy our books elsewhere and use Kindle, Nook, Kobo, or Googlebooks apps to read them on both iOS and OS X devices.

I just imported, and opened, all of my purchased ibooks in Adobe Digital Editions by browsing to the epub files in the iTunes folder. The books look really sharp! This may only be a feature of the latest ADE. To all that mentioned this workaround: thanks for the tip.

Dev.ON wrote:

I just imported, and opened, all of my purchased ibooks in Adobe Digital Editions

Could you provide some examples of the publishers for which this worked? It's handy to know which ones don't use DRM. O'Reilly, Take Control, Tor, and Double Dragon are ones I have heard of before.

I got lucky. Six of my ibooks were published by O'Reilly. I also have a Smashing Magazie book that says "unknown publisher". I now know which publishers are going on my favorites list.

Like a1 repair I also assummed that I could read books on my imac and iOS devices. I thought that the commercial they had saying " You start here and you can continue here" showing the macbook and iOS devices would also include the ibooks. It will be really convenient when, you are doing your programming homework, to be able to refer bac to the books without actually opening the book on another device. I want to be able to start my homework and look at the examples on the Macbook. So when I am at a Starbucks or the library I do not have to carry 2 devices. I have both iPad and iPhone, but there are times when I want to travel light to the library or Starbucks. Having the ability to read the books on the MacBook, would be a plus. At least for me.

After the realization that iBooks does not run on OS X devices and downloading "Kindle" for Mac and paying for several books twice (on iBooks and Kindle) to have access to books that I am reading on iOS6 as well as OS X.

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!

This is a work around for the lack of support of iBooks on the OS X platform, but it will keep you from having to buy several formats of the same books for each device.

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:

Google this..........Google Books Play

Google books play cannot read books purchased from the iBookstore that have DRM, which is what most people want to do.

This is really a shame for Apple! Why I can't see ibooks on all my devices? I paid, shame on you!

Now that Steve Jobs is gone, no one left to care. 😟

Very dissapointed that there is no iBooks for mac... Looks like Kindle is a much better for reading... You can read anywhere

They are losing a lot of customers in a silly way, I will no longer buy books on Apple store. Music is ok because I can listen my songs in any device.