how can i read ibooks on my mac

a1repair wrote:

I was under the impression that Mountain Lion was supposed to change this and make it the same as an iphone/ipad.

None of the information ever released by Apple about what Mountain Lion would do ever mentioned ibooks. The OS is really irrelevant, you just need them to release an app.

I have searched high and low for a solution to this problem. The logic board on my company iPad just broke (out of warranty), leaving me without a way to read my technical books that I purchased through Apple bookstore.

I have a perfectly good Macbook Pro and external display that I can use. If I had know this ahead of time, I would've purchased the books from Amazon. I only purchased the books through the Apple bookstore because I liked the Apple reading application more. Now, I have to go purchase the same books from Amazon. This doesn't leave me with a good feeling. Even if I do get another iPad, no way will I be purchasing books from Apple.

None of the information ever released by Apple about what Mountain Lion would do ever mentioned ibooks. The OS is really irrelevant, you just need them to release an app.

Tom you sound well versed on this issue. Are you an Apple employee support guru?

All I know is that the marketing strategy Apple used to promote Mountain Lion was that all our Apple devices as well as iMac would in fact be the same. I remember telling my wife prior to the Mountain Lion release that I'd be able to play games & read books (my mistake) just like she has on her iTouch and iPad. I was as happy as a pig in a poke, the reason.... I mistakingly assumed that the abilty to read digital downloads purchased from iTunes/Apple would be part of Mountain Lion.

If what you say:

"you just need them to release an app."

is all it will take, why don't they? 😕

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 🙂

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.

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.

I think that Apple seems to see itself as a hardware product company, but iTunes, iCloud etc are cross platform software products. Somehow they need to come to terms with being a big brand in software products and those products should carry excellent design and just work on all Apple devices, at least. Some products act as a bridge to draw users of other platforms in - so long as it is a two-way bridge. For example, products like Dropbox make it really easy to use files on all of your platforms.

CAZ8 wrote:

I can read it on my mac. Just follow the steps on this youTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=2vQ5PWa161k

That is only good for books without DRM. There has never been any problem reading such books on a Mac. But neither Adobe Digital Editions nor any other app will read books with DRM, which is what most people want to do and why these discussion threads exist.

I'm switching to Kindle or ebooks on Amazon. Kindle app works great. Apple has their head up their *** once again with not being able to read purchased ebooks across all Apple platforms. For example the iSC2 chapters for CISSP cannot be read on the Mac from what I can tell. I don't want to lug my iPad when I have my MacBook Pro with me in order to read

I have a Retina pro 15 that cost almost three thousand and I can't buy and read ibooks on it. This is not only extrememly dissapointing and infuriating, it's extremely embarrassing. I don't dare mention this to my friends who all use windows. I would never hear the end of it.

I thought Mountain Lion would certainly bring this feature. Since it hasn't I have bought zero ibooks and I never will buy them until the app is on my mac. My Kindle app also looks horrible on my retina screen so this puts me in a bind. Sometimes it feels like Apple doesn't really care about it's customers, other times it feels like they really do. I'll let you guess which time I feel this appears to be.

I bought an ipad for my mother, and I thought about a new ipad mini or fourth gen retina pad for me. Without ibooks on my mac I am not even considering buying either. I keep thinking I will see it in the app store any day, but I never do. This is beyond sad and ridiculous. How can Apple be thought of as a good company when not even ibooks has cross platform capability.

Oh yea, I just remembered I bought applecare so my computer cost more than three thousand. Still no ibooks, YIKES!!!!

Too add insult to injury, iBooks 3.0 that was just released does not address this issue of reading DRM pubs on a Mac. Looking into this issue further, it turns out we don't purchase digital books, we license them. Unlike a hard copy we don't own our purchases.

I don't like the fact that I have multiple iOS6 devices - some for work and some for home and since I use different Apple ID's not only can't I share DRM but I can't share apps I've purchased from my personal iPad to my work iPhone. And I'm not going to purchase an App for each device.

I just thought of another thing that is really hurting Apple. Many people ask me about owning a mac since I and no one else they know have them. I tell them honestly that I like macs but their are flaws which will seriously infuriate you and dissapoint you. The ibooks flaw is the shocking example I tell people of. The look of shock accompanied by silence I receive says it all. You can guess what happens. Not one of those people so far has switched from a windows computer over to a mac. Why would they, for the money and hype this kind of thing is almost to the point of being scam like misrepresentation of Mountain Lion. It really is almost dishonest considering how Mountain Lion was going to bridge the divide between platforms supposedly.

If Ibooks comes out on the Mac platform and has retina support then my recommendations will change. Otherwise they won't and I simply won't feel bad that Apple is not getting those sales. They are doing this, not me. I am simply telling people the truth which apple is border line not doing with their hyping of Mountain Lion cross support. The cross support is simply not there for the most part. Hopefully apple will man up and do what they should be doing in order to justify the claims they make and the prices they charge.

I will say that I had an air 13" with applecare and broke the screen. They fixed it for free. This greatly impressde me and is probably why I have stuck with them despite these other issues. Lack of ibooks cross support is even eroding my respect for my screen being fixed. It's simply not right that they have done nothing about this.