how can i read ibooks on my mac

It really is almost dishonest considering how Mountain Lion was going to bridge the divide between platforms supposedly

Thanks, a1repair.

I just found out that Kindle has a cloud reader I can use in safari. Most of my books are already on Kindle so this works good for me. If apple had come out with an ibooks app I would have possibly switched even though these books would not be on there. I also would have considered an ipad or ipad mini.

Maybe I will look into the Fire HD or the new surface. It runs ms office which I need. The keyboard also looks really nice. Who knows, maybe all of this will get me back to microsoft. I do like amazon including for movies. I do not care for itunes since even on my fifteen inch screen the icons and text are tiny and painful to decipher.

It's a miracle apple does so well when things like this occur so frequently. Of course they do many things very well, and this makes it so hard to comprehend the things they do so poorly and weirdly. Itunes is bazarre with the tiny icons and text. Go figure!!!!

How about this?

Bill

http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2012/10/25/pock-releases-new-mac-app-brings-mo bile-reading-experience-to-the-desktop/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&u tm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheDigitalReader+%28The+Digital+Reader%29#.UIqxnbTiD7A

I never imagined that this was true.

iBooks has lost me as a customer. Kindle and others offer so much more flexibility, it makes me wonder why Apple would continue this.

Kodak largely invented digital photography, but didn' t impliment it because they didn't want to cut into the profitable film business. It never occurred to them that there was competition out there.

Maybe a similar situation for the iBooks division.

One thing about iBooks that is far better then Kindle is that it reads epubs, of which I have a large number. Kindle does not read epub format, which I guess is their marketing decision. I have an epub reader app for my Mac (iReader) and on my phone I just use iBooks.

The sole thing I am missing is that there is no way to page-sync the two. It would be handy to have all devices know what page I'm on in my current book.

Of course, free, non-DRM epubs are just an annoyance for both Amazon and Apple.

At ZDNet, the author is of the opinion that Apple may never release a reader for Mac. Read the article here (I guess, if he's right, that puts to rest any questions we have but only puncuates our need to bring this to Apple direct):

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/apple/why-ibooks-will-never-come-to-mac-os/12067

Jules1857 wrote:

At ZDNet, the author is of the opinion that Apple may never release a reader for Mac. Read the article here (I guess, if he's right, that puts to rest any questions we have but only puncuates our need to bring this to Apple direct):

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/apple/why-ibooks-will-never-come-to-mac-os/12067

That's an interesting perspective, but I truly hope (and believe) he's wrong. I think people want to use their devices interchangably (as much as possible, within the limitations of the hardware), and Apple seems to be heading in that direction.

FWIW, as stated in the article, here's why I think Apple WILL release iBooks for Mac:

"Had I purchased my ebook from the iBookstore, I'd have to switch from my production workstation to my iPad each time I wanted to look something up. This kind of workflow is this unpractical, cumbersome and makes researching ebooks on my Mac completely impossible."

I couldn't have said it better myself!

botro wrote:

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.

Exactly! Barnes and Noble was recently accused of expiring any ebooks purchased when the credit card with which it was purchased expired. This is a form of planned obsolescence. There was an article on NPR not that long ago regarding this very thing. Students who downloaded textbooks found that the ebooks were expiring as soon as 18 months in. You never really own anything you buy electronically, not like when you had the genuine article in your possesion. Progress,,,huh.

Greetings friends,

There are third party readers such as Calibre where you can read books you bought from itunes.

1. Install Calibre,

2. Find your purchased ebook in your itunes folder (For me its Music>iTunes>iTunes Media>Books>)

3. Right click on the book. Open with Calibre.

Though this comes nowhere close to kindle's synchronized reading where you can switch devices. Hence I strongly recommend buying books off Kindle than rather overpriced iTunes store.

--

Manu Sharma

diabloSharma wrote:

There are third party readers such as Calibre where you can read books you bought from itunes.

Neither Calibre nor any other app will read paid-for ebooks from the iBookstore with DRM (or any .ibooks Textbooks), which is what most people want to do and why these threads exist.

There has never been any problem to read epub ebooks without DRM on your Mac or any other platform.

Tom,

I am afraid you are going to have to have "External readers will not read iBooks content with DRM" tattooed on the inside of some posters' eyelids and I suspect they will still not get it. There are a number of DRM cracking/hacking programs around but they are pretty flaky and many of the download sites will give you a free worm or trojan along with your download, as a special offer, so best avoided.

Particulalry for the student and technical books markets, Apple are really shooting themselves in the foot with this approach and driving folks into the arms of Amazon, Samsung, Microsoft et al. However occasional block headed stupidity arising from arrogance, has never stopped Apple taking an eccentric and obtuse postion in the past (Blu-Ray just for one example) and I doubt if they will change their minds in this case. I had hoped that this was one of the areas that Tim Cook might have shaken the company up but there is no evidence of that to date. In fact with the debacle of "Maps" it seems the opposite may be the case.

Wilson

WilsonLaidlaw wrote:

I am afraid you are going to have to have "External readers will not read iBooks content with DRM" tattooed on the inside of some posters' eyelids and I suspect they will still not get it.

Yes, a surprising number seem to never read DRM books and thus don't understand what the problem is, so they propose the same non-solutions over and over again.

I agree Apple's failure to provide an ibooks app for OS X (or license its DRM to others for that purpose) makes no sense. Anyone in college who is using a iPad instead of a MacBook is probably not studying anything that will provide much in the way of employment after graduation.

Tom,

I totally agree about your comment on studying just with an iPad.

It is like the group of college graduates asked to comment on an object. The engineering graduate asks "how was it made": The science graduate asks "what is the basic theory underlying its operation": The accountancy graduate asks "how cheaply can the object be made": The arts graduate asks "do you want double fries with it".

Wilson

botro wrote:

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.

Actually, it's quite easy to share your purchased apps, ibooks, and music with other iOS devices; simply go to settings, scroll down to iTunes & App Stores, click on the Apple ID, and sign out, then sign back in with an Apple ID that you used to purchase the stuff. Works for putting apps on more than one mac, for apps purchased through the mac app store.

I'm guessing here, but could the explanation for this strange gap simply have to do with the technology of unpacking, decrypting, and displaying protected information on the screen? Clearly, at some point between “file containing protected book” and “reading it”, the information has to be decrypted or otherwise unlocked. On OS/X, which of course is a powerful UNIX derivative, a DRM ebook owner with root access would have the maximum of possibilities of trapping the unprotected content and unlocking it. This is much more difficult on iOS devices, or so it seems to me. It's possible that this concession was necessary in order to get publishers to let Apple sell their ebooks, or at least maybe it was part of the negotiations.