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Not impressed! No edit info, no library management!

I really hope these can be fixed soon. As others have said, not having the ability to edit book info, which was so easy in iTunes, is terrible! And that iBooks moves all your books to a hard to find folder on your internal drive, and renames the files, equally bad.


It's great being able to read books on the mac for the first time, but everything else is a step backwards. In iTunes the books were stored neatly in the media folder and could be moved anywhere you wished with the rest of the library, and you could easily edit info, covers etc. Now it's all been taken away and we're stuck with having little to no options again.


I hope it can all be fixed soon!

iBook, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Oct 23, 2013 1:46 AM

Reply
173 replies

Oct 24, 2013 3:56 AM in response to Nicolas Online

exactly the same for me. This is the worst ever released application from Apple IMHO.


All my well kept and organised books and pdf's are now in disorder. Lost their category settings, their author setting and on top of all can't be edited in iBooks anymore and any further. No chance to edit wrong typings and to fill missing information (eg. authors, categories, ...).


I used to organise my papers (mostly PDF's) in iTunes like a document manager, the way I needed them on my various iOS devices and used them for work. I had groupings for my books like computing - networks, computing - guides, computing - iOS, computing - scripting, etc. .... now all is gone and lost. How am I supposed to organise over 1300 papers without any editing possibility (only sections can be assigned, no categories can be, neither can any information be edited/changed/corrected?


And on top of that all: HOW DO I BACKUP / RESTORE MY BOOKS from now on?


The books and PDF's are moved from the iTunes Library, where they were accessible and editable and where I could backup my whole media library on external NAS and storage. How will I get back my books/PDFs in the future if I setup my Mac Pro again from scratch or in case of a disaster (eg. failing disk)? Am I forced to use TimeMachine here?


There is no way to define by myselfs the place where the iBooks are stored on my system. No, they are all moved to some well hidden place into the users-library filling up my (until iBooks/Mavericks) system only SSD hard drive with hidden books. Is this the new strategy of Apple to try to make me under-age?


No editing, very limited organizing, no possibilty to define it's own storage-location, no backup/restore (no export/archive like in most other application like calender, addressbook, mail, etc. ....) what the **** is that?


I like most of Mavericks new additions but this here with iBooks is a mess and complete drawback for a user that liked to read his books on his iOS devices and was well organized.


And to be honest, I seriously consider to migrate back to OS X Mountain Lion just because of this ridiculous implementation of iBooks!

Oct 24, 2013 5:42 AM in response to Nicolas Online

What a nuisance to have to revert, but I may be there also. I had finally figured out how to get my books organized in iTunes and get the authors to show as well as categories.


Organizing pdf's is doubly hard when the authors are still writing for windows formats with all the underscores, lower case and don't include their names in the "get info". Now Apple is loosing it "ituitive processes" or at least common sense for going forward.


It is a shame that Apple equates "keeping up with the competition" with stepping back or over to less polished, intuitive and organized applications.


The "Mavericks" title had me excited, something really to look forward to and it was a big let down.

Oct 24, 2013 11:50 AM in response to Detroit_Soul

Detroit_Soul wrote:


Absolutely!


I need to have ability to control the location of my iBook library. This release is a disaster! One step forward, five steps back... How come this was not addressed during beta testing??? I have a hard time believing that none of the developers noticed this and did not raise objections... 😠


I have the same question. I searched for any issues online before upgrading and people who had supposedly beta-tested Mavericks didn't mention any significant issues and only gave Mavericks glowing reviews. I should have known enough to wait a few days 😟. I upgraded because I trusted Apple and in over 15 years of using Apple products never had a serious issue. Very disppointed. I don't believe Steve Jobs would have let something like this through.

Oct 24, 2013 2:10 PM in response to Nicolas Online

I was lucky, or perhaps forewarned so I installed Mavericks on an external disk which I then erased. The disaster that was (still is to some degree) iTunes 11 had me wasting hours in trying to find and use a way to go back to 10.7. Then came the horror that is iOS7, and I'm not talking functionality here because I was forewarned and never installed the **** thing (having friends and family who have been screaming **** after they were misled to install and regret it bitterly. I should mention that I have an iPhone running iOS6, an iPad 3 running iOS6 and I bought an iPad mini the day before iOS7 was released so I could avoid having iOS7 pre-installed.). I was hoping I could upgrade my Macbook and Macbook Pro to Mavericks but I will not do it because of the iBooks fiasko. I also have over 3500 books and articles in need of taging. I wonder if anybody at Apple ever read a book anymore. I don't suppose they are illiterate, probably they are too busy listening to iTunes radio and playing with the photos of their cute kids in iPhoto. I suddenly came to realise that Apple is catering only to teenagers and don't want customers like me. It is very sad but I suspect I won't be buying any more hardware from the once great company. I wish I would never had to say this after enjoying Apple's products for over 26 years. And the **** thing is I cannot find any good enough alternative either. Oh, how I miss Steve...

Oct 24, 2013 2:22 PM in response to kiripap

It is absolute fiasco indeed kiripap.


It's no wonder I'm still on a 2007 MacBook Pro (which came standard with a matte screen). The 2008 Apple Cinema Display in the still matte screen and a 2010 Mac Pro. It's a bit off topic, but it's true that it's like waking up in a nightmare. iOS 7 and the disaster that is their Music app (though music is what arguably got apple to a large part where they are today) took a HUGE step back in terms of fucntionality. Mavericks and the disaster of iBooks. The different looks of iOS 7 and Mavericks, the icons are all over the place, I wish I could find a way to revert to iOS 6 on my iPad and iPhone. No, there are no better alternatives than Apple out there. Hopefully my hardware will be able to last a bit longer for them to get their act together. But it's unbelievable how in the matter of a couple of months since iOS 7 and Mavericks, they have added a bunch of problems for me to solve rather than making my life easier.


it is a shame. We all miss you Steve.

Oct 25, 2013 1:52 AM in response to Kevin Edgecomb

UPDATE: You have to restart iTunes for it to work. Apologies Kevin, your technique DOES WORK.


Kevin,


I tried your technique, but nothing changes in iTunes. In other words iTunes itself still has no "Books" pane to see and manage your books, they now show up in the "Music" pane with your songs.


Killing the iBooks bookstoreagent process and deleting iBooks didn't change how iTunes deals with books.

Oct 25, 2013 2:25 AM in response to JudasI

@Kevin - That worked a treat, thank you. Had to restart iTunes to get the Books tab back, and not all the books were copied ( it seemed to pick up the old location under ~/Library, even though I'd duplicated that folder under ~/Downloads ), but I've now got everything back where it should be.


It's at times like this that I can't wait for publishers to realise that DRM doesn't work, and release books un-encumbered.

Not impressed! No edit info, no library management!

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