Every Single Problem with iBooks for Mac

I was actually reffering to the UI elements and not the functions. Apple is not consistent. Apple uses the same layout for Calendar in iOS and Mac OS X but other applications don't share the same visual language.

What I meant is that some Mac OS X parts and apps were modified in concordance with the new flat design of iOS 7 but not all of them and not system wide. Some apps and menu's still have the old skeuomorphic elements. Take a look at the Mail (or Safari) icon in Mavericks, iCloud web interface and iOS 7. They should be consistent (the same).

So don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Apple should make a hybrid OS that works on both but only that Apple should be consistent in the visual (UI) language in all her services. Furthermore, I think iTunes is a mess and Apple should split the sync side of it an make it a dedicated Mac OS X App (service) made only for this purpose (syncing) like it once was (iSync) and let iTunes do only what it's best in, in my opinion managing and playing music. To achieve consistency Apple should also make dedicated apps for all parts of iTunes (like they did with iBooks), so a dedicated app for each category: Podcastst, iOS apps, Movies and TV Shows. Each of those 4 dedicated apps would have access to their own store just like iBooks only displays the iBookstore. At this moment I personally think it's a mess browsing all those diferent stores from within iTunes.

Sorry for being late, I was out. I understand how frustrating is the case. After the first time the iBooks appeared as an application several problems came to light. I hope you do have a backup of your books... just to be able to start from the scratch. Before anything else, where are NOW your books? Try the excellent "Find Any File" applications (App Store) searching as root user (look the preferences) for files visible AND hidden ending ".epub" or any other extension your books should have. If you find several files listed with alphanumeric unintelligible name, it means your books have been translated into a hidden special folder. A lot of discussions are in this blog as to finding it. This folder should be at:~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks.

If that is the case, AND YOU HAVE BACKUP of books, delete all these items, including their folder(s).

You DID eliminate iBooks, did you? You should have done it using an app for it (I have AppCleaner) to be sure that no iBooks related file remained in your Mac.

Once you make sure the books have been eliminated, I suggest:

1. Clean any cache file in the mac (for all users), both system and users. Several applications do that, see MacUpdate. The latest is "Yosemite Cache Cleaner".

Repair permissions and run all periodic cleaning.

2. It would be possible your Mac's directory contains errors. To ascertain that and repair it, I use DiskWarrior. This is a bit complex and expensive exercise. try to ignore this point, at first.

3. See one of my first posts in this blog: Every Single Problem with iBooks for Mac (that was 2 "system upgrades" ago, but nothing should have changed for ibooks since then) and try to follow the steps listed there.

4. Restart your Mac.

5. Launch iTunes. Click the ••• at its top-left. See if a list similar to my one appears:

(Sorry, it's Italian, like me) That should appear if iTunes went back to its original way, even if the books section is empty. Then you can add your backed-up books to iTunes.

Last but not least, If your mac is connected to any other mac or external disk containing the iBooks application, iTunes will force to use use it vanishing all your effort.

Again, good luck.

Franco.

Yes and if you attempt to consolidate the files again it copies them for a second time inside the Downloads folder. As often you use this function, as many duplicates it creates on your hard disk. This must be a bug, I reported it to Apple through the web feedback form for iBooks but feel free to also give feedback by using the link below:

https://www.apple.com/feedback/ibooks.html

More feedback means it gets to a higher priority on Apple's to do list.

Ok So I have figured out some kind of workaround to get my books onto my Ipad with a minimum of fuss. It took an hour to add 3 books, but I think I can do this without getting my blood pressure up too high next time.

Just to be clear I am NOT happy with Mavericks, but I've upgraded and I think I can make it work without downgrading.

I am on a MacBook Pro and use Calibre to manage all of my ebooks and metadata.

I did the following things

In Finder

Created a new favorite folder called "iPad books" This folder is located on my desktop and on the sidebar in Finder

In Calibre

1. import the books
2. update the metadata and save
3. At the top under the Connect/Share icon, there is an option to connect to a folder.
4. Connected Calibre to the "iPad Books" Folder
5. Sent the books I wanted to add to my iPad to that folder

In IBooks

Imported the books from the "iPad Books" folder

In ITunes

synced my iPad and the books were added.

Afterwards, I deleted the copies of the epub files from the "iPad Books" folder so I didn't re-import into iBooks next time

Before I figured this out, I tried to send the books directly to the new iBooks folder hidden deep in the Library. It didn't work and my books didn't show up in iBooks. Calibre showed they were "On the device" but they weren't there.

The only way to add them is to import them into iBooks.

Okay, I have a solution that works for getting books onto your iPad. I used to use Calibre and connect through iTunes. That no longer works.

I still use Calibre to manage the books. Basic steps are:

1. Get book from whatever source
2. Add book to calibre
3. Convert book to epub
4. Export epub version of book to a folder
5. Open the folder in Finder
6. Double Click on the book to open it in iBooks
7. Move the book to whatever collection you want
8. Connect your iPad to your computer
9. In iTunes choose to sync the book just as you always did.

It took me a while to discover, but it seems to work flawlessly now.

You can also bypass iBooks entirely by

1. Emailing the book to yourself as an attachment
2. Opening the email on your iPad
3. Telling the iPad to open the attachment with iBooks

Hope that helps those of you that have had the frustrations I have.

Steven

@ S_eye, Yes, that is the agent to kill. However, it will be re-created, if you leave iBooks for Mac applicationand its library sitting in your Mac; it seems likely that iTunes searches for them when lauched. Hence, the trick is to convince iTunes those files are not available. You should completely delete both application and supporting files. There are several shareware utlilities around capable to do that, such as TinkerTool System, AppCleaner and other.

Assuming you have a pre-Mavericks backup of your books (and, if applicable, for each username), follow this method:

1. Prepre the mac for cleaning: rebuild permissions, run periodic maintenace scripts, rebuild file links, delete system cache, applications cache and user caches, etc... the free Onyx utility will do all of these for you in a bunch of minutes.
2. Kill the process via Activity Monitor.
3. Delete completely the iBooks library, including its folder (is an invisible and protected folder, deep inside each user folde. The library includes all books converted Y iBooks for Mac... but you have your bacups available, am I right?. If your Mac has more than one registered user, points 1 to 7 must be repeated for each user; you might use FindAnyFile (shareware, at Apple AppStore) to locate file to delete; if so, select them, right-click on selection, choose immediate deletion; don't launch iTunes and/or iBooks (see point 4). Keep curiosity out of you.
4. Logoff & logon back to make sure that the agent is no longer under your username. Search for it, to confirm it has not been recreated (this happens every time you launch iTunes and/or iBooks) If so, start over again.
5. Restart your Mac.
6. Launch iTunes: a "Books" library should re-appear in the leftiest column, provided your iTunes preferences are set up to do so.
7. Copy your pre-Mavricks backup files into the iTunes Books library.
8. When copying is finished, restart your Mac: voilà, your books are listed as they were before the DOWNgrade to Mavericks, included the metadata you originally defined for each book, visible in the information menu for each selected file.. Syncing to iPad is back available in Itunes. Now you better resync to your devices, since the procedure outlined before has changed the modification date of every ebook file.
9. Now you cannot read your books from Mac. Use a specific application to do so (I choose BookReader, see AppStore). Double-cliking on the file in iTunes library will not open it. Sorry, you should follow the tedious way: select a file, right-click it, choose "show in finder". In Finder view select the file, right-click, choose get info, open with... or use Automator to make a complete action.

What if you (mmmpf) do not have the valuable backups? Well, before cleaning your mac you can at least recover those recorded in your iPad. ICopyBot is one of the utilities which permits to copy a selected content from iPad to elsewhere. If not all books are in your iPad, you better sync all of them to iPad before getting rid of it to be able to copy then in human readable format back to Mac in a folder of your choice. It would take a considerable patience to reconstruct File by file the Ibook mess but if you have no other chance...

All that worked for me; it takes more explaining than doing but I tought a detailed explanation might be useful to other angry mac users. My best wishes: good luck!

I don't know if this has been posted before or not, but I found a simple solution to ditching iBooks and returning iTunes to it's proper behavior.

Go -> Applications

1. Find the iBooks app.
2. Select "Show Package Contents"
3. Rename "Contents" to "old.Contents"
4. Reboot -- iBooks won't start and iTunes appears to be normal again.

Now when I open iTunes and my iPad is connected, I can simply drag and drop a new book as before.

I hope this helps somebody

@bookarts

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 categorie 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!

I kept my iTunes folder on an external drive and I noticed that all of my Books are still in its folder on that drive. I can re-add books from the Itunes Media > Books folder back into iBooks.

Like Nicolas said, you can then go to your iPad in iTunes and check books you want to synch. A lot of hassle, IMHO.

Please send feedback to Apple about this mess:

iBooks menu > Provide iBooks Feedback

All the books are now under this path:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books

But now they're renamed with an ID, so it's hard to tell which book it is.

I too, am so upset with this half baked Mavericks and iBooks Apple calls themselves releasing. It's like they hate metadata. They already prevent us from editing any of our metadata on iOS, let alone viewing it!

<Edited by Host>

I installed Mavericks only to dongrade back to Mountain Lion after spending an hour with iBooks. Am I right in also adding that once the .epubs are imported to iBooks there is no way of getting them back out of it?

It looks like you could be right. I have been obsessive about listing and saving my books, consequently have several copies here and there, hopefully I have them all.

A lot of the sites where you purchase your epubs will let you redownload more than once. Hopefully that will help you recover.