Every Single Problem with iBooks for Mac

Thank you, you are correct. NOWHERE in the iBooks help does it mention this...

In order to sync your own books, non-purchased books, or PDF's from your computer to a device such as an iPad or iPhone into the iBooks application on your device - you STILL must do it in iTunes.

Plug in your device, in the iTunes screen select your device (iPad, etc.), click on the BOOKS tab, then find and click the box next to the item then click on SYNC.

Your own books, non-purchased books, PDF's, etc., DO NOT sync via iCould.

(restated your answer to help those who are searching for this problem)

There must be a lot of frustrated people out there.

Hands down one of the very worst updates I've ever seen from Apple - horrible.

Steve must be rolling in his grave. (Ironically just watched "Jobs" last night...this iBooks app goes against all he stood for, except ways of making $$ from the iStore.)

Back to Mountain Lion. I tried everything, but could not get the Books category to show up in iTunes. I even used AppZapper (like AppDelete) to delete everything it found having to do with iTunes, except iTunes itself, and moving the whole iTunes folder out of Music. Nada. Oh well. 8 minutes left on a clean install of Mountain Lion...well...8 minutes and 1 day to get it all straightened out. My MacBook needed cleaning anyway. Thanks for wasting my time, Apple! Feedback left.

Note to all...

There is NO MORE "Books" category in iTunes - but - there IS a BOOKS tab in iTunes when you click on your device once it is connected to iTunes (with a wire), and see the tabs under that device.

If you have your own book or pdf - you can add it to your device in several steps: first by dragging it into the new iBooks app on your computer - then go to iTunes where it will show up under the Books tab when you click on and select your connected device. Then you have to click the box next to the book or pdf to select it. THEN you have to click on SYNC to get it to your device.

And - it sounds like this may not be working for everyone...

It's crazy confusing, takes several steps, and a mega-nightmare - epic fail from Appple on this one.

Oh! But I never lost that "tab" for my iPad. And synching seemed to be OK, except it refused to leave the book about the making of the movie Lincoln on my iPad. It kept getting unchecked in the Books tab. It's probably because he was a Repulican. 😉 I was trying to get back the Books category...and now I have it! There's even a Books checkbutton in the preferences! I like cats better than cold California salt water. 🙂

I just had a look at the new deep rooted iBooks folder that can be found in the following location:

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

There are several folders in the iBooks folder:

Books

Downloads

Now here is a weird thing, if you go to iTunes > File > Library and choose the option "Organize Library" iTunes puts a copy of the ebooks from the folder "Books" into the folder "Downloads". The books "Downloads" folder have the old, legible, structure.

This could be a feature, but the problem is that if you use the "Organize Library" option again, iTunes puts again a new copy in the "Downloads" folder. At the end you end up by having lots of copies of the ebooks in the "Downloads" folder.

I still dont't understand how the new ebooks management works, any help to understand it better would be appreciated.

Among mavy suggestions, your post looks more attractive to me. However, given my ignorance, HOW DO KILL THE PROCESS?

Can't find any command to do that, and I'm afraid not to be able to use the terminal to do that.

Might you be so kind to show a step-by-step how-to-do?

Many thanks.

Thanks for your help. The adjustment took me several hours since I've accumulated more than 4,300 books personally crafted... and maintained in different ways in two macs and two ipads, for their different uses.

Now I'm back to the originals.

In many, many years of use of appreciable Apple products, hard & soft, this is the first time I have been so much frustrated by a piece of software raw, useless, so badly made and lacking any kind of user friendliness and control. To say that this version of iBook is just bare-bone would be very complimentary! Cannot believe that a firm world-wide known for the elegance of its refined products might have had such a flop!

One point that does not seem to be mentioned in the posts to comment this "uncompleted product": did anyone noticed that after the conversion to iBook the size on the files included in the book library increased EACH by a ratio of about 2.5 times the original one? To me, by going back to iTunes that reprented a gain of more than 2 GIGABYTE!

Hey, Apple, if you read me (?), throw this product in the waste basket and start over from the scratch. And, please, complete also the iPad version. You cannot believe that effectively cataloguing a large collection of books is just a bare listing of titles, author and genre!

Bluevoice, thanks again.

Just wanted to comment that after following the instructions above I did have my iTunes books restored. The problem was that all the metadata from PDF docs was gone. Also, the pointers were still looking at the iBooks directory. To fix these, I did the following...

1. Restored the "Books" diresctory in the iTuned Media folder from a backup.

2. Deleted thre iBooks directory including the books and downloads folder

3. Using Time Machine, I restored my iTunes Library file from just before the iBook debacle

4. Logged out and back in... all my books and tags were back to the way they were

Hello,

here was my solution (after countless other tricks which did nothing) to reset my iBooks app in OS X and get my purchases from the iTunes store in there.

*** very simple walkthrough ***

1- delete all books from iBooks on OS X

2- delete all books from iBooks on iOS devices

3- sign out of iTunes for OS X

4- sign out of iBooks for OS X

5- sign out of iTunes on all iOS devices (from Settings/iTunes & App Store)

6- delete everything in /Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books on OS X

7- open Disk Utility on OS X and repairs all permissions

8- turn off/on all iOS devices, don't connect to iTunes yet

9- reboot OS X computer

10- open iTunes on iOS, re-enable iTunes & App Store account (log back in)

11- verify that nothing is left in folder mentioned in step 6 above

12- open iTunes on OS X, do the same

13- opne iBooks on OS X, do the same

14- add some PDFs in iBooks on OS X

15- download some previous purchases from iBooks on OS X

16- sync OS X with iOS using iTunes

Voilà. Step 15 did not work for me until now. Everything appears to be under control now.

Hope this works for y'all!

Peace out,

Dr S.

I found a solution that worked for me.

I had books that were not purchased from iTunes and some that were in my iPhone iBooks and they were not in iBooks on my macbookair.

Connect iPhone to iTunes ( I used wifi sync).

I went into itunes - then File / Devices - select Transfer purchases from iPhone.

voila after restarting iBooks they appeared on my Macbookair.

hope that helps others.

iBooks destroyd my whole library which has taken me years to built up. Over 900 titles are missing. Cloud shows the same title over 20 times with hundreds of books and I am unable do download and restore them. iBooks on my iPad is extremely necessary for my work as for nearly most of us. I am using Mac now since 1988 and this software is definetively the worst Apple ever made. This will cost me countless hours to solve.

My final conclusion is: I will downgrade back to Lion and definetely wait a long time of careful researches before upgrading ever again.