Every Single Problem with iBooks for Mac

Perhaps creating a page on a well known social media site might make Apple take more notice and do what they should have done weeks ago, admit that iBooks is a bust and that they are making every effort to fix things.

When I read the posts, it is clear to me that I was not using the previous iBooks version to its full capability. I am just somebody that wants to read my books across various devices while maintaining my notes. The program is so bad, that I can't even do that.

Just to let people know, Mossberg left the WSJ:

Mr. Pogue’s departure comes as technology coverage has become increasingly prized by media companies. Only weeks ago, Walter S. Mossberg, a leading reviewer of new devices, said he would be leaving The Wall Street Journal to start a technology writing and conference business with Kara Swisher, who is leaving AllThingsD. The business will be backed by new partners.

I had problem #1, but then I realized there is a way:

1. connect ipad to itunes via usb

2. on the ipad screen in itunes, go to the "on this ipad" tab

3. Click "books" in the left column to select it, then drag your epub from the Mac to the right side of the window.

Eventually, this book shows up in iPad iBooks on the bookshelf.

Luckily I never trusted Apple "auto-filing", may-be because I experienced too many OS changes over the years. So the PDF issue is not one for me as my documents, including PDFs, are filed the "old fashion way" via Finder.

Now I do find the new design just awful, the Orange icon, disgrasful, and had to sync all the books and pdfs to see it working properly, after my books were no more accessible on my iPad.

Not happy of what clearly seems to be another Apple fiasco!

I think iOS is still rock solid for its simplicity and ease of use (so no need for an Android tablet). Unfortunately Mac OS X is lagging behind, the Mac OS X still doesn't benefit of the interface overhaul in iOS 7. Some parts of it yes but not the whole. There is no consistency in the interface and functions any more.

Apple clearly priorizes iOS, while Mac OS X is falling more and more behind.

the Mac OS X still doesn't benefit of the interface overhaul in iOS 7.

I don't really agree. Take as an example Windows 8. Microsoft tried to get a desktop operating system as close as possible to a mobile OS. The result is that Windows 8 is not well suited for desktop productivity and works poorly on a tablet.

Apple didn't make the mistake of turning Mac OS X into a hybrid OS not well suited for anything.

The real problem with iOS is that it is relying too much on desktop applications like iTunes for managing contents.

@S-eye: no problem and thanks! I really hope Apple will solve some of those problems in an upcoming update or the new Mac OS X 10.10 release next year. But Mac OS X is clearly not Apple's focus at this moment otherwise they'd put the necessary resources in getting Mavericks to the next level.

As I see it Mavericks is Apple's Windows Vista visually, an in between operating system that visually is only half ready. I'm also under the impression that Apple changes things gradually to let users adapt to the new flat interface. Otherwise users might complain, just like the iOS 7 users that want the wooden bookshelf back in the iOS iBooks app because they can't adapt to the clean interface.

I do appreciate the fact that that Mavericks is a very fast operating system, and that it runs well even on older hardware which is a plus.

I subscribe all of your commnts... and have more additional ones! To be as clear as possible, iBooks for Mac is the worst application ever seen being issued by Apple. A complete horrible disaster.

For example:

1. the size of the files created by ibooks for mac are 2.5 times larger than the home-made epubs (i.e.: not bought from the store). My collection (more than 4,300 books ALL carefully crafted by myself went from 1.8 gigabytes up to 2.9!).

2. the "iBooks library" identifies every book by a crypted numerical code. I bet anyone to be able search and find one of his or her book with the usual search by filename. And the larger the collection, the greater the unsuccess.

3. not being able to add/delete/modify metadata makes the organization of a collection just impossible. Using system tags to that purpose is noe equal and effective. The personal organization ot the user's files is a firm right of the user, it cannot be delegated to an "automatic" uncontrolled process (which iis anyway badly thought).

4. altough I would desire to spin off iTunes into separate specific applications, one for each type of media managed through it, in the wait for Apple to consider/realize that change (hopelessly?), I do not see any reason for iTunes to drop out Books library, which at least permitted to solve some of the points here mentioned, although partially.

5. the increase in size mentioned in point 1 replicates also in the iPad devices... whose total capability is only a small fraction of a medium-sized Mac, so its impact is much, much greater. Why was it necessary? Unknown.

6. the design of iBook for both Mac and IPad is now a flat anonymous window: the look and feel of a virtual book of the previous iPad version is lost. Look and feel is very important for readers used to red fro printed paper to move to digital editions, and the current issue makes extremely less attractive the use of the new issue... just when that was one of the main reason for using the Apple reader other that one produced by other. Does Apple remember that "a picture is worth a thousand words"?

Parallel to the bad change in the iBooks arena, even Pages as been "upgraded" to something which lost its look and feel and - more important - lost several functions very simple and intuitive to use when creating a book. I went back and reinstalled iWork 9. Pages 5 had is rightful end into my waste basket.

MY REACTIONS

Well, having been badly driven to install Mavericks by the magic of "upgrading" (I moved from Mountain Lion to Mavericks JUST FOR THE PROPAGANDA ON THE BOOKS) I am now trying to understand to what extent and how is it possible to "downgrade" to mountain Lion, not being so certain that it would be a painless move, and similarly if and how downgrade be possible for the iPad I WAS USED for reading my boos.

Meantime, I made a limited number of changes to Mavericks by which a small fraction of my comments were cured (to a certain extent):

1. Killed the "agent" who causes the move of the iTunes library to the iBooks library.

2. Completely deleted iBooks for Mac and its supporting files with AppDelete. Cleaned all system and application caches with Onyx. Restarted my Mac.

3. A Books setion reappears in itunes (Magic? no, iTunes did not find the killer iBooks application.)

4. Repopulated iTunes Books library with the most recent backup of books library preceding the infamous Maverick. Fortune: not one lost. Previous metadata posted by me still present

5. Found in AppStore a reader for Mac approaching to a certain extent the previuos iPad iBooKs look and feel. I found the one called "BookReader". If anybody knows a better one, I would be happy to test it.

CONCLUSION:

It's evident that my fight against those so-called upgrades isn't finished. I blame Apple for betraying its own guidelines and philosophy (do you remenber "think different"? Do you remeber "back to my Mac"? Where are your visionary lessons, Steve?). A moltitude of protest are rising from mac users. Does Apple listen? It seems the answer is "no".

Aving said all that, my appreciation of these products is:

five BLACK stars to IBooks for Mac 😟😟😟😟😟

five to iPage 5 😟😟😟😟😟

five to iPad IOS 7 😟😟😟😟😟

THE REAL QUESTION

who did decide to implement the f.... change? Has him/her been fired for the image and commercial damage procured to the company? Who authorized the change? Was him Bill Gates? Was the change a test to measure the faithfullness of Mac people?

I apologize for the lenght of this post (and for my imperfect english) but I am really very, very, very... ****** off (oops! excuse me!).

@Franco,

The agent that you killed, was it the "bookstoreagent"? No matter how I kill the process and rename the file for this service, itunes forces me to migrate to iBooks after I restore the library.

Please let me know

Hi All,

While I agree the fact that iBooks for Mac has killed the syncing of externally sourced EPub / PDFs to the iPad stinks, it is not all doom and gloom. (Warning: this is not the prefect synced solution, but it gets the books on the iPad.)

I am using the following method, which works for me:

Firstly, you need to have the EPub / PDFs backed up independently from the iBooks folder. (You have backed them up, haven't you? If not, time travel your machine back to a previous date to restore the directory where your files are located.)

Secondly, you need to have a sftp type app on your target device, be it the iPad or iPhone. I use iTransfer from ComcSoft.

Thirdly, you need to enable Remote Login on your Mac.

So, I did the following:

1. Create a folder on the Mac where I have all my EPub / PDFs stored

2. Turn on remote log in via Sharing in System Preferences

3. On the iPad, open the iTransfer App and open a connection to the Mac

4. Navigate to the Book folder, and transfer the required books to the iPad

5. Once transfered, and it is very quick over WiFi, go to the Local Files list

6. Select the book and select Open In and select iBooks

iBooks open and your book is ready to read.

Yes, not perfect, but if you use iBooks to store work PDFs or have Open Source books from Project Gutenberg, then this works reasonably well.

Alasdair

New one to add (I think).

- We know that when copying PDFs, eBooks, etc to iBooks, iBooks copies them to it's 'Books' folder (Library/Containers/etcetc/iBooks/Books), however, if you then attempt to consolidate your files in iTunes, the iTunes app decides that they should actually be in the 'Downloads' folder ((Library/Containers/etcetc/iBooks/Downloads) and copies them all over, doubling the space they take on the hard drive.

It doesn't actually update the registry in the iBooks app, though, which still uses the ones in the 'Books' folder. iTunes just wants them to exist in Downloads as well.

😟

After having a disastrous and confusing time with iBooks I followed the procedures listed here and elsewhere and deleted the app and reverted back to iTunes. Then the latest edition of iBooks for iPad came along, and when I installed that I lost my huge list of hundreds of folders. They are still there, just not visible. I have to search for titles and then they come up under their folder name. Today I returned home and added a few books to iTunes and in turn the iPad (what a long, complicated process it is to add stuff to an iPad or iPhone!), and discovered that for some reason the computer or system, in my absence, had unchecked all my books ... so I had to laboriously go through – for what seems like the 10th time in a month – and recheck books I want on my device. What a nightmare.

Yes, I did kill the iBook agent. The "automatic" unchecking of most of my content may have been due to some hidden system process that kicks in when the iPad is near full ... I only had 2 GBs free. In addition, all the books that were uncheck were not considered books but "other" in the color-coded sorting thermostat at the bottom of the iTunes window! Perhaps that means that I did miss a step in deleting iBooks. Like several others on this and other threads, I have downloaded Marvin and activated it in Calibre, and may switch entirely to that app until if and when Apple fixes iBooks.

I haven't even tried to fix iBooks, makes my head spin to think about it. However, I did download Marvin and tried to load a couple of PDF ebooks through DropBox, which I don't like either. I could not get them to load into Marvin, I can't find anywhere where it states it does not handle PDF's, have sent them a note.

Has anyone found a good PDF reader since about 160 of my eBooks are PDF format and although they did finally load in iBooks on the iPad they, as you know, can't be sorted. In addition every book has a different format for the titles and authors, and not being able to add the meta data makes everything a mess. It is like taking a pile of books and magazines and throwing them on the floor and trying to find a specfic detail, 52 card pick-up style.