Every Single Problem with iBooks for Mac

Hi Franco,

Yes, it was iCopyBot that I was looking for. I eradicated iBooks from my mac few hours after testing it.

I still use iBooks on iOS devices. It's easier to do better than iBooks, but there is no real way to sync the metadata from iTunes, to third party apps. This is why I am stuck with iOS iBooks.

The ideal thing would be to find an app that shares the books database with iBooks. I guess this is impossible since apps are living in their own sandbox and cannot share data.

Thanks again

Cheers

Luca

Is there any way to sync books from iBooks to an iPad without having to sync music and photos as well. When I select sync books in iTunes on my Mac, the warning pop-up tells me it's going to erase and re-sync all of my 3200 songs and 4700 photos.

Unfortunately, there seems no other way to move a book from my Mac to my iPad without resorting to some thrid-party software.

I can drag a pdf from a folder on my Mac to the iPad in the sidebar of iTunes and it will show up in my iPad iBooks library but not in the iPad library on my Mac.

If you have alreay tried to uncheck Music and Photo, It would seem that your iPad was sync with another library before.

Because it is the first time you sync with This library, iTunes has to erase everything from the old library,

I have problem with this. I used to do exactly what you said; but now when I open the "books" tab on my iOS device in iTunes, the books are not updating with the libraries of the iBooks for Mac. It is supposed to but unfortunately, it is not. I wonder why? This iBooks is seriously full of holes. All I need is to transfer my epub books from iBooks for Mac to my iPod Touch/iPad, as simple as that and this simple and essential function is made impossible.

Dong

Michael Lesser1 wrote:

Has anybody heard any news about the 10.9.2 Mavericks upgrade re iBooks? I'm not sure how much longer I can stand this mess.

Since OS X 10.9.2 hasn't been released yet we cannot discuss it here, per the support community TOS.

You may be interested in this problem I came across. I initially posted it in the iTunes section but it relates to iBooks as well. After a lot of trial and error, I've just found the solution:

Problem: PDFs in iBooks for Mac that had the same author as an artist in iTunes (i.e. sheet music) were showing up as album art in the Artist column and in the wrong place (under their first name, despite all music being sorted by surname). The PDFs are nowhere to be found in iTunes, save on the Books tab when syncing an iOS device.

Solution: Search the name of the artist in iTunes and the PDF will show up in the results as an Unknown Album. It can't be opened so drag it to a playlist, go to that playlist, right-click the PDF and Get info. Then populate the artist sort-by field to match the music metadata and click OK. Finally, delete the PDF from the playlist and quit iTunes. Relaunch and the artist is column-sorted in the right place with the correct album art. (And the PDF is still located in iBooks.)

Does anyone have an idea why iBooks on my iPhone uses more storage than the books themselves take up? The file that contains all of my epubs only totals 3.8GB, but the storage bar on my iPhone says that they are taking up more than 5GB. Why would there be an extra 1+GB?

You must have synced your books to Apple iBooks for iPad. Each of your books has then been converted and recorded subdivided in individual chapters (1 file each chapter) plus one (or more) metadata and support files for each book, in a format different from the simple omnicomprehensive epub. This explains the substantial growth (many thanks, Apple!) in size and in my experience has also the effect of significantly slowing down the time for opening it, even when a book is read in part and subsequently re-opened at the bookmark point. The more books you have, and the bigger they are, the more time is spent... waiting to open it. Just another problem of a long list of bad choices in the "upgrade" of the entire Apple eBooking system that none would appreciate, I believe. I would like really to reinstall the previous version of ios... but that is not permitted.

Welcome to the community of upset book readers.

After suffering the same issues, I installed Kindle on my iPad and convert books to mobi format using Calibre. I download a lot of free magazines and newspapers--MacWorld, WSJ, Popular Science, etc.-- in Calibre and used to simply transfer them to iBooks using iTunes.

After conversion to mobi and saving them to my Calibre folder I can click on the Kindle app when my iPad is connected to iTunes and add them to Kindle by navigating to the Calibre folder.

For pdfs, I've installed Adobe Reader on the iPad and use Calibre in the same manner.

Calibre, as others have mentioned, allows editing of metadata as well as conversion to various ebook formats.

Not the method I would use if I still had the capability to add books to iPad using iTunes, but it works for me. Maybe someone from Apple will read of my heresy here and be motivated to actually fix iBooks before I simply start buying all my books from Amazon and using Kindle for everything I read.

This does not resolve the claimed weaknesses. The list given by opening the "books" section of the device is just ... a list of the device content of what the device iOS accepted. No editing or other user action is permitted by it. Apple has no other chance to stop the ever increasing complaint than redesign the eBook system from the scratch.

I'm in some kind of weird hybrid limbo. My VERY large library, managed under Calibre (Please, Apple, just license Calibre!) is intact, thank goodness, but I can't manage things on & off my iPad effectively anymore, and in the oddest twist, some of my Calibre library has found its way from my iPad into the cloud...

Ibooks is no doubt the worst app ever from Apple:

- I have no control whatsoever over my PDFs and eBooks, as I cannot edit metadata as I could in iTunes;

- I still haven´t found how to transfer my iBooks collections, etc., once I reinstall the OS, which was so easy with iTunes;

- Worst of all, I can live with the folks from Cupertino bullying me into using the new iwork apps which, once I open my existing files on them, render my 2008 Mountain Lion Macbook useless to read or edit MY DOCUMETS (and I stress that they are mine, they are not Apple's documents) as they do not let me install the new apps on that Macbook. But what really ****** me off is the fact that I had dozens of hours of MY TIME invested in organized my hundreds of PDF files on iTunes, renaming them, making collectinons, etc. and what did Apple do? Yes, they acted as if the files were not mine and messed up my work. If I had done the same to Aplle I am pretty sure they would sue my butt to my last penny.

I love Apple products, love their software, etc., but THAT STINKS!

iBooks for Mac is a real stink bomb. You can't edit metadata (really, Apple?), so if there's metadata that needs changing, you have to use an app like Calibre and re-import the book to iBooks. (Hint: After you update the metadata with Calibre, reconvert the book to your desired format, even if it's already in that format. That'll make metadata changes like cover art 'stick' when the file is imported to iBooks.)

Once a title is added to iBooks you can't delete it, even though there's a delete pick in the pop-up menu when you two-finger click on the book. So now you have two or more copies, and you can't get rid of the old ones! iBooks creates duplicate files when they're imported, but there's no "Show in Finder" option. It took forever to figure out that they're in a hidden folder buried deep within the Library folder, but the file titles are changed to some random-looking string of letters and digits so you can't even delete an unwanted file because the names are unrecognizable.

After struggling with this awful software for several days, I finally gave up, uninstalled it, and deleted all of the hidden iBook Library files.

When iBooks is uninstalled, the books option will automatically reappear in iTunes and you can now add ebook files and sync them easily with your pad or phone iBooks apps, just like it worked pre-iBooks for Mac.

To uninstall iBooks on Mac, open Terminal (It's in the Utilities folder in Applications) and type the following on the command line:

sudo rm -rf /Applications/iBooks.app

Double-check your typing. Press Enter.

You may be prompted for your system password - Type that in and press Enter. iBooks is now gone from your Mac. If the iBooks icon is still on the dock, it can be manually deleted.

The iBooks files are in:

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

The 'Containers' folder was hard to find. I found it using MacKeeper and deleted the books from there.

I had equal problem, especially with crashing iBook app after the last update.

With many trail and errors i found a solution. The problem seems to me the filthy update procedure that made data garbage. My original books are stored under itunes, or if you need in your time machine backup.

To fix it, i've made i fresh iBooks installation with following way.

- using "AppCleaner" (try google, this app helps me in the past often) to delete iBooks and all related system files (not the books)

- downloading the mavericks 10.9 installation image and create a USB installation stick

- downloading an unrar or anzip utility, in my case i used "pacifist".

- using "Pacifist" to locate the iBook.app in the "Essential.pkg"

- install ibooks

After that iBook works (no crash). Downloading my purchased books need a bit. Then all works fine.

Okay, I just added 2 books to my iBooks library. How do I find those 2 books, simply and quickly, to check the box next to them in iTunes and sync them? I have roughly 4500 books in my iTunes library; don't tell me to scroll through them all.

Needless to say, I use still Calibre to store and organize my ebooks. I might have switched to iBooks if it was a decent app, but it is not. I was bitterly disappointed when all my metadata was ignored when iBooks imported the book files. I realize Apple is protecting digital rights, but making the transfer of a book from computer to iPad a painful and difficult task is not the type of user experience Apple customarily provides.