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"And because the iBooks app uses ePub, the most popular open book format in the world, you can also use it to read ePub books you get from other sources with your computer."
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So Apple, please explain. If you are so proud of the fact that the iBooks application supports EPUB, the most popular format in the world, then why does your own book creation application *NOT* support it (properly)?
That just does not seem logical. First you show everybody how proud you are to support the standard (and even be a prominent member of the committee), and then you create an application eminently suited to produce books in that standard, but omit the option to do just that.
Puzzled.
Oh, yeah. They've seen a way to possibly make *more* money.
Quote:
Originally Posted by murraypaul
Which is all exactly the same as if you had made that book as an iOS app instead.
What iBook Author is doing is provide an easier way to create media-heavy books than creating a custom app each time. For 'normal' books there is no need to do either.
It isn't so much whether it is fine or not, but why all the fuss about something that hasn't really changed? Make it as an app, Apple control whether it can be sold or not. Make it as an iBook, Apple control whether it can be sold or not. It just takes less time to do it the second way.
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Huge difference, IMHO. An app is software. There is no point to create an iOS app, and then sell it in the Android (or any other) market. It just does not work, it can't run on an Android device. You write an application for one operating system, or for another. It's a choice you can make.
A book however, is just a file format, with some information such as text and pictures inside. It needs another program to be useful, and other programs can be written for other operating systems, to be able to open such a file. Therefore, the book is not inherently tied to an operating sytem, but Apple wants to do that nonetheless.
In my view, with iBooks' EULA, Apple is hampering authors a great deal instead of helping them, if they decide to use iBooks. Instead of Apple giving the authors a fine tool with which they can also easily get into 15% the Apple marketshare, that tool, when used, gives them only the Apple market share, and denies them at least 52% (the Android share).
See this chart.
While the chart is for smartphones, I don't think that it'll be much different for tablets, in the end. I would know what I would choose, and it's not iBooks.