Quote:
Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze
My post was intended to be a footnote for Mac users who have reasons for not upgrading to Maverick.
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Hey, I understand totally. I'm still keeping my Mac Mini on 10.6 because I have old PPC software which I can only use with Rosetta, and I wouldn't even be using 10.9 myself on the MacBook Pro if it hadn't been a totally free upgrade (and I keep the original install of 10.8 on a bootable external hard drive, just in case).
But I will be sure to note that there are particular system requirements for some stuff in the future, because for years I collected the iTunes freebies not knowing if I'd ever get an iDevice to use them on and that they generally weren't DRM-strippable/convertible, and then lo and behold, Apple finally released the iBooks app for Mavericks.
So conceivably some other posters might want to do some similar future maybe-one-day-I'll-be-in-a-position-to-read-this with regards to their own collections.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8
I wish that all ebook publishers who publish on iTunes would make their offerings available simultaneously on at least the Kindle format also. Does anyone know why a publisher wouldn't (in order to keep from being egregiously O.T., no discussion please)? Thankfully, the iTunes-only thingie seems to be pretty rare.
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Well, in the case of the Made for iBooks books, it's probably because they're really multimedia presentations that are often built around the additional specialized content (not just the videos, but also sometimes interactive quiz stuff and pop-up pictures/captions/sidebars) that there isn't really a standardized e-book format for.
It's like the way that Amazon has the Kindle with Audio/Video format or B&N has the NOOK Enhanced/NOOK Kids Read To Me formats which require one of their devices or a supporting app so it's a bit unusual for those sorts of books to make it across to multiple stores, unless the publisher has some kind of major financial incentive (or sufficient volunteer tech resources) to do so. (And I personally still can't open any of the few I've picked up free.)
It may be that there seem to be a lot of Made for iBooks books out there because the iBooks Author software is easier for most people to use than the various Kindle format creators (or maybe it just seems that way because as a Canadian, it's harder for me to find Kindle Audio/Video freebies as many of them seem to be geo-restricted to the US and I have to go through this entire rigmarole of opening up another browser and resetting my shopping country to check whereas the iTunes ones are just an easy keyword search/filter to show only free books away in the iBooks Mac app).
Anyway, there are a lot of really nifty Made for iBooks freebies out there, which I will be eventually posting spaced out with the more regular e-book ones, but I've tried to look for at least PDF alternatives to some of them (the science and education people tend to be pretty good about that sort of thing) for people who can't access the multimedia versions but would still be interested in just the regular text/picture content.