iBooks app in latest OS X Mavericks developer preview!

I quit using Messages on my Mountain Lion Mac Mini long ago. It just seemed dysfunctional half of the time. It should check for new messages fairly often, as do my iPhone and iPad. But I would often not see an SMS appear for hours after the other devices had it. All three devices are on the same WiFi network, BTW. And it would fail to send SMS replies quite often. What's the purpose of having Messages on the desktop Mac if it doesn't work? It is quicker and more reliable to just use my iPhone.

[kyteflyer]

Originally Posted by jswinden

I quit using Messages on my Mountain Lion Mac Mini long ago. It just seemed dysfunctional half of the time. It should check for new messages fairly often, as do my iPhone and iPad. But I would often not see an SMS appear for hours after the other devices had it. All three devices are on the same WiFi network, BTW. And it would fail to send SMS replies quite often. What's the purpose of having Messages on the desktop Mac if it doesn't work? It is quicker and more reliable to just use my iPhone.

Mine actually seems to work quite well, and, interestingly, is more likely to receive the message before my phone does. Odd. It does screw up mightily at times, though, and you see it rearranging its messages, because somehow they got to be out of order.

I was using Whatsapp instead for a long time, but as my friends have gradually switched to iphones, its become unnecessary, and I think now there are only 2 or 3 friends with whom I regularly SMS who don't have an iPhone so.. meh.

I definitely HATE that they have moved books out of iTunes though.

[Jessica Lares]

I have never had any issues with Messages? My Mac gets it before the iPad...

[ijhursh]

Hi Jessica, I am running Mavericks and IOS 7 what file do I need to change in calibre to get the books to my iPad from iBooks on my mac? Not much of a help file and Mac says iCloud should replicate them but has not for me.

thx
Jim

[GRiker]

Originally Posted by ijhursh

Hi Jessica, I am running Mavericks and IOS 7 what file do I need to change in calibre to get the books to my iPad from iBooks on my mac? Not much of a help file and Mac says iCloud should replicate them but has not for me.

thx
Jim

@ijhursh, I am the developer of the calibre iOS reader applications plugin which supports iBooks under OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) and earlier.

I won't be installing 10.9 (Mavericks) until it is officially released. I have no idea what changes have been put in place by moving book management away from iTunes to iBooks on the Mac under 10.9. I can tell you that implementing the original driver was challenging, as Apple doesn't make it easy for third party developers due to their 'walled garden' philosophy.

At this time, I simply don't know if I'll be able to update the iOS reader applications plugin to support Mavericks. Until I see what's changed, I can't speculate.

In the meantime, I would suggest that you take a look at Marvin for iOS as an alternative to iBooks. If you're also using iBooks for PDFs, I can recommend GoodReader as an alternative, also supported by the calibre plugin.

Marvin is very well supported by calibre, and works well with iOS7.

Marvin has its own forum here on MobileRead. Most of my development effort is going to reading apps which cooperate with calibre rather than making it more difficult.

G

[Jessica Lares]

Sorry for not answering. We don't have notifications here. I haven't actually tried getting books from iBooks into the iPad yet. I'm installing today's preview, so let's see if anything changes.

[kyteflyer]

I dont think its going to be long before Mavericks is released, there have been multiple updates to iBooks in the last couple of days... Looks and behaves the same so it must be under the hood stuff. I said I wasnt going to go Mavericks but I probably will... but I'm not going back in with the betas, just too much of a hassle to update from the beginning.

[democrite]

As far as Calibre and iBooks management, it seems that won't be possible. iBooks manages ePubs by moving them to ~/Library/Containers…. and even unzips them and removes the original file. Good thing I had all of them on Dropbox and was able to restore.

[GRiker]

Originally Posted by democrite

As far as Calibre and iBooks management, it seems that won't be possible. iBooks manages ePubs by moving them to ~/Library/Containers…. and even unzips them and removes the original file. Good thing I had all of them on Dropbox and was able to restore.

Thanks for the report on the new location of the books. Another major issue is the mechanism by which iBooks for OS X transports books to iBooks for iOS. Under iTunes, this was something that could be accomplished with OSA (app automation). I'm guessing that iBooks for OS X will no longer have that ability.

The garden walls grow higher.

G

[democrite]

I would imagine OSA support won't be in the initial iBooks release. It lacks AppleScript support so far. There is a Books.plist that contains a list of all added books so it would still be possible to read it and then rezip the files when copying a device.

[Kloos]

Mavericks with iBooks now official and 1/3 of my books disappeared in iBooks. The rest is still in the iTunes Library. Happy to have Calibre and immediately switched to Marvin !

[Jessica Lares]

Originally Posted by democrite

I would imagine OSA support won't be in the initial iBooks release. It lacks AppleScript support so far. There is a Books.plist that contains a list of all added books so it would still be possible to read it and then rezip the files when copying a device.

AppleScript has been downgraded in most products. It isn't in the new iWork either. I think it's the sandboxing effect.

[kyteflyer]

Originally Posted by Kloos

Mavericks with iBooks now official and 1/3 of my books disappeared in iBooks. The rest is still in the iTunes Library. Happy to have Calibre and immediately switched to Marvin !

The only sensible option, IMO. I removed all of my non-ibookstore books before I upgraded (made sure copies were still in Calibre) but I do have a few ibookstore freebies that I want to keep so I guess my Ibooks will stay put for a while. I was never going to be able to read those on anything else, in any case.

[harriska2]

Originally Posted by Kloos

Happy to have Calibre and immediately switched to Marvin !

Oh my. I've never heard of Marvin. Sooo much better. Took me a little while to figure out that the menu bar at the top is accessed by touch/holding at the bottom. The highlight, copy to annotation is amazing. I prefer that the annotations are in one file instead of a bunch of html files but it is pretty darn slick. The vocabulary list is cool. Kudos to all that wrote and designed that program!

[baboyak]

I've abandoned iBooks after using it when Stanza died. After Mavericks, iBooks is totally unacceptable. I'm using Calibre and that doesn't work with iBooks. I've moved to Marvin!