[Device Plugin] iOS reader applications

[Montana Harper]

Originally Posted by LuCouto

Now this is very strange because I have an iPad Mini 2 (retina) with iOS 9 and it's working just fine with Calibre and Marvin

You're able to sync it using the Marvin buttons in Calibre when it's connected? If so, then maybe something in iOS 9 has reverted the changes from iOS 8.3 and up.

My understanding of the problem (which is definitely shaky, because I'm not a programmer and I don't know a lot about the internal workings of iOS) is that Apple blocked the ability of third-party addons to access certain areas where some programs stored data/files. Because Marvin is one of those programs that store files in a directory structure (?) that Apple considers nonstandard, only Marvin itself (or iTunes) can access those files, and iOS Reader Applications no longer can. (Someone who knows this stuff better than me feel free to correct me if any of what I've said is wrong.)

The iOS 8.3+ issue is only a problem with the iOS Reader Applications syncing interface between Calibre and Marvin; there shouldn't be a problem with using iTunes add files to Marvin. I'm not sure if there's a separate way to send files directly from Calibre to Marvin without iOSRA, because I'm not upgrading my iOS until the problem is fixed; I'm too dependent on iOSRA and the Marvin plugin to risk it, and I'm happy with my current workflow.

[LuCouto]

Originally Posted by Montana Harper

You're able to sync it using the Marvin buttons in Calibre when it's connected? If so, then maybe something in iOS 9 has reverted the changes from iOS 8.3 and up.

I don't know what do you mean by "sync" (both ways?), but I was able to send books from Calibre to Marvin using my iPad Mini 2 with iOS 8.4.3 also. And that continued to work after updating it to iOS 9. The problem now is just that the new iPad Mini 4 is not recognized by Calibre.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: I've found it!

So, I've edit the init.py file inside the iOS plugin to add the following line
_BCD.add(0x502) # iPad Mini 4 GSM ???

And voilà ! My new iPad Mini 4 is recognized by Calibre and Marvin is working nice! I can send books directly to it

[eschwartz]

And you're not jailbroken? (Apparently there is a Cydia hack which unlocks the old behavior.)
Interesting, that makes it sound like Apple reversed their policy.


As for the USB ID of your iPad Mini 4 -- the comments at the end declaring the device names are so the plugin maintainer knows which devices have been accounted for. The question mark is if he wasn't sure which model it was.

Are you not sure whether your iPad is the GSM version

[LuCouto]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

And you're not jailbroken? (Apparently there is a Cydia hack which unlocks the old behavior.)
Interesting, that makes it sound like Apple reversed their policy.


As for the USB ID of your iPad Mini 4 -- the comments at the end declaring the device names are so the plugin maintainer knows which devices have been accounted for. The question mark is if he wasn't sure which model it was.

Are you not sure whether your iPad is the GSM version

Yep, no jailbreak in my iDevices.
It's strange but since iOS 8.3 my iPad Mini 2 was working fine with Calibre and Marvin. I didn't understand the reason of the discussions in this post...

For the USB fingerprint, I've just copy/paste the line above and changed the id...

[Montana Harper]

Originally Posted by LuCouto

Yep, no jailbreak in my iDevices.
It's strange but since iOS 8.3 my iPad Mini 2 was working fine with Calibre and Marvin. I didn't understand the reason of the discussions in this post...

I'm curious. What happens when you click on the MarvinXD button in Calibre with either of your iPads connected?

[ShellShock]

Originally Posted by LuCouto

Yep, no jailbreak in my iDevices.
It's strange but since iOS 8.3 my iPad Mini 2 was working fine with Calibre and Marvin. I didn't understand the reason of the discussions in this post...

For the USB fingerprint, I've just copy/paste the line above and changed the id...

What country are you in? What language are you using in IOS? I wonder whether this is a regional difference in IOS?

[clux13]

Ok first of im not really tech savvie but here it goes.

I have and Ipad 2 and I have used Calibe for a couple years now. When i updated to 8.3 i lost the ability to link Calibre and Marvin. After reading some of the newest posts i decided to try IOS 9. Good news is Calibre doesn't tell me my device is not compatible or whatever any more. Bad new is it still doesn't link to Marvin. I have uninstalled and reinstalled both ios and Marvin plug-ins with no luck. My cablibre is even up to date and im using Windows 7. So if someone else is having better luck with similar situation i would love to know how to fix it.

[LuCouto]

Originally Posted by Montana Harper

I'm curious. What happens when you click on the MarvinXD button in Calibre with either of your iPads connected?

So, when I click on the MarvinXD button, the "magic" happens and everything works fine! See this video:
https://youtu.be/zSzVZ2_Asbg

Originally Posted by ShellShock

What country are you in? What language are you using in IOS? I wonder whether this is a regional difference in IOS?

Right now I'm in France using the iPad Mini in French

[Montana Harper]

Originally Posted by LuCouto

So, when I click on the MarvinXD button, the "magic" happens and everything works fine! See this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrxJ2qSbDKA

Ah, you're on a Mac. I'm not sure if that makes a difference or not. I definitely know that many of the other, earlier problems that folks had with MarvinXD/iOSRA were Windows-only, and there was at least one that was Mac-only, so platform might matter.

[ShellShock]

@LuCouto, that is a very interesting video, thanks for posting it. You are able to connect to Marvin (with IOS >= 8.3) when many others have failed.

I would be surprised if this a Mac vs Windows problem: Calibre and the IOSRA plugin are mainly Python (platform neutral); the libimobiledevice library that the IOSRA plugin uses has a little bit of platform specific code in it, but I don't think the difference is there. I think other Mac users have had problems connecting to Marvin since IOS 8.3 too (can any other MAC users confirm)?

As I said before, this may be a regional difference in IOS, e.g., LuCouto's IPad Mini is using the French language/culture. It would be interesting if anyone else can replicate this.

NB: pre-IOS 8.3 there was a problem for Windows users only trying to connect to Marvin, due to Apple changing the communication protocol; Unix users were OK because they had a updated version of the libimobiledevice library, whereas Windows users had a wait a few months for this updated version to be ported to Windows. Now however, AFAIK both Windows and Unix users are using essentially the same version of libimobiledevice.

[LuCouto]

Hi folks,

As there has been a doubt about this issue being or not OS related (Mac X Windows), I've decided to test it in my Virtual Machine running Windows 10. So, I've installed:
- iTunes
- Calibre
- custom iOSRA plugin

And the surprise is.... IT'S WORKING!

https://youtu.be/egYhd1Ksaqc

Please, let me know if I can help to identify the reasons why this is working here and so, try to discover a solution for others...

[clux13]

Originally Posted by LuCouto

Hi folks,

As there has been a doubt about this issue being or not OS related (Mac X Windows), I've decided to test it in my Virtual Machine running Windows 10. So, I've installed:
- iTunes
- Calibre
- custom iOSRA plugin

And the surprise is.... IT'S WORKING!

https://youtu.be/egYhd1Ksaqc

Please, let me know if I can help to identify the reasons why this is working here and so, try to discover a solution for others...

First thanks for the info and video. I noticed from your post and video that your not using English books. Are you in the US or overseas? From what i have ready it looks like the vast majority of the US customers are the ones affected by this but i may very well be wrong.

[LuCouto]

Actually I'm in France and my iPad is configured in French.

[eschwartz]

As the plugin currently works, it tries to find Marvin's database by accessing VendContainer. This is what Apple blocked in iOS 8.3, right?

If @LuCouto is seeing the plugin working with Marvin, on iOS 8.4.3 && iOS 9, that can only mean... that calibre's bundled copy of libimobiledevice, on OSX and Windows, was able to gain access to VendContainer on iOS 8.4.3 && iOS 9.


Why that might be, I don't know. Is it possible that the French version of iOS does not have the VendContainer restriction? Maybe... but then, too, maybe @LuCouto got a special version of iOS from the gods of ereading.

[ShellShock]

It would not surprise me if this is an IOS language bug, e.g., it is looking for the French translation of VendContainer.