Decent review of the iOS12 books.app

[kyteflyer]

From Macstories:
https://www.macstories.net/stories/a...er-to-readers/

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by kyteflyer

From Macstories:
https://www.macstories.net/stories/a...er-to-readers/

Interesting. Thanks

I'm still trying to find if the iBooks app for MacOS has undergone a similar transformation and now has audiobooks. One of my beefs with Apple is how audiobooks are handled differently depending on 1) what platform you are on, mac or iOS and 2) if you bought the audiobook from Apple or not.

[johnnyb]

I can just keep repeating myself: if Apple offered a small eink device I’d be all over their offerings.
Without it, I just stick to Kindle...

[tomsem]

The part where the reviewer says Books is some sort of Goodreads replacement is rather silly. Goodreads isn’t going anywhere, and serves a much larger community of readers than Apple will ever have on its own, and Apple will never sell every book ever published such that you could track it in Books app. Goodreads allows users to add and review titles that don’t even exist (but I am not trying to give anyone any ideas).

It is interesting that any title that exists in Apple Book Store can be tagged as Finished, whether you ever got it from Apple or not, but it does not seem a very useful feature, at least initially.

I am not sure the ‘no unicorns’ icon for Non-fiction works for me, though it is such a broad category that nothing really would work well. Lord knows that there is plenty of misinformation in the Non-fiction category, and even books about unicorns.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Interesting. Thanks

I'm still trying to find if the iBooks app for MacOS has undergone a similar transformation and now has audiobooks. One of my beefs with Apple is how audiobooks are handled differently depending on 1) what platform you are on, mac or iOS and 2) if you bought the audiobook from Apple or not.

Do you read ebooks or listen to audiobooks on your Mac? To me laptops and desktops are devices of last resort for either activity. It’s nice to know it can be done, but...

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by tomsem

Do you read ebooks or listen to audiobooks on your Mac? To me laptops and desktops are devices of last resort for either activity. It’s nice to know it can be done, but...

I use my mac to organize the ebooks and audiobooks. It has a lot more screen real estate for moving things around and to see things. Plus, I only keep a small subset of my audiobook collection on my iPad or iPhone. I have in excess of 700 audiobooks, there is no way they would all fit on my iPad or iPhone and have room for anything else.

Unless you are buying from Apple, it's kind of hard to get ebooks or audiobooks into the books app without going through iTunes/iBooks.

[svenlind]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Unless you are buying from Apple, it's kind of hard to get ebooks or audiobooks into the books app without going through iTunes/iBooks.

If you use Calibre Companion to organise your books on your iPad, then it is very easy to copy books from CC to iBooks or any other reading app.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by svenlind

If you use Calibre Companion to organise your books on your iPad, then it is very easy to copy books from CC to iBooks or any other reading app.

Well, yes and that's how I do ebooks but that presumes you are using a laptop/desktop as well. The question was why do you need a laptop/desktop. For audiobooks, I use iTunes.

A few years ago, Apple made the decision not to allow non Apple audiobooks in iCloud. This caused all sorts of havoc. I'm really not sure why they did it.

[OtinG]

I bought one iBook years ago when I got my first iPad. I was so thoroughly underwhelmed by iBooks and the iBook store that I never bought anything else therein. Why would I? The Amazon bookstore is a zillion times better. Personally I could care less about calibre and all other 3rd party apps for library management. I never needed to hire anyone to manage my print books, why the heck would I want or need that with digital books. I'm perfectly happy just using the Kindle app on my iPads/iPhone. Maybe I'm not anal retentive like some people, but I'm able to use the Amazon cloud to store and organize my library and find whatever I need. I would never attempt that with iBooks or the new Books app. Apple simply never got what a library or bookstore really are all about. I guess they don't read much in Cupertino. Then again, I never cared for their music environment either, nor their app store. None of their stores are particularly useful nor easy to navigate. They are all a PITA IMO. I have to use the app store, but I can go elsewhere for books and music, and that is exactly what I do.

[johnnyb]

Yup that about sums it up for me too
It’s less of a hassle if you’re using a Mac but in general Apple just cannot compete with Amazon in terms of quality of service

[GlennD]

I'd be happy using just the Kindle app as well, except that I grab books from a variety of sources - Tor, Baen, etc. I still do most of my reading in the Kindle app or on my kindle, but it's nice to have the option with calibre companion to read in another app.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by OtinG

I bought one iBook years ago when I got my first iPad. I was so thoroughly underwhelmed by iBooks and the iBook store that I never bought anything else therein. Why would I? The Amazon bookstore is a zillion times better. Personally I could care less about calibre and all other 3rd party apps for library management. I never needed to hire anyone to manage my print books, why the heck would I want or need that with digital books. I'm perfectly happy just using the Kindle app on my iPads/iPhone. Maybe I'm not anal retentive like some people, but I'm able to use the Amazon cloud to store and organize my library and find whatever I need. I would never attempt that with iBooks or the new Books app. Apple simply never got what a library or bookstore really are all about. I guess they don't read much in Cupertino. Then again, I never cared for their music environment either, nor their app store. None of their stores are particularly useful nor easy to navigate. They are all a PITA IMO. I have to use the app store, but I can go elsewhere for books and music, and that is exactly what I do.

Different strokes for different folks as they say. I've bought a lot of music on the iTunes store. I found it much more usable than Amazon's mp3 store. If you are in the Amazon infrastructure and prefer it, no real need to switch if you don't want to.

[kyteflyer]

And nobody is asking anybody to switch, are they? I'm not. I don't understand the negativity when it seems uncalled for.

[pwalker8]

The new release comes out next week. Lots of rumors about what's going to be announced. I still haven't really heard anything about a new book app for MacOS and the preview page at apple.com doesn't mention it. I'm starting to suspect that I'm in for another disappointment with regards to rationalizing the app between the Mac and the iOS device.

[pwalker8]

And the Apple event has come and gone. The big thing was the iPhone Xs Max, a 6.5 in iPhone with the same form factor as the iPhone 8 plus, but no bezel. With the bigger screen and OLED screen, that should make a pretty nice reading device. The new iOS comes out next Monday with the new MacOS coming out the Monday after that. That gives us the new Books app (and I would presume the new iTunes store) next Monday. I've been using the beta in my iPad mini for a while. I'll wait for the official roll out to upgrade all my other iDevices. I'm not sure if the delay on the MacOS rollout is to give them some more time or simply to spread out the support issues with a big release like this.

Personally, I'm not really planning any new purchases. I like my iPhone 8+ just fine. The memory bump for the iPhone (to 512 G) is appealing as is the bigger/nicer screen, but not enough to make me plop down a grand plus, especially with 5G just now starting to roll out. My guess is that next year's iPhone will support 5G, which will be a good reason to upgrade then.