{"id":17142,"date":"2017-02-08T14:59:26","date_gmt":"2017-02-08T19:59:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=17142"},"modified":"2017-02-09T16:29:29","modified_gmt":"2017-02-09T21:29:29","slug":"i-wish-apple-loved-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2017\/02\/08\/i-wish-apple-loved-books\/","title":{"rendered":"I Wish Apple Loved Books"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daniel Steinberg<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I’ve joked that if Eddie Cue loved reading the way he clearly loves music, then iBooks, the iBookstore, and iBooks Author would be amazing. Not only aren’t they amazing, they aren’t even good.<\/p>

It’s like they’ve assigned a committed carnivore to design the meals and cook for Vegans. You need someone who loves and understands vegetables and shares the commitment to not using meat or meat products.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

I was an early embracer and adopter of iBooks Author. I could produce beautiful books. The software was initially frustrating but they improved it in significant ways early.<\/p>

Then they stopped.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

Yesterday, I uploaded my latest version of my book to Gum Road and to iBooks. Within minutes I was getting email notifications of sales of my book on Gum Road.<\/p>

An hour later my book was approved for sale on iBooks. This is remarkably quick. It used to take days. I looked online and my book wasn’t on the iBookstore yet. Also, my name was still listed incorrectly.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Via Adam C. Engst<\/a>:<\/p>\n

After an initial burst of enthusiasm, both iBooks and iBooks Author have languished, iCloud Drive’s integration with iBooks is flaky, and the iBooks Store never recovered momentum after Apple was found guilty of ebook price fixing back in 2013. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Bradley Metrock<\/a>:<\/p>\n

So let’s think about that a minute. You’re using software called “iBooks Author.” What, exactly, are you authoring? Um…iBooks. Yet, for some reason no one can explain, you can’t say that.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

Next, Steinberg discusses the interplay between the EPUB format, the iBooks format, and attempting to provide his readers with updates. He nails this - it’s unnecessarily clumsy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

John Gruber<\/a>:<\/p>\n

iBooks Author was announced in January 2012, when the iPad was two years old. The iPad itself, seemingly, would be a fine device for creating books with iBooks Author. But iBooks Author remains Mac-only.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Update (2017-02-09): Nick Heer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

iBooks Author was most recently updated in September; prior to that, it was updated almost exactly one year prior. That’s a glacial pace for an app, but it isn’t out of line with many of Apple’s other Mac applications.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

I think there’s a tremendous opportunity that Apple is sleeping on.<\/p><\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Daniel Steinberg: I’ve joked that if Eddie Cue loved reading the way he clearly loves music, then iBooks, the iBookstore, and iBooks Author would be amazing. Not only aren’t they amazing, they aren’t even good.It’s like they’ve assigned a committed carnivore to design the meals and cook for Vegans. You need someone who loves and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[166,93,94,31,1380,145,653,30,1381],"class_list":["post-17142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-ebooks","tag-ibooks","tag-ibooksauthor","tag-ios","tag-ios-10","tag-ipad","tag-itunes-connect","tag-mac","tag-macos-10-12"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17142"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17148,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17142\/revisions\/17148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}