Subcribe to our RSS Feed

New iTunes 9.1 with EPUB Library Support

March 31st, 2010 | 3 Comments | Posted in Readers by Mike Cook

Apple have just released an updated iTunes 9.1 to make ready for iPad syncing and EPUB support for when the users receive their iPad and can access the iBooks store.

We here in Europe can’t even pre-order an iPad yet so I won’t be able to do a full test for some time yet but I thought I’d see what happens when a DRM-Free EPUB file is added to iTunes….which turns out to be not a lot.

As you can see from the screenshot below, the EPUB book does get recognised as a Book with the title and author details being taken from the file’s meta data. One thing that concerns me is with the book Info dialogue and how the book’s meta details are presented as though it is a song; Artist, Composer, Track Number, etc. Let’s hope this gets fixed soon to show an appropriate information page. Read the full article »

Tags: Apple, iBooks, iPad, iPhone, iTunes

The Apple iPad and ePub Books

February 20th, 2010 | 25 Comments | Posted in Readers by Mike Cook

It’s been a few weeks now since the Apple iPad announcement; a 9.7-inch multi-purpose tablet with native Book, Magazine and Newspaper options. Although Apple hasn’t released this as a dedicated eBook reader, or a direct competitor to popular eReaders such as the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader – in essence an eReader is what it is.

So, the iPad is an eReader – though it’s one that reads not only books and newspapers but web pages, emails and numerous other electronic documents. It can also do that stuff an iPhone and iPod Touch can do – running those thousands of third party applications from the iTunes App store. However, I want to focus this article on the book aspects, especially in relation to the EPUB eBook format.

There were rumours knocking around weeks before Apple’s announcement that they’d been discussing with publishers and newspapers to get their content for a new Apple device. Most of this content will be accessible from the upcoming Apple iBooks Store and there should be plenty to choose from as Apple have brought onboard big names such as Penguin, HarperCollins and Macmillan. Read the full article »

Tags: Apple, eReaders, iBooks, iPad