Kevin Bostic
Apple may be on the verge of expanding the types of devices that can access rich content created using its iBooks Author program, according to a change in wording in iBooks' documentation.
image via Macworld
Previously, iBooks Author-created ebooks not viewed on an iPad would display a message saying "This book can only be viewed using iBooks 3.0 or later on an iPad. iOS 5.1 or later is required." Now, though, Macworld points out that the text reads "To view this book, you must have an iOS device with iBooks 3.0 or later and iOS 5.1 or later, or a Mac with iBooks 1.0 or later and OS X 10.9 or later."
That iBooks will debut on the Mac in the near future is no surprise, given that Apple announced its arrival when showing off OS X Mavericks at this year's Worldwide Developer Conference. At the time, though, Apple did not specify that iBooks would be expanding beyond iPads on the iOS platform.
Allowing iBooks Author-created texts onto the iPhone and iPod would give owners of those devices a number of ebook features they currently cannot access. Among those are embedded videos, interactive content, and the reflowable portrait mode, in which rich elements can float alongside a book's text, resizable and interactive at the whim of the user.
iPhones and iPods still cannot download iBooks Author ebooks, but the capability could be unveiled at next week's media event, which will likely see the full unveiling of final versions of Mavericks, iOS 7, and the new iPhone models.
AppleInsider Staff
Malcolm Owen
Oliver Haslam
Andrew O'Hara
Wesley Hilliard
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
21 Comments
Cool. That'll be a nice feature for people. I'm really looking forward to iBooks on my Mac.
Yeah! It only makes sense that you should be able to preview the work on the machine you are creating it on. Having an iPad plugged into you Mac just to preview is really a kludge.
They should fix the big shortcomings of iBooks first, for one the lack of support for vector-based graphics and the lack of support for navigating large graphics properly.
They should fix the big shortcomings of iBooks first, for one the lack of support for vector-based graphics and the lack of support for navigating large graphics properly.
You can't drop SVG files into iBooks Author directly. You have to wrap them in a PDF file. Open the SVG in Illustrator and save copy as PDF. Drop the PDF into iBook Author. Works like a charm.
Cool. That'll be a nice feature for people. I'm really looking forward to iBooks on my Mac.
Yeah, but unfortunately, for those of us that are stuck on SL ... this is just "one more thing" that we cannot participate in ... and don't even bother to suggest that I just upgrade my Mac ... I gladly spent $2300.00 for my 24" iMac but am now not in a position to do that anymore, nor could I justify the expense based on what I now use my Mac for .... Oh well ... such is life.