Mike Wuerthele
Apple shines a spotlight on the new and redesigned Books app for iOS 12 and macOS 10.14 Mojave.
"Apple Books will inspire a love of reading — it puts a world of books and audiobooks right at your fingertips, whether you want to dive into your favorite story for a couple of minutes or a few hours," said Apple's senior vice president of Internet Software & Services Eddy Cue, . "This is our biggest books redesign ever, and we hope this beautiful app inspires both customers and authors alike."
The new Reading Now tab in the new revision of Books is the user's bookmark repository, in addition to being used for discovering similar reads or listens. With Want to Read, Users can keep a wishlist of books in the Want to Read section, with a Complete the Series option for a reader that might have stumbled into the middle of a longer collection.
You Might Like presents books to the user based on recently finished titles.
The Library tab holds all the users books, including the books downloaded to your device by the user from third-party sources. A Finished section showcases completed books, and the date you finished them in a timeline.
The Book Store tab is a convenient link to Apple's store, with easy access to Top Charts, Staff Picks, Editorial Collections, plus Special Offers & Free titles. As the app is used more, Apple says that suggestions will be refined further.
The new Apple Books app launches this fall, with the Book Store available in 51 countries, and free books available in 155 countries.
The Books changes are reminiscent of the same changes launched with the iOS App Store, and coming to the MacOS App Store. Apple has put a high priority on discovery with the changes to all three, as well as bringing other user convenience features to the app.
The changes were only touched on during the WWDC 2018 keynote speech. All of the changes are coming not just to iOS 12, but to macOS Mojave as well.
Christine McKee
Andrew Orr
Charles Martin
Marko Zivkovic
Wesley Hilliard
17 Comments
The iOS 12 Books code-base is absolutely massive too!
Really glad to see this, as I both read lots of digital books and love to listen to audiobooks especially when driving.
I just hope that Apple improves is search and back catalog (Amazon has them beat by carrying a lot more titles now).
I am assuming that with audiobooks moving from iTunes to Books that there will be a separate player in CarPlay?
Audiobooks have been hosted in iBooks on iOS since iOS 11 at least.
The formatting of [non PDF] e-books is generally so diminished over their paper counterparts that investing in their strengths is a painful decision. The typography is diminished, formatting is diminished, and covers and internal artwork that might beautifully fill the screen do not. We might say that e-books are “books of hurt”. :-)
Serif font family? What on earth??