iBooks App Won’t Be Standard on iPad

Ed Sutherland ()

iBooks App Won’t Be Standard on iPad

iBooks, one of the best-known applications for the Apple’s new iPad, won’t ship with the tablet device, according to a Thursday report. Viewed as the ebook equivalent of iTunes, iBooks must be downloaded separately.

“Apple didn’t emphasize this heavily at the introduction, but the iBooks app is not going to be bundled with the iPad — it’s an app you download from the App Store, putting it on an (at least somewhat) equal footing to e-book readers from other companies,” writes Daring Fireball‘s John Gruber.

Why not pre-install the application, like Stocks, Weather, etc? The thinking is by offering iBooks as a separate app, it will be easier to update. Otherwise, it would require an update of the entire iPhone OS.

There could be a negative side-effect to such a difference for Apple, though. If iPad users go searching for an ebook-reader and they are unaware Apple is connected to iBooks, consumers might download Amazon’s Kindle app, thus unintentionally boosting the Seattle-based online book-seller’s ebook market share.

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[Via Business Insider and Daring Fireball]

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About the author

Ed Sutherland

Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.

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  • tommy

    One thing I dislike about kindle for iphone is that you cannot search within the book you are reading. Does anyone know if ibooks will allow this?

    I am a pastor in the UMC. Our polity/resolutions books are thick…so i thought it would be cool to buy em on kindle so i could just do a simple search to get where i need to be…but then i discovered kindle for iphone doesn’t allow that….thats the kinda thing i use it for…so hoping ibooks does allow the search feature…

  • Charli

    there is an unexpected plus side to this as well. Amazon can’t claim any kind of monopoly action by Apple since users will have their choice of ebook reader program.

    and I’m sure that iBooks will be placed front and center in the ipad app store so no one can miss it.

  • Emil

    I think the main reason why it won’t be shipped with iBooks is that the iBook app will only be available in the U.S (and probably a few other countries). There is no indication that there will be an iBook app here in Sweden…

  • joh

    This is good news for more than one reason.

  • Brian

    If consumers are smart…they will download the Kindle for Ipad app instead of the ibooks app. Why?

    1.) Works basically the same. Amazon totally revamped the Kindle app for Ipad to have full color Book covers, different color text and can do full color books as well with photographs.

    2.) Device Sync: The Ipad is big and heavy. Yes, it will be good as a book reader sometimes, but it it terrible outside (glare) and too heavy to hold in your hands for hours at a time (no use putting it down if you have to keep flipping pages). So, with Amazon Kindle, you can have a Kindle, an Iphone, a laptop and an Ipad. You can read the same book on all 4 devices and Amazon will sync them so that when you put down your Ipad, and then pick up your Kindle 10 minutes later, the Kindle knows what page you are on.

    3.) You can’t even read ibooks on the Iphone yet. Read point above. Sometimes, you may be out doing something without your Ipad, or a laptop (shopping at Mall with wife/husband) and you have a few minutes to kill (while your spouse is trying on clothes). I pull out my Iphone and read a few pages of my book. Ibooks doesn’t do that.

    4.) Books are cheaper at Amazon than Apple.

    So, even if you don’t want to get a Kindle device (although I highly recommend one, but I understand not everyone can afford a Kindle AND an Ipad), get the Kindle App for Ipad and download books from Amazon. You can read them on your phone (Iphone or Blackberry for now, others to come), PC or Mac plus Kindle (of course)

  • QA

    I just can’t accept how the books you download are stored inside the app itself. This means I can’t read them on my Macs, which is really lame. I should be able to start a book collection that is platform-independent.

    Apple has the best reader but with each company using their own proprietary and DRM-ridden formats it’s pointless to even start collecting. If you want me to begin investing hundreds of dollars in a digital book collection, you need to first convince me that the availability of titles will be as broad as possible and that even if Apple/Amazon/B&N hypothetically go out of business tomorrow my book collection will still be relevant.

    My photo collection for example is in JPEG format. Those photos are good on any platform, be it Mac/Win/Linux or even others. Likewise, my music collection is in MP3, so it is compatible with any OS or media player.
    iBooks on the other hand are a DRM’d version of e-pub files that live mysteriously inside of an app that runs on a single device – the iPad. That’s just oppressive. I would already have bought an iPad and sold everything on my bookshelf if it weren’t for this!

  • Mfournier

    Anyone serious about books is going to load the kindle app anyway
    More books in kindle format the ibook you can read them on any device not just your ipad or iphone and it syncs on all devices picking up where you left off.