Read books on your Mac. Sure, tablets and e-ink devices are better ways to read than your computer – and even your phone is nicer than a laptop if you’re on the couch. But sometimes you need to open a book on your Mac. Maybe you’re using a text as a reference for a project, or maybe you just want to read a few chapters of a novel at your desk. The best ebook reader platform on the market: user friendly, powerful, fast, with synchronized library, this book reader provides unprecedented flexibility, speed and reading comfort.

Apple Books, formerly iBooks, is an e-book reading and store application by Apple Inc. for its iOS and macOS operating systems and devices. It was announced, under the name iBooks, in conjunction with the iPad on January 27, 2010,^[1] and was released for the iPhone and iPod Touch in mid-2010, as part of the iOS 4 update.^[2] Initially, iBooks was not pre-loaded onto iOS devices, but users could install it free of charge from the iTunesApp Store. With the release of iOS 8, it became an integrated app. On June 10, 2013, at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, Craig Federighi announced that iBooks would also be provided with OS X Mavericks in fall 2013.^[3][4] Prior to iOS 12 and macOS Mojave, the application was named iBooks.

It primarily receives EPUB content from the iBooks Store, but users can also add their own EPUB and PDF files via data synchronization with iTunes. Additionally, the files can be downloaded to iBooks through Safari or Apple Mail. It is also capable of displaying e-books that incorporate multimedia.^[1][5] According to product information as of March 2010, iBooks will be able to 'read the contents of any page [to the user]' using VoiceOver.^[6][7]

On January 19, 2012 at an education-focused special event in New York City, Apple announced the free release of iBooks 2, which can operate in landscape mode and allows for interactive reading. In addition, a new application, iBooks Author, was announced for the Mac App Store, allowing anyone to create interactive textbooks for reading in iBooks; and the iBooks Store was expanded with a textbook category.^[8][9] The iBooks Author Conference, the annual gathering of digital content creators around Apple's iBooks Author, has convened since 2015.^[10][11]

iBooks was renamed to Apple Books alongside the release of iOS 12 and macOS Mojave in September 2018.^[12] It features a new variation of the San Francisco typeface known as 'SF Serif.'^[13]

• 1History

History[edit]

iBooks was announced alongside the iPad at a press conference in January 2010. The store itself, however, was released in America three days before the iPad with the introduction of iTunes 9.1. This was supposedly to prevent too much traffic on Apple's servers, as they have been overloaded with previous releases of the iPhone. On the day of its launch, on March 31, 2010, the iBooks Store collection comprised some 60,000 titles.^[14]

On April 8, 2010, Apple announced that iBooks would be updated to support the iPhone and iPod Touch with iOS 4. As a result, iBooks was not supported on first-generation iPhones and iPod Touches.^[2]

On June 8, 2010 at the WWDC Keynote it was announced that iBooks would be updated that month to read PDF files as well as have the ability to annotate both PDFs and eBooks.

As of July 1, Apple expanded iBooks availability to Canada.

Upon its release for older devices running iOS 4, such as the iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch, iBooks received criticism for its slow performance.^[15][16] However, a July 19 update from Apple offered several improvements.^[17]

On September 27, 2011, Apple expanded the premium store to the Republic of Ireland.

On January 19, 2012, Apple announced the release of the iBooks 2 app, allowing users to purchase and download textbooks to the iPad.^[18] The new app will support digital textbooks that can display interactive diagrams, audio and video on the iPad.^[19] Apple also released a free tool called iBooks Author. The software allows users to create these interactive textbooks themselves.

On October 23, 2012, Apple announced iBooks 3.

On June 10, 2013, Apple announced iBooks for OS X Mavericks.Books are now available for purchase in the following countries; Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States, and Venezuela.

On November 15, 2013, Apple pushed version 3.2 of iBooks for iOS with a redesigned interface to match the 'flat' style of iOS 7, which dropped support for iOS 6 and earlier versions.

On the annual WWDC in 2014, Apple unveiled that iBooks will be a pre-installed app in the next version of the operating system, iOS 8, along with the Podcasts app.

On September 17, 2014, Apple bundled version 4.0 of iBooks for iOS with iOS 8.0. This includes slight changes with the bookstore button (into a persistent navigation bar at the bottom), grouping of books by series in the bookshelf, Auto-night mode theme, as well as small changes to the underlying rendering engine.

On October 20, 2014, Apple bundled version 4.1 of iBooks for iOS with iOS 8.1.

On January 24, 2018, Apple renamed iBooks to Books in the iOS 11.3 beta.^[20]

As well as in macOS 10.13.4 beta iBooks to Books on March 5, 2018. It was renamed back to iBooks in a next intermittent 10.13.4 macOS beta, showing some uncertainty about the marketing decision.

Formats[edit]

The supported e-book formats by iBooks are EPUB and PDF.^[21] As of version 2.0, iBooks also supports a proprietary iBook format (IBA), generated with the iBooks Author tool. This format is based upon the EPUB format but depends upon custom widget code in the iBooks app to function.^[22]

Features[edit]

As of version 3, iBooks renders text written in 18 different languages. Users of the application are able to change the font and text size displayed. Available English fonts are Baskerville, Cochin, Georgia, Palatino, Times New Roman, Verdana, Athelas, Charter, Iowan Old Style and Seravek.^[23]

Users can adjust screen brightness from within the application.

Words can be selected and searched throughout the book. Definitions of words can also be found upon clicking on the word and selecting 'define' which will give the reader a brief description of what the word means and if there isn't a definition available, the reader can opt to either search on Wikipedia or the web for a definition, an option available even if there is a definition for the word. Readers can also highlight passages and when this is done, the part of theEbook which deals with the chapters and notes will automatically save the words or sentences which were highlighted, as well as revealing any notes made after highlighting a certain passage, another feature.

Originally, there were three viewing background themes to choose from, except when reading PDF documents. The themes were:^[24][25]

• Normal: black text on a white background
• Sepia: sepia text on an off-white background
• Night: light grey text on a black background

With the introduction of iOS 8 in 2014, an additional 'Auto-Night Theme' was introduced, which dynamically changes the theme from 'Normal' or 'Sepia' to 'Night' and vice versa based on the ambient light conditions.

With the introduction of iOS 9 in 2015, a fourth background theme was added: Gray: light grey text on a dark gray background.

Book Reader App For Iphone

iBooks also stacks books that belong to a series when the user is on the 'All Books' screen. When selected, the books included in the series are shown in the order in which they were released, including books in the series that the user has not purchased. The prices of the unpurchased books are displayed on the upper right corner of the book 'ear-marked' in green. Tapping the unpurchased book takes the user directly to the iBook store allowing for quick purchase.

There are three page layouts: Book, Full Screen, and Scroll. In Book or Full Screen layout, pages are turned by tapping or dragging the page, animated to imitate the appearance of a paper book. In Scroll, there is no page turning, and the book appears as continuous text, read vertically like a web browser.

Until May 2011^[26] each copy of iBooks used to provide a free copy of Winnie-the-Pooh, the 1926 book by A. A. Milne, in order to get the user's library started.

iBooks Store[edit]

The iBooks Store is an ePub content sales and delivery system that delivers eBooks to any iOS device such as the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. It does not currently support either the downloading or reading of iBooks directly on Windows or Linux distributions, but it does support the downloading and reading of iBooks on OS X Mavericks and later.^[27]

Prior to the unveiling of the iPad, publishers Penguin Books, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan Publishers, and Hachette Book Group USA committed to producing content for the iBooks Store. Additional publishers were invited to participate on the day of the product announcement, January 27, 2010.^[28] The iBooks Store also provides access to the 30,000+ free books available from Project Gutenberg,^[29] and it provides content channeled through Draft2Digital or Smashwords, allowing independent authors and publishers to self-publish.^[30]

Android Book Reader App

The day before the iPad event, Terry McGraw, the CEO of McGraw-Hill, appeared to divulge information to Erin Burnett on CNBC about the upcoming iPad release.^[31] This was quickly picked up and disseminated by rumor sites and eventually mainstream media outlets as revelation of features of the iPad. McGraw Hill was not included in the iPad presentation at the Apple media event and there was speculation that the exclusion was in response to this release of information.^[32] However, McGraw-Hill has stated that the information disclosed by McGraw was not privileged, and that the company had not intended to participate in the event.^[33]

In 2011, an Apple spokesperson announced that 'We are now requiring that if an app offers customers the ability to purchase books outside of the app, that the same option is also available to customers from within the app with in-app purchase.'^[34] Due to the 30% revenue share that Apple receives from the in-app purchase mechanism, the financial viability of competing bookstore apps run by other book retailers is uncertain, even though in many countries, the iBooks Store still does not provide consumers access to any e-books except for free works, such as ones that are in the public domain. Apple's competitor Amazon.com updated its iOS Kindle app in July 2013 to bypass the 30% revenue share by requiring the user to purchase content using the Kindle Store's website instead of using the Kindle app; users can still get free e-books or samples while using the app.^[35]

Controversy[edit]

Some critics have stated that the iBooks interface is a near-exact replica of Classics by Andrew Kaz and Phill Ryu, released over a year prior and even featured in Apple's own TV commercials. Apple has made no acknowledgment of this.^[36][37][38]

Documents created by iBooks Author in the .ibooks format may be sold for a fee only if they are accepted by and exclusively distributed by Apple.^{[39][40][41][42]} These restrictions do not apply to documents created in other formats like exported as PDF or text files. As Apple officially mentions the EPUB format,^[39] documents renamed to *.epub may not be affected. But this is left unclear and such documents are not fully compatible with the EPUB standard.^{[speculation?]}

Trademark dispute[edit]

In June 2011, Apple was sued by New York publisher John T. Colby over the use of the term 'iBook'.^[43] Colby claims to be the owner of a trademark on the term 'ibooks' as applied to published books, after acquiring the assets of deceased publisher Byron Preiss, who had published a series of sci-fi and fantasy books under the term. Apple had previously used the term 'iBook' to refer to a line of laptops that it sold until 2006, but Colby claims exclusive right to the term as applied to published books, including e-books. Apple began using the term 'iBooks' in 2010 to refer to e-books sold for the iPad. Byron Preiss published more than 1,000 books under the 'ibooks' brand starting in 1999.^[44] Apple emerged the victor in the suit. The judge stated: 'They have offered no evidence that consumers who use Apple's iBooks software to download ebooks have come to believe that Apple has also entered the publishing business and is the publisher of all of the downloaded books, despite the fact that each book bears the imprint of its actual publisher.'^[45]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

1. ^ ^abApple Inc. (July 16, 2003). 'iPad Announcement Keynote'. Events.apple.com.edgesuite.net. Archived from the original on January 20, 2017. Retrieved September 18, 2011.Cite uses deprecated parameter |dead-url= (help); Cite web requires |website= (help)
2. ^ ^ab'Get a sneak peek into the future of iPhone OS'. Apple. April 8, 2010. Archived from the original on April 8, 2010.Cite uses deprecated parameter |deadurl= (help); Cite web requires |website= (help)
3. ^'Maps, iBooks, iCloud Keychain coming to OS X Mavericks'. AppleInsider. June 10, 2013.Cite web requires |website= (help)
4. ^'OS X Mavericks - Do even more with new apps and new features'. Apple Inc. Archived from the original on July 16, 2013. Retrieved September 9, 2017.Cite uses deprecated parameter |dead-url= (help); Cite web requires |website= (help)
5. ^Apple Inc. (July 16, 2003). 'WWDC 2010 Keynote'. Apple.com. Archived from the original on September 25, 2011. Retrieved September 18, 2011.Cite uses deprecated parameter |dead-url= (help); Cite web requires |website= (help)
6. ^'iPad — Buy and read books like never before'. Apple. Retrieved September 18, 2011.Cite web requires |website= (help)
7. ^Previous post Next post (March 12, 2010). 'Wired GadgetLab: iPad ebook features'. Wired.com. Retrieved September 18, 2011.Cite news requires |newspaper= (help)
8. ^Chloe Albanesius (January 19, 2012). 'Apple Targets Educators Via iBooks 2, iBooks Author, iTunes U App'. PCMag.com.Cite web requires |website= (help)
9. ^Josh Lowensohn (January 19, 2012). 'Apple unveils iBooks 2 for digital textbooks, self-pub app (live blog)'. CNET.Cite web requires |website= (help)
10. ^'Media from the 2015 iBooks Author Conference'. Retrieved April 8, 2017.Cite web requires |website= (help)
11. ^'iBooks Author Conference. What did we learn?'. Retrieved April 8, 2017.Cite web requires |website= (help)
12. ^'iBooks gets a redesign and new Apple Books branding in iOS 12'. The Verge. Retrieved June 5, 2018.
13. ^'Apple Books: What's new in iOS 12'. iMore. Retrieved July 10, 2018.
14. ^King, Sammy. 'Survey of Kindle, Nook, iPad, Sony and OverDrive eBook Store Collection Size'. eBookReaderGuide.com. Retrieved March 13, 2011.Cite web requires |website= (help)
15. ^'iBooks on iPhone 3GS — app review'.Cite web requires |website= (help)
16. ^'Apple iBooks now available for iPhone, iPod touch'. Mobiputing.com. June 21, 2010. Retrieved September 18, 2011.Cite web requires |website= (help)
17. ^balandin (July 20, 2010). 'Download iBooks 1.1.1 for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch'. iPhoneHeat. Retrieved September 18, 2011.Cite web requires |website= (help)
18. ^'Apple Reinvents Textbooks with iBooks 2 for iPad'. Apple Inc. Retrieved January 19, 2012.Cite web requires |website= (help)
19. ^Brian Chen and Nick Wingfield, The New York Times. 'Apple Unveils App and Tools for Digital Textbooks.' January 19, 2012. Retrieved January 19, 2012.
20. ^'iOS 11.3: The 7 best new features'. CNET. January 24, 2018. Retrieved February 11, 2018.
21. ^'iBooks: Frequently Asked Questions'. Apple. June 8, 2011. Retrieved August 27, 2011.Cite web requires |website= (help)
22. ^Arnold Kim (January 19, 2012). 'New ibooks not technically in epub format'. MacRumors.Cite web requires |website= (help)
23. ^Friedlander, Joel (March 1, 2010). 'Apple iPad Typography: Fonts We Actually Want'. TheBookDesigner.com.Cite web requires |website= (help)
24. ^Built-In Apps: iBooks. Apple. Retrieved August 1, 2012.
25. ^Use iBooks Themes to Improve the Reading Experience on iPhone & iPad. OSXDaily. Retrieved August 1, 2012.
26. ^'Winnie the Pooh goes MIA from NZ iBookstore, demands money from other territories'. Archived from the original on May 31, 2011.Cite uses deprecated parameter |deadurl= (help); Cite web requires |website= (help). iPhonewzealand. May 26, 2011
27. ^https://web.archive.org/web/20131023225452/http://www.apple.com/osx/whats-new/#ibooks
28. ^'iPad iBooks app US-only, McGraw-Hill absent from Apple event'. AppleInsider. January 28, 2010. Retrieved February 14, 2010.
29. ^'Apple pre-loading iBook Store with 30,000 free eBooks'. Appleinsider.com. March 25, 2010. Retrieved September 18, 2011.Cite web requires |website= (help)
30. ^Foresman, Chris (March 31, 2010). 'Self-published authors to get in iBookstore via Smashwords'. Arstechnica.com. Retrieved September 18, 2011.Cite web requires |website= (help)
31. ^'McGraw-Hill's Q4 Earnings'. CNBC. September 16, 2001. Retrieved September 18, 2011.Cite web requires |website= (help)
32. ^Apple Special Event January 2010Archived August 20, 2014, at the Wayback MachineApple Inc. January 27, 2010
33. ^John Paczkowski (January 28, 2010). 'McGraw-Hill: We Didn't Get Booted From the iPad Launch, Because We Weren't Part of It'. All Things Digital. Retrieved January 28, 2010.
34. ^Yarow, Jay. 'Apple Just Declared War On Amazon Kindle.'Business Insider, February 1, 2011.
35. ^Amazon skirts Apple restrictions with updated Kindle iOS appThe Verge, Jul 30, 2013
36. ^Chen, Brian. 'Apple’s Tablet E-Book App Rips off Indie Dev’s Creation' 'Wired', January 27, 2010
37. ^Carnoy, David. 'Is Apple's iBooks e-reader app a rip-off?' 'CNET', January 28, 2010
38. ^Slivka, Eric. New iPhone Ad: 'Read' 'MacRumors', January 25, 2009
39. ^ ^abApple (March 23, 2012). 'Apple iBooks Author FAQ'. Apple. Retrieved April 26, 2012.Cite web requires |website= (help)
40. ^'If you publish with iBooks Author, does Apple 'own' you?'. Los Angeles Times. January 20, 2012.Cite news requires |newspaper= (help)
41. ^Gary Marshall (January 20, 2012). 'Hands on: iBooks Author review'. TechRadar.com.Cite web requires |website= (help)
42. ^'Apple's iBooks Author Software: Just Say No'. InformationWeek. Archived from the original on July 11, 2012. Retrieved November 27, 2015.Cite uses deprecated parameter |deadurl= (help)
43. ^Chris Foresman (June 16, 2011). 'Apple iBooks trademark under fire from independent book publisher'. Ars Technica.Cite web requires |website= (help)
44. ^Musil, Steven (June 16, 2011). 'Apple sued over its use of 'iBook''. CNET.com. Retrieved January 19, 2012.Cite web requires |website= (help)
45. ^'Apple wins trademark lawsuit over use of 'iBooks' term'. CNET. CBS Interactive. May 10, 2013. Retrieved November 27, 2015.

External links[edit]

• Official website
• Video Making & Selling iBooks for iPad on YouTube

Take your love for literature to a new level! With the best audiobook apps for iPhone and iPad in 2019, you will be able to listen to your favorite books whenever and wherever you want.

If you love audiobooks, then you very well know that it can be an enthralling way to keep you occupied during extended travels or long road trips. Once you go with a suitable audiobook app, your iPhone can become your mobile library, and you don’t have to miss out on an interesting book ever again.

There are different types of audiobook apps. It’s hard to classify one particular app as the best as the choice mostly depends on what exactly you’re looking for. The subscription services take different approaches to their functioning. Some offer unlimited online streaming while some give you a limited number of downloads every month and letting you own the downloaded books.

Best iPhone Audio Book Apps of 2019

#1. Audible

The Audible app is arguably the biggest and most popular among the audiobook apps available in the market. Audible offers fantastic audiobook file management by segregating audiobooks into two types, the audible direct downloads, and the iPod library content. This app also translates and shows most of the iTunes meta-data such as chapter, summary, and categories thus helping you organize your library more efficiently.

Audible offers you the usual player controls such as play-pause, R-F, chapter navigation, bookmarking options, scrubbing and speed of narration. Audible’s best feature by far is the option to directly download the audio books from audible.com for offline listening.

Price: Free
Download

#2. Audio Books

Audio books by audiobooks.com is a cloud-based platform that provides a good audiobook app for both the iOS and Android users. As a subscriber, you can pick from a collection of about 50,000 audiobooks encompassing almost every genre.

You can use the search feature to discover new audiobooks and then can either stream these audio books or download them for offline listening. The app gives you the necessary controls like playback speed, auto bookmarking and other such features. It also lets you sync across devices letting you continue listening to the audiobook on whichever device you are using.

Price: Free
Download

#3. Overdrive

The Overdrive Media Console app offers you mp3 audiobooks that can be downloaded to the iDevice library. Presently, this app only allows direct library downloads using Safari. You may find the downloading process slightly awkward at first.

The app also needs a valid library card for downloads as it works as a gateway to the public libraries’ collections. Using the “Get Books” feature in the app, you can locate close by libraries and add them to the app. The one not so likable aspect of this app is the download limit of 3 imposed on the user. The app gives you a standard audiobook player with all the usual features and a useful file management system including selective file downloads and rapid file deletion.

Price: Free
Download

#4. Scribd Audio Books

Scribd is a popular platform hosting a ton of e-books that can be read online. Now, it is offering audiobooks as part of its on-demand service letting users stream or download an unlimited number of audiobooks from its 30,000 title collection. You can get this for a monthly fee of $8.99 along with access to Scribd’s vast e-book collection. After finding the book you want from Scribd’s library, you can add it to your library, and can even download it if you wish to read it offline.

At the price point, it’s offered at, Scribd’s new audiobook service is certainly enticing enough to try out.

Comic Book Reader App Mac

Price: Free
Download

#5. LibriVox Audio Books

If you are one of those audio bookworms who are not after the most recent bestselling books, then LibriVox can be a pretty good audio books app for you. This app gives you access to more than 15,000 free titles predominantly filled with public domain works including classics and out of print books.

You can search by the book’s title, author or genre. On finding the right book, you can save it and listen to multiple books as you desire. You can also have limitless bookmarks along with a sleep timer. You may find the narration standards to fluctuate, but for the cost of nothing, you can get access to great audiobooks.

Price: Free
Download

#6. Audio Books 15000+

As the name itself suggests, this app offers you a selection of over 15,000 audiobooks for your listening pleasure.

Once you download the app, simply search through the different titles in varying genres like classical, fantasy, children, etc. Just select the one you want and download it for listening to it anytime offline.

All the books have proper descriptions and also the option to be played back in split tracks. You get the usual audiobook playback controls. Best of all, this app is completely free yet provides you decent audiobook collections.

Price: Free
Download

#7. Bookmobile Audiobook and Podcast Player

The Bookmobile app is designed particularly for reading out audio books which mean that it’s optimized for spoken voice and therefore delivers a clean, can output. This app provides an excellent audiobook player that’s easy to use while loaded with playback adequate features.

This app lets you import content from your iTunes library, the Internet and even from RSS feeds. The app functions very smoothly with both DRM-enabled content and non-DRM-enabled content. In fact, you can download non-DRM audio directly into the App.

Price: Free
Download

#8. Audiobooks Now

What has caught my attention in this app is the gigantic collection of over 85,000 audiobooks. You can browse through the entire library and download your favorite books to listen. And yes, once you have downloaded the books, you don’t need an Internet connection to listen to them.

The app provides audio playback speed control, and there is also a manual bookmark and labeling feature. You will be able to skip books within a track list. Using cloud service, you can sync your books across your devices.

Price: Free
Download

#9. SmartBook

“SmartBook” is a fully-featured audiobook app for iOS, which lets you download and listen up to 11,000 books for free! You can import and play any book. The app is able to remember where you stopped listening so you can start off where you left the last time. Besides, it lets you keep a tab on your status as well.

You can adjust the playback speed and also shorten the silences. It has the support of multiple files including MP3 files, M4B and M4A files. Moreover, you can use the sleep timer to set the app to automatically stop once you have listened to your fav book at night.

Price: Free
Download

#10. vBookz – Free Audiobooks

vBookz is a great audiobook app for kids learning how to speak and read or for people with visual impairments. It offers a unique read along male or female voice synthesizer, which can be enabled or disabled. Even if you do not like voice synthesizers, the app provides a great collection of e-books to keep you hooked.

The app gives you the facilities to bookmark, choose and resize fonts, opting between night and day reading, a pretty good search feature and animated page turning. If you are a German, French or Spanish speaker, then the app offers some book versions in these languages.

Price: $4.99
Download

That’s all, folks!

What’s your favorite?

Ten to one, you have picked out some of the audio books from this list to enhance your listening experience. May I know their names and the features you have appreciated in them?

Don’t miss:

Do share your feedback with us in the comment, on Facebook, Twitter, and Telegram. Also, make sure to download our app on your iPhone and iPad.