Apple iOS 12, macOS Mojave Books app redesign biggest ever, with enhanced discovery

Posted:
in iPhone edited October 2018
Apple shines a spotlight on the new and redesigned Books app for iOS 12 and macOS 10.14 Mojave.

iOS 12 bookstore and audio books


"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.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 17
    indiekidukindiekiduk Posts: 381member
    The iOS 12 Books code-base is absolutely massive too!
  • Reply 2 of 17
    emoelleremoeller Posts: 574member
    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?
  • Reply 3 of 17
    sphericspheric Posts: 2,544member
    Audiobooks have been hosted in iBooks on iOS since iOS 11 at least. 
  • Reply 4 of 17
    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”. :-)
  • Reply 5 of 17
    Serif font family?  What on earth??
    mpw_amherst
  • Reply 6 of 17
    rogifan_newrogifan_new Posts: 4,297member
    That header font hurts my eyes.
    mpw_amherst
  • Reply 7 of 17
    mac_128mac_128 Posts: 3,454member
    I hope this makes it easier to manage in iCloud. I was looking at my iCloud storage as I'm nearing my limit, and Books takes up a huge amount of my cloud storage for some reason -- I thought books I purchased from the Apple Book store were not supposed to count against my cloud storage? Also under Books, it shows not only PDFs I've loaded into Books but the same PDFs in Preview which seems redundant. So intuitively, I really have no idea what I'm deleting where.
  • Reply 8 of 17
    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”. :-)
    The other problem is that the user never really knows what the resolution quality of photos/graphics in image heavy e-books is going to be. There's no industry standard and it's not something that's even listed when you browse e-books. I think comics and graphic novels used 'HD' for awhile as a description, but that wasn't even really a reference to a standard. It just meant "higher resolution than they used to be". IMO, it makes spending $$ on anything that isn't just text oriented a dubious exercise. 
    CurtisHight
  • Reply 9 of 17

    Serif font family?  What on earth??
    I like it. Appropriate typographic touch for the redesign and makes it stand out vs. other apps.
  • Reply 10 of 17
    FolioFolio Posts: 698member
    I’ve enjoyed the elegance of a few iBooks and glad for Apple effort. I’m probably in a tiny minority, but would like ability to annotate w pencil in app. (Right now I use screen shots and make notes there.)
    mbenz1962
  • Reply 11 of 17
    lorin schultzlorin schultz Posts: 2,771member
    Can anyone who has actually seen the new app tell me if it follows the model Apple has adopted with the Apple TV and TV app requiring visitors to enter through the gift shop? When opening Movies or TV Shows I'm presented with a storefront rather than seeing the titles in my collection.

    I appreciate being able to make purchases from within the app, but find it a nuisance to have to navigate past the store to get to my library.
  • Reply 12 of 17
    Also hate the serif font, largely for flouting the typeface-design language elsewhere in iOS. And if the argument is books are different then why not mail? Or a different type of typeface for News? Or Music?

    also, I wish my audiobooks synced to iCloud and across my devices, as books do or Apple Music/iTunes Match. 
  • Reply 13 of 17

    I really hope Apple sorts out whatever issues they have rolling out iBooks/ Books to other markets. They are doing their customers a huge disservice by making us depend on Amazon for digital books!

  • Reply 14 of 17
    mbenz1962mbenz1962 Posts: 171member

    also, I wish my audiobooks synced to iCloud and across my devices, as books do or Apple Music/iTunes Match. 
    This!!!
    Folio said:
    I’ve enjoyed the elegance of a few iBooks and glad for Apple effort. I’m probably in a tiny minority, but would like ability to annotate w pencil in app. (Right now I use screen shots and make notes there.)
    I would also really like better annotation support for PDF's in particular.  Also some sort of floating note that improves on their "sticky note" concept for ePub would be great.  Maybe it could work like Smart Annotation (currently in Beta) for Pages.

    Also, better support with 3rd party books.  I know Apple makes money on books, but I have lots of ePub and PDF books that are "free" from other sources (brochures, user guides, education, etc.) that I use in iBooks and the features for management are just not on par with Book Storte purchased items.  iCloud Library for Books helped a lot, but there is still room for improvement.  For example, when syncing iOS frequently clears the downloaded items and starts with 3rd party content.  I would like to "pin" several items so they they are not cleared in the case of space constraints.  

    It may be a dream, but it would be great if the Book store offered some sort of subscription for audio books.  Maybe they could tie it into AppleMusic.
  • Reply 15 of 17
    PuddleglumPuddleglum Posts: 1unconfirmed, member
    In the spirit of, "You had one job...",

    Apple places 'Books/iBooks' between their users and their audiobooks synced with iTunes.

    Books, put quite simply, is bloated and crashes upon track change, for me, about every 6-8 tracks.

    The app is devoted to nothing but selling end users more content and fails in its primary task of SERVING content.

    I'm probably mistaken but I don't believe it's possible to use an alternative app to access audiobook files transferred to iOS via iTunes.

    It should tell you something when the App Store refuses to let you Rate "Apple Books"   Currently, it has -no- ratings or reviews.

    And STILL no bookmark feature.  Imagine Audible, Hoopla, Overdrive, or Libby without a bookmarking feature!   You don't have to imagine it because for years it has been existent in all variants of Apple Books.

     
    edited November 2018 spheric
  • Reply 16 of 17
    crowleycrowley Posts: 10,453member
    Top marks for presentation, but until there's an eInk reader that syncs with Apples Bookstore, it's a worthless app to me.  Deleted.
  • Reply 17 of 17
    sphericspheric Posts: 2,544member
    crowley said:
    Top marks for presentation, but until there's an eInk reader that syncs with Apples Bookstore, it's a worthless app to me.  Deleted.
    Top marks for grammar, but since I listen to audiobooks on the phone and have my fake book and synth manual archives on the iPad, it's a worthless comment to me. Not upvoted.
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