Why, Numbers is one of my fav apps?
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It makes a great deal of sense, web. Thank you! I have never heard of Brave. It might be interesting to see how it works. Iâll try it on my Mac.
I have both Chrome and Firefox, aside from Safari, on my iOS devices. Firefox I donât care for.
@webwalrus Even though you were responding to @Katie, I read this with interest. I just learned more from your succinct post than anything else Iâve readâand I understood it! Thanks for sharing the explanation. I just saved it for reference.
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I think there should be both a Dashboard and a Desktop solution. The Dashboard one could be implemented, as suggested in the episode, as an upgrade for the Launchpad. This could potentially be great for iOS-first users (those who actually use Launchpad in their daily workflows) as it would be familiar for them.
I completely agree that putting them in the Notification Center, particularly when they have to fight for vertical space with notifications, is a horrible idea. Itâs like Windows Vista widgets but even worse. And if Apple really wants to keep those widgets in the Notification Center, they should be in the second column.
By the way, any change that would allow for different widget placement would also make those extra large iPad widgets possible on the Mac.
Itâs clear to me that the Books app is all about being a platform for buying content from Apple and not at all about giving Appleâs hardware customers a solid, thoughtfully designed tool for reading (including reading in the form of listening to audiobooks), taking notes, and managing their digital libraries. Whenever I open the app the first thing it shows me is something to buy, not the thing Iâm actually in the process of readingâeven if I open it with the âReading Nowâ screen selected. I only use Books when there is absolutely no other option.
Itâs hard not to believe that an app is laughing at you when it shows you completely wrong metadata and gives you no way to correct it âŚ
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I donât want to contradict you, but when I open the Books app on my iPad or my Mac, I see a âReading Nowâ heading and a sliding row of Current and Recent books that Iâve been reading.
And many are ebooks Iâve purchased without DRM or copy protection, not from Apple, but from outfits like Take Control, Baen, OâReilly, and Tor, etc. I have loaded them via iCloud or by dragging them to the iPad when it is plugged into my Mac.
I would like to echo two thoughts that David and Stephen both shared. The first is with the âlegacyâ apple IDs and the iCloud IDs. I have the same problem they both have with having an older ID i used to buy a lot of stuff with and now having a ânewerâ iCloud account as well. It has been a real pain trying to navigate between the two. I wish there was some way Apple could fix this. David mentioned in previous episodes that he thinks there may be some legal ramifications around merging them, but it really adds an additional step that i find very annoying when trying to purchase things or share stuff. This needs to be fixed somehow. The second item is about how iCloud will randomly ask for your password. You have to enter it an undetermined (random) number of times it seems until if magically goes away. I like Davidâs idea of putting the âAâ team on this to fix it. The problem has been around for what seems like a long time and still persists. Itâs time to fix this too!
I see those too, but the bottom half or so of my iPad screen is cluttered with âMore to Exploreâ items, such as âCustomer Favoritesâ and âSpecial Offers.â (Todayâs âBrowse Free Booksâ section promises âReads for all ages,â the first of which on offer is Sexy Filthy Boss. Thatâs some algorithm 
)
Yes, itâs a free app, but Iâve laid down a decent chunk of change to buy the devices it comes on and would like the option to turn the clutter off. At the moment there doesnât seem to be a good ebook reader that handles both drm-free* ePubs and PDFs and syncs across macOS and iOS. I will cheerfully pay for a good app that does that and doesnât try to sell me content. (Fingers crossed that Readwiseâs promised Reader app will.)
I would mostly disagree with this one. Yes, the Books app is oriented towards those who purchase books directly from Apple and yes, thereâs a lot that could be improved. I myself donât trust the iCloud component to the point that I have a second library in Calibre that syncs via OneDrive and I also have a separate iCloud Drive catalog for storing the books Iâve obtained from 3rd parties. And Sigil for editing metadata when somethingâs wrong.
But the actual reading experience is quite decent in Apple Books. I donât know any other 3rd party app that would look and feel this good when reading. And I donât feel that it shoves the store in my face. It is actually, in my opinion, quite well and thoughtfully implemented. And, unlike some other apps (yes, Iâm looking at you Music) thereâs no need to switch between local and store search â itâs all nicely integrated and actually useful.
Oh, my heart belongs to Marvin 3. If it handled PDFs, Iâd be in heaven.
My biggest complaints about Books isnât the store itself, but rather that the focus on selling content seems to have taken the dev teamâs eye off of things like local library management, metadata management and the like. (I tag my books with great care âwhy canât I see those tags in Books?) The WORST thing by far is the appâs insistence that audiobooks must be stored in a Books library on oneâs hard drive. I have a mammoth audiobook library of titles not purchased from Apple that I store on an external hard drive. There is no way to point Books at that drive to manage my library.
All of my ePubs and PDFs are in a Dropbox folder and managed via Calibre. Marvin 3 syncs my reading position, notes, and bookmarks via iCloud. Sigh. Except for PDFs. My point is, I would prefer not to have to cobble together a bunch of apps to get a good reading workflow.
Until we wake up and change it.
We cannot expect the Tech press to lead the fight for privacy while they themselve deploy advertising trackers en masse.
Iâm moving towards bringing stuff back local. I just bought a Firewall and eventually will be doing email and fileshare via an On-Prem device.
Iâm just DONE with looking at a product and then being followed across the web with adverts. I canât even search for private stuff like jewelry for the wife without fear that suddenly iâve got diamon ads all over the place when I search.
Itâs beyond ridiculous at this point.
Iâve downloaded Marvin 3. Sadly, it doesnât have that nice animation for page turning that Apple Books does. It may seem like a small thing but for me itâs at the core of reading experience. I may give it a try though â itâs very reasonably priced and there seems to be plenty of interesting features. Thank you for recommending it.
I donât think that advanced library management was ever the scope of the Books app, particularly the iOS version. Maybe for the better â it likes to reshuffle recent view in the library tab quite often.
The audiobook support is so awful that I forgot it actually existed. Itâs actually surprising that they havenât enabled it for iCloud â after all, if people were to upload their audiobooks collections to the iCloud they could try to make an extra buck from storage plan upgrades. Only reason I would consider putting an audiobook in the Books app on my Mac is if I wanted to sync it to my iPhone so that I could play it in my car via CarPlay.
All the faults, I still wouldnât put Books in the grade F built-in apps. At the very least, it doesnât have performance problems. It may have a poor feature set but itâs at least working as expected (bar any iCloud problems).
I would never discount a seemingly âsmallâ thing like that! I find itâs often something âsmallâ that keeps me loyal to an app that might not be the âbestâ in terms of UI or features. For instance, I still use Marked 2 almost everydayânot because I really need something for markdown preview, but because it produces the prettiest continuous page PDFs for me to store in my document repository! I could useDevonTHINK or Obsidian for that, but Marked 2 makes it easy to generate a good looking PDF with the headings, fonts, and what not tuned to just the way I like them.
A warning about Marvin 3: it is perilously close to being abandonware.
[quote=âkrocnyc, post:68, topic:27406, full:trueâ]
Itâs clear to me that the Books app is all about being a platform for buying content from Apple [/quote]
Sadly the same is true about the Amazon Kindle. And more (see next paragraph). But my ebooks I sell on Amazon (for Kindle) look better in Appleâs Books app. Sadly Amazonâs policies de facto require DRM on books sold there, so my customers cannot take the books and view them in Books (for those that have Apple devices). And while Amazon makes it easy to publish through them, Apple does not!
This âAdvertising Forwardâ also has invaded iTunes/Music where your own music files get buried by Apple Music. And everyones video services are guilty of hiding what you have paid for among the stuff they are pushing.
While you are talking Books, there is a great book club (for lack of a better term) called BookBud. You select which genres you are interested in and every day they send you approx. 6 titles for 99 cents up to $3. I buy a lot of books from them, guilt-free.
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I love Books! I also have Kindle but much prefer Books.
Sigh. DRM. Itâs not that difficult to strip DRM off of ebooks and audiobooks. I suppose the platform purveyors of digital content assume that that modest hurdle is too high for most of their customers to clear, thus ensuring lock-in.
I buy my audiobooks DRM-free from LibroFM. They sell most of the titles one can buy on Audible or through Apple, so DRM isnât the publishersâ requirementâitâs Amazonâs and Appleâs.
Interesting service! It looks like theyâre functioning as a âDeal of the Dayâ clearinghouse for content you can buy (or get for free) on all the major platforms.
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Usually, the books are listed for the exact same price as Amazon and Books. Most of the books donât interest me much. If I am unsure, I check Amazonâs feedback before taking the plunge and spending an entire $2. But one out of the six usually interests me.