Does any of you know if the audio books in apple books sync reading progress with the same ebook?
Kindle has this feature where the ebook skips forward to current reading position if you listen to the same book in Audible. And vise versa, the audio book skips forward if I read a few pages on the Kindle.
I’ve found a book I want on both Amazon and Apple Book store, and the price is almost the same, but if Apple books don’t have that progress syncing feature, I think I’ll go with Kindle again.
But I thought maybe with the resent iOS16 overhaul to the Books app, it might have gotten that feature too. I just can’t find anything specific in the documentation or reviews, so it probably hasn’t…
I use that very seldom, but as far as I remember, it syncs the same way as a regular iBook.
And there is also a new feature, that is about to turn every book into an Audiobook with an internal reading function.
It is bad enough that AI-powered chat-meisters are branching out into forms of writing: analyzing, summarizing, composing, and referencing. But now they are going to read to us. A key feature of AI is that it really does not know what it is doing. How is it ever going to read with expression and the proper emphasis?
Most properly, it is not!
I tested today the „reading“ function of the Readwise Reader App.
I did it with a German Text, and my first thought was, that I had just discovered a new language!
The App is simply not taking any care about the language of the text, but just „read“ everything with an strong English pronunciation!
Simply terrible, and completely without any value!
The Verge article noted above says about Amazon:
Notably, its Kindles used to offer a text-to-speech feature, but this was discontinued a decade ago after copyright concerns were raised.
Maybe I need to be more specific in my question. I’m not talking about narrating e-books:
I buy an Audiobook in Apple’s Books-app. Let’s say Moby Dick.
I also buy the e-book Moby Dick in Apple Books.
I then read chapter 1 and 2 on the iPad.
Then I go for a walk with my iPhone and AirPods, and I want to listen to chapter 3 and 4. Does the Books app know where I left off on the iPad and skip the first two chapters, so it starts narrating chapter 3?
And then on my walk, I listen to chapters 3 and 4. Next day I resume reading on my iPad. Does it sync the e-book to chapter 5?
I don’t want to navigate chapters manually, and I don’t want to search for the latest phrases to find where I left the book last time.
Kindle in combination with Audible has this feature, so I thought maybe Apple added it with the latest update.
I don’t think so. Whispersync is amazing technology and - for now - seems to be unique to the Amazon ecosystem.
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There are iBooks, that contain the Audiobook, and it worked on them.
But I do not think that this would work, if you purchase the iBook, and the Audiobook separate, as the system would most probably do not know, that these independent files should be handled as once.
I wasn’t aware, that this should be working with Audible, but I also do not use this (expensive) service, as the most books I am reading (currently around 250-300 a year) are not available as Audiobook anyway.
And I just learned, that the “Whispersync” seems to be not available for all Audiobooks on Audible.
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It’s a fair point… Whispersync is generally available on more popular books, presumably because it entails a considerable amount of extra work to link text and audio.
I’m not sure Audible is expensive, at least in the UK. I’ve not found audiobooks for less. I’m currently paying just over £4 per audiobook… That’s any audiobook in the collection (I recently bought 45 hours of Stephen King for one credit). If you own a Kindle ebook you can often add on the audiobook for less than £4.
Publishing is complex and the ebook and audiobook rights aren’t always owned by the same company and it differs internationally. Hence the deals and functionality varies.
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