Editorial: The iBooks application is one of the most popular apps on the iPad, providing users with a well-designed user interface with which they can organize and interact with their written media. The primary file format used for books in this app is the ePub format, a free open standard by which books can be encoded into a relatively small file size and synced to an iPad or iPhone for easy and comfortable reading. The open-standards of the ePub format have ensured the availability of millions of books on the iPad without Apple having to convert each text to a single proprietary standard, like Amazon’s Kindle.
Why then, does Apple undermine the ePub open standards by treating it with such disdain? Are they scared of something that we don’t know about?
The rationale for this discussion is as follows. Apple recently released an update for the OSX software iWork, which specifically enabled the Pages application to export files in ePub format. This is a great step forward, some might say. Apple is finally dancing to the beat of it’s own ‘open’ drum and giving users what they want, some might say.
Bollocks to that.
Users can export files from pages as ePub. But can they open those files. Hell No! If you try to open that file that you just exported, Pages can’t do a damn thing about it. Neither can any other Apple program. You have to add the file to iTunes and sync it to your iPad and read it there. You can download Calibre if you want, which is an excellent program (if not a little system hogging), and import it there but why should you have to. The ePub format is a free open format. There are no proprietary algorithms at work here. Why can’t you open the file in Pages?
More importantly, why are you still unable to open the file in iTunes. Apple has issued a new version of iTunes, only last week, but still have failed to incorporate support for natively reading ePub files in the application. Once again, the only way is through the iBooks app on the iPad. There is an entire section of iTunes devoted to eBooks and yet you can’t view them. This is one of the most ridiculous paradoxical situations that Apple users have yet found themselves in.
Apple. ePub. Arse. Kick. Seriously.
Needing a swift kick in the arse?
