Apple Books 12+

I really like reading books on my iPad. But while the reading experience is still good, the page turn animation I still absolute love to this to this day for example, the library organisation is a mess. And since you can’t edit the metadata there isn’t much you can do about it.

For example I have a bunch of Kurt Vonnegut books that are all split between “Kurt Vonnegut” and “Kurt Vonnegut Jr. I also have some Douglas Adam’s books that all get grouped into a series…apart from one.

I understand this can happen with small differences in metadata but give us the control to change it please. Collections help with this to a degree but it’s clunky.

Also the cloud library is downright infuriating, books constantly get undownloaded, even downloaded books will sometimes refuse to open without an internet connection for some unknown reason. I use my iPad when I’m away from a mobile signal so that can be really annoying. If download something I want it to stay downloaded!

If apple don’t want to give this books app the attention it deserves I have a suggestion. Open up the users apple books library to be shared with other apps, like you can with your music library. I can imagine third party developers creating apps that appeal to people who want finer grained control.

While I’m in dream land an apple eink product would be great, or make a deal with Kobo 😉. I do miss the long battery life and eink screens.

Used to be good until we had to instal ios16. I am a blind person who uses voiceover. Since the update it has become harder to read with Apple Books. You now have to slide upwards with 3 fingers to turn a page and when you turn it there are words missing from the new page. This spoils the reading experience and spoils the book. Apple need to deal with this quickly as we have paid money for our books and don’t deserve our experience to be spoilt. Many blind people use apple products as their devices are best for us to use. I hope somebody at apple reads this and makes the situation better. I won’t be buying anymore books from you if the app remains like this. It’s a shame because i have enjoyed using the app untiil now and it is an excellent way to buy books. Before the update i would have given Apple Books 5 stars but not now. I’m glad I’ve had my say. Why is it that people always try to mend things that don’t neeed fixing. It’s what happens when you have to much money coming in and not enough to do.

This update has genuinely filled me with rage. The app is now unusable. Forces you to be in vertical scroll mode. They got rid of the lovely page turning animation and replaced it with hideous cards. You can no longer drag your finger along the bottom to jump to a page in a book (which I do all the time for books I’ve already read and want to skim through). This is now only available in vertical scroll, and you have to tap the settings button in the bottom corner to bring it up, you can’t keep it on-screen. In scroll mode, there are of course no distinct pages and it’s horrendous to read, but I’m forced to use it since there are now features missing from page-turning mode. Bookmarks are made by double tapping the screen now, which I do by accident ALL THE TIME, especially since my thumb now permanently hovers over the screen to scroll. I can’t find any positive reviews about this update. For the first time, I will be looking to other apps for my books, eco-system be damned. I’d wonder if the developers might listen and fix the issues people are having; but it’s Apple, and of course they won’t.