Apple Books.app replacement needed

TidBITS Talk
41

Mostly true. According to the author, he took a job working for Apple last year and therefore can’t continue to develop it (I assume Apple makes employees sign a “brain clause” that gives them ownership of anything invented by an employee). But he has said that he will continue to make updates to keep it compatible with new versions of macOS. I assume this means he’ll keep it working, but won’t add/change any features.

The latest version (in the App Store and directly downloaded) was released a year ago and includes an update to fix a bug with it running on Big Sur.

Does this mean it works with Monterey? Will it work with Ventura? We probably won’t know until someone here tries it.

42

I have always used Bookpedia (along with DVDpedia, Gamepedia and CDpedia) They sync with the iOS center and has always worked well. I looked at Delicious, just because it has a nice look, but did not work out for me. Now they have a TVpedia and I will be checking that out! They are always updating and responsive to questions.

PS I use a Keyboard Maestro macro to open the files at my desktop computer from my iPhone and then can sync quickly. Also to close them. I feel like I underuse the power of KM.

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43

My mistake. The Pocketpedia TV is basically the Pocketpedia sync system (that I use on iOS) for the Apple TV, maybe?

44

Kobo is still owned by Rakuten. Walmart has a license to sell their products, but does not own them.

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45

re. Feedback. Yes I just did some:

re. Reinstate proper metadata tag editing in Books app on macOS & make all fields viewable across Apple OS’s.

Since the Catalyst version of the macOS Books app was introduced in the last version of macOS, proper metadata tag editing has been removed for most fields. The only editable fields available currently are Author, Title, and Cover. Previously we also had Year, Category, Comments, and Description available to us.

Worse, currently only non-Apple Bookstore (i.e. third-party) ePubs/PDFs have these 3 fields editable; purchased books have ZERO fields that can be edited at all anymore.

This makes curating a library in the Books app almost impossible to do now.

Link to serious Apple users thread:
Apple Books.app replacement needed - #4 by jimthing

Regards.

Though given under the feedback drop-menu “Which version of Books for Mac are you using?” it only goes up to v1.5 while the latest is v4.4(!), one wonders if anyone cares if they can’t even keep the current versions correct. :roll_eyes:

46

re. VM + older macOS version.

AFAICT, you can get a 'free for personal use’ download of VMWare Fusion 12 Player, then install the older version of macOS on that.

EDIT: Caveat here - it has to be an Intel (non-Apple Silicon) machine, and one capable of running Mojave, to boot it. Which obviously doesn’t make it a good idea if you’re moving away from Intel machines entirely, unfortunately. And VM/emulation as of April 2024 are a non-starter too, as they only offer macOS 12 Monterey or later. :frowning_face:

https://customerconnect.vmware.com/web/vmware/evalcenter?p=fusion-player-personal

On a separate (yet interesting) connected note, I found a post by TCo’s Kirk McElhearn (with Joshua Long), on doing VM with Windows 11 on M-Series Macs, with certain caveats. Some around here may find it useful: :wink:
https://www.intego.com/mac-security-blog/how-to-run-windows-11-for-free-on-an-m1-or-m2-mac

47

Most apps can simply be copied to a newer OS since they are mostly self-contained. Safari is one exception in that generally it is closely mapped to WebKit frameworks, but some have reported even that works.

That doesn’t mean all such copied apps will work properly in a newer OS, so always backup the newer one in case it must be restored.

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48

Sure, thanks for the info. But specifically for Books app; is there a good way of doing this?

49

I just took a look at the Mojave Books app from Catalina which tells me it won’t run in OSs greater than 10.14 (and yes I did confirm that by trying to lauch it). I don’t know whether the Catalina version would have the same issue in Monterey or not.

Screen Shot 2022-08-28 at 11.07.06 AM
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50

The simple way is to copy the app from the /Applications folder to a new location or to give it a new name.

If that fails there is another way. Use the macOS installer that has the legacy version you want installed. Then download Pacifist and have it open the macOS installer. Browse the listing to find the Books app and have Pacifist install it. Pacifist will install any dependencies required.

I have used both methods and find that copying works most of the time.

*Edited for clarity.

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51

This has been a problem for years, ever since books were split from iTunes. Numerous efforts at feedback to Apple have produced no results. Whoever wrote the Books app has clearly never been in a real library.
I run an old version of iTunes (12.9.5.5) on an old iMac running Big Sur and edit all the metadata there. I then drag and drop the book to the desktop and in Books I use ‘Add to Library’ to import it. Then I have to sort it manually.
I expect the old iMac to keep going for many years but once that dies …

52

Well, I finally found a way to get my (extensive) catalog listing of my books on Apple Books. They won’t let one print the list of your purchases, and block every other way, so I used TextSniper to copy the text of the listings - slow work given multiple pages - pasted the result in a Nisus Writer Pro document, cleaned up the results and converted it into a table.

I’ve been able for years to easily copy and paste my audible books and Kindle books to develop the same table format, then add alphabetical rows (A, B, C, etc) which are then added to a table of contents, duplicate the whole database so I can sort one by author and another by title, then PDF the result. Very handy, very simple and so useful. Unfortunately Apple doesn’t want us to have easy access to our information. Bad Apple ;-P

BTW Amazon has made the Kindle app almost unusable. They keep tweeting it and have messed up what was once a very easy system to access books on the device. I’m beginning to think a modification of Mark Twain’s statement fits for big tech: “I wonder if God invented the monkey because He (sic) was disappointed in sofware designers!” Sorry Mark but I had to say it. . . .

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53

Mojave (and iTunes) is the answer I’ve come to as well.

Currently that’s my previous laptop, an unloved 2016 MacBook Pro that was replaced by an M1 13" MBP. I never upgraded it from macOS 10.whatever (Mojave), because I didn’t want to lose all of the things that iTunes does do well. (Not arguing iTunes isn’t also bloated; just that it manages audiobooks very well, and nothing else does.) I simply didn’t try to move my audiobooks to the new laptop, and I continue to maintain my collection on the older machine.

Which is a ridiculous waste of hardware. I’m in the process of setting up a Mojave VM on a newer (but not M1) Mac mini, which I bought specifically to be able to use with older versions of macOS that couldn’t run on an M1 (M2, etc.) Mac. And do other things that require an Intel processor.

I’d be thrilled to see someone build a dedicated audiobook library manager, but the market for that seems…quite small, at least if you limit it to macOS. (There are some supposedly good Windows-based options, another thing the Intel Mac mini will help me explore.)

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54

I don’t use audiobooks, so it’s really the Books app in Mojave that’s my issue. But yes, audiobook users are screwed under Catalyst new Books app as well.

If only Apple could:

  1. Add ALL the metadata tags back to all books – purchased as well as third-party ePubs/PDFs.
  2. Allow storage location of apps Books [inc. audiobooks], and maybe even Podcasts, on external drives.
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55

Agree. I mostly manage my ebooks in the Finder, and don’t worry too much about the metadata. But I don’t read a lot of material from ebooks.

But my audiobooks collection, starting with Audible in 2003 (!), and growing to include books from Downpour.com, other services I use less frequently, and physical books on CDs and MP3 CDs (storing those is a separate irritation), is thousands of books now. It’s 95+% of my recreational reading.

The metadata matters, but it’s not the only thing. While sites like LibraryThing (or Goodreads, Delicious Library, or whatever) are, I suppose, fine for tracking lists of books, that’s not my use case. My use case is keeping the actual, digital audiobook files organized, searchable and sortable, and so on. It’s essential that the metadata gets written back to the audio tracks, so that the information about the book travels wherever the book goes.

LibraryThing isn’t going to play my audiobook, nor is Delicious Library. The app where I listen needs to know about, use, and have access to complete enough metadata about the entire collection to find book #4 in a series when I can’t remember what the title is.

The Audible app does a mediocre-to-poor job of this, but Books.app makes the Audible app look first class. From the Audible app, I almost always fail out to Goodreads to double-check. From Books.app, if I ever bothered to use it, that would be mandatory.

For managing storage…ebooks are one thing, but audiobooks are an entirely different matter. At high quality, a long-ish audiobook is 600 MB to 1 GB! I think the iTunes library on my audiobooks machine is more than 1 TB, more than half the total storage on the laptop where I manage them. iTunes can be set to use external storage but, having tried it years ago, there are limitations that make that sub-optimal, at least if you don’t keep that storage connected all the time. I decided I’d rather just pay for more internal storage, instead of living with always needing to remember to connect before opening iTunes…

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56

@dougeddy I recently upgraded my Kindle to latest Paperwhite with USB-C charging. It now has Bluetooth and can have both audio and text content. (Audible/Kindle). No speaker though, only wireless usage to another device, headphones or speaker.

57

Note that Kindle software is pretty universal. You can read Kindle books on almost any computer or mobile device via the Kindle app. The same hold for Audilble.

That said, I actually use Apple Books both for ebooks and for organizing essential PDFs. I do miss the ability to do more organization via metadata, the inability to control the placement of the library, and the mysterious file naming. I wish that Books Apple Books had been built like Apple Music or Apple TV, with collections taking the place of playlists and users having the ability to relocate the local library content away from the home directory. I have similar issues with the Apple Podcast app.

58

Yes, I have had the Kindle Oasis for several years (uses the horrible old USB mini charging cable). Love the ability to adjust the text because of my eyes but they have messed things up a good bit. A number of the books suddenly change font for no reason and it is much harder type to read. I just wish they would quit playing with the interface and the ability to easily download books. Too often it downloads the audible book, which I do not want on my kindle - I use Audible on my phone so I can read along to the narration - that was the original purpose of “Whispersynch” shhh - don’t read to loud lol.

I guess I’m getting old but I do believe don’t fix what wasn’t broke but Apple and Amazon seem to think their latest brainstorms have fixed broken things - really?? LOL

59

I’ve never used an Oasis but the new Paperwhite is a game changer with USB C and the ability to download the audio separately from the text. It has a really functional adaptive “front light”, easily adjustable text and you can get Kindle books directly on the device. Also charges wirelessly if that’s in your quiver.

I absolutely agree that audio is better from phone but having it possible as backup on Kindle for a car ride or other is great.

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