iBooks viewable on tablet other than iPad?

[miamialley]

Once you buy and iBook from iTunes, does that marry you to the iPad as the tablet for viewing? Can you view those iBooks on another tablet, like a Xoom or Kindle? I know music purchased on iTunes is not married to iTunes, but was wondering if iBooks works the same way.

 

[anthony691]

Apple uses a proprietary "Fairplay" DRM for iBooks that means the books can only really be read in iBooks. Some books can be read on a Mac using Adobe Digital Editions.

It is hard to find DRM-free ebooks. My solution to this problem was to purchase books that included the weakest form of DRM and simply removing it. They work great in iBooks!

 

[ditzy]

It is one of the weaknesses of iBooks, they are only viewable on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. While the application is gorgeous, that's really it's only advantage. I'd recommend using the kindle app, you'll never lose your books that way.

 

[ucfgrad93]

It is one of the weaknesses of iBooks, they are only viewable on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. While the application is gorgeous, that's really it's only advantage. I'd recommend using the kindle app, you'll never lose your books that way.

Agreed. iBooks can only be read on an iOS device. A kindle book can be read on a Kindle, iOS device, PC or Mac computers, Android OS, Windows Phone 7 and possibly some others I'm forgetting.

 

[No1up]

+1for kindle

 

[miamialley]

If you buy a Kindle book, do you have all the same functionality as if you bought it from iBooks? (when viewing it on iOS obviously)

 

[ucfgrad93]

^^^^Not really sure what you are asking. Amazon has a Kindle app for the iPhone and iPad. So when you buy a Kindle book you have to read it using the Kindle app, which doesn't have the same page turning animations, options, etc.

 

[miamialley]

^^^^Not really sure what you are asking. Amazon has a Kindle app for the iPhone and iPad. So when you buy a Kindle book you have to read it using the Kindle app, which doesn't have the same page turning animations, options, etc.

Oh okay, for some reason I was thinking you could transfer a Kindle purchase and view it in iBooks. Guess not.

How big are typical iBook files anyway? I'm trying to determine which iPad I'd need (16, 32, 64).

 

[ck2875]

How big are typical iBook files anyway? I'm trying to determine which iPad I'd need (16, 32, 64).

Text-based books tend to be under 2mb. Once photos start getting added they tend to jump to around 15mb or so. The largest I've seen was Bush's Decision Points that weighs in at 45mb, but not many get that large.

Something else to consider is that you don't have to sync all of your books to the iPad. How many books are you wanting to read at any given time?

 

[NATO]

Oh okay, for some reason I was thinking you could transfer a Kindle purchase and view it in iBooks. Guess not.

Personally I prefer Kindle because they have viewing apps on pretty much every modern platform (PC, Mac, iOS, Android etc). Means if you switch devices chances are you can still view your books. Saying that, there are things out there which will strip the Kindle DRM off the books so you can convert to ePub which you can import into iBooks.