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Apple enables iBook gifting on iOS and OS X ahead of the holidays

After recently overhauling its iBooks apps for iOS 7, Apple has enabled the ability to purchase iBooks for others through its gifting system as Macworld first noted.

Previously, you could purchase credit for the iBooks Store for someone else, but you could not purchase a specific book intended for someone else’s account. Amazon’s Kindle ecosystem has allowed e-book gifting for a few years now, but the feature’s absence remained a point of confusion for many iBook customers before today…

The change comes at an opportune time as the holidays approach and gifting will likely be quite popular.

With the launch of OS X Mavericks in late October, iBooks debuted on the Mac for the first time enabling Mac users to read iBook purchases away from iOS for the first time. iBooks gifting support extends to the desktop as well.

For more information and support for iBooks, check out our tutorial on managing iBooks for Mac as well as the iBookstore.

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Comments

  1. PMZanetti - 10 years ago

    Awesome. Only about 3 years over due.

  2. Great, now let us gift APPS!!

    • dman238 - 10 years ago

      You’ve been able to do that forever now—> http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2736 Just you instructions on “Gift an item on a iOS device”.

      Got to say I am very surprised that someone posting on 9 to 5, doesn’t know about being able to gift items / apps on the App Store…

  3. Shari Murray - 10 years ago

    How would I go about gifting from the ibook store?

    • Zac Hall - 10 years ago

      On an iPhone or iPad, look for the button with an arrow coming out of a box like in the top right of this photo: http://d.pr/i/IesQ

      On a Mac, loon for the small menu button like in the screen above.

  4. Patrick Choi (@koban4max) - 10 years ago

    is this what apple good at? Gifting rather than improving mac pro or other computer types?

  5. Sil - 10 years ago

    Awesome!
    It’s enabled in the Netherlands too!
    (both on Mac and iOS)

Author

Avatar for Zac Hall Zac Hall

Zac covers Apple news, hosts the 9to5Mac Happy Hour podcast, and created SpaceExplored.com.