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iOS 8.4 brings iBooks Author Textbooks to the iPhone for the first time

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In addition to a new Music application, iOS 8.4 brings textbooks developed using the iBooks Author tool to the iPhone for the first time. Launched in 2012 as part of Apple’s Education initiatives, iBooks Author allows schools and teachers to create dynamic, digital textbooks that can play videos, embed Study Cards, and connect to the internet…

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These digital textbooks were exclusive to the iPad until the Mac gained an iBooks application and iBookstore in fall 2013 with OS X Mavericks. In iOS 8.4, these textbooks run in their digital forms with videos, the glossary, highlighting, and notes on both the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.

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As noted on Twitter, these textbooks also show up in the iBookstore on an iOS 8.4 iPhone, while our tests on current iOS Software do not pull up textbooks in iBookstore searches. iOS 8.4’s support for iBooks Author textbooks first appeared in the first beta, but the functionality was buried under the the new Music app’s spotlight, so it is fitting to highlight it on the day of beta 3.

In iOS 8.4, the new iBooks application gains support for an Audiobooks section and improved compatibility with CarPlay via a new dedicated app.

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Comments

  1. virtualstorm - 9 years ago

    All what I need is an iOS Preview App so I can read my iCloud PDF files. Is that hard to ask for? By the way, I an a paying iCloud user

    • crichton007 - 9 years ago

      If you have an app like GoodReader or Documents 5 you can use Preview for them on your Mac and also have access to them on your iOS devices as well.

    • mhuggies - 9 years ago

      I’m not refuting the need for a file management app in iOS 9, but you can open PDFs in the iBooks app already

  2. Exciting times for iBooks Author and digital content creators everywhere! Thanks for reporting this.

  3. crichton007 - 9 years ago

    Will this only work on an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus?

    • Frank Lowney - 9 years ago

      good question
      The excuse for not doing this earlier was that there wasn’t enough resolution on the iPhone to do justice to what can be created with iBooks Author.

  4. Stephen Reiss - 9 years ago

    iBooks Author is not only for textbooks. We have used it to publish several travel / food & wine books that are photo rich and interactive. For example our book “A Drink and a Year Off” has over 2000 photos in it. There is no other platform that could support a book like this. It is a kludgy bit of software that produces amazing results. It is great to hear that our books will finally be available on the iPhone.

  5. Milorad Ivović - 9 years ago

    Hopefully also fixes the crashiness introduced in 8.3.. worst public beta EVER!

    Springboard is now prone to instability issues, and restarts itself twice a week. iOS was famed for stability once upon a time… the appeal of iPhones for basic stability reasons cannot be overstated.