Apple Books

In a continued effort to push the Apple News platform, Apple has today published an exclusive story, giving an excerpt from former First Lady Michelle Obama’s upcoming book, Becoming.

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A Higher Loyalty, the memoir/exposé written by former FBI director James Comey, is now available for pre-order on iPhone and iPad, ahead of its official publication date tomorrow.

In the book –subtitled Truth, lies and leadership – Comey likens President Trump to a ‘mob boss’ who is ‘untethered to the truth’ and morally unfit to be president. But he also doesn’t hold back about Apple’s decision not to help the FBI in the San Bernardino shooting, describing it as ‘appalling’ …

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As Apple seeks to boost its recurring income from services, it recently purchased Texture – one of a number of services described as ‘Netflix for magazines.’ Ten dollars a month gives subscribers access to more than 200 different magazines.

That’s nice, but what I really like to see from Apple is ‘Netflix for books’ – perhaps more accurately described as ‘Kindle Unlimited for iBooks.’

If Apple were able to bring to that the kind of discovery smarts it has achieved with Apple Music, it would be a killer product …

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Earlier today, a report by Bloomberg mentioned that Apple is working on big changes for the Books app (previously called iBooks) and the Apple Books Store.

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According to a new report from Bloomberg, Apple will revamp the iBooks app later this year with a major redesign, with a new ‘Reading Now’ tab, a separate section for audiobooks and a store interface that draws from the same design language as the iOS 11 App Store.

The report follows the launch of iOS 11.3 beta, which includes a renaming of the iBooks app to simply ‘Books’. In the current beta, there are no meaningful UI changes to the Books app.

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US eBook sales fell by 18.7% in the first nine months of 2016, while UK sales dropped 17% across the year, reports CNN. There appears to have been a resurgence in reading physical books, where sales grew during the same period.

In the UK, sales of physical books and journals went up by 7% over the same period, while children’s books surged 16%. The same trend is on display in the U.S., where […] paperback sales were up 7.5% over the same period, and hardback sales increased 4.1%.

The popularity of print format books is not necessarily very literary in nature, however …

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This week I bought and played through my first audiobook in iBooks (Shoe Dog) after realizing I have a habit of buying a lot of books then rarely making time to actually read them. I finished the 13 hour 22 minute book over the weekend and really enjoyed the experience (and the book). I listen to a lot of podcasts, so playing audio in the background while running errands is something I know I enjoy.

iBooks on the iPhone is a solid audiobook player. It works with Apple CarPlay, 3D Touch from the Home screen, and to my surprise has arguably the best Now Playing screen of any Apple app. Apple currently has three different versions of its audio Now Playing screen between its Music, Podcasts, and iBooks apps, the audiobooks version has features that every Now Playing screen should adopt.

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When the long-running antitrust case against Apple over ebook price-fixing was finally settled last year, one chapter ended and a new one began – this time in Europe. German regulators objected to Apple agreeing an exclusive deal with Amazon-owned Audible for the supply of audiobooks, stating that this reduced competition and thus harmed consumers …

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On the 20th anniversary of the first publication of A Game of Thrones, George RR Martin told the Guardian that a special edition of the book due to be released today on iTunes represents ‘an amazing next step in the world of books.’

A Game of Thrones: Enhanced Edition [offers] ‘a world of additional content,’ said its publisher HarperCollins, ranging from interactive character maps to detailed annotations, character journeys and timelines, family trees [and] audio clips.

The book, which is exclusive to iBooks, includes an extract from The Winds of Winter. Martin said that he was excited by the opportunity to offer readers access to a whole range of secondary material …

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Apple continues to experiment in the social media space to promote its businesses and products. In this vein, iBooks has launched its own official Instagram account this weekend. Apple is using the photo-centric social network to share book artwork, quotes, min-reviews and more. Interestingly, none of the posts so far feature call-to-action links where users can directly purchase the promoted novels from iBooks itself.

It appears to be using a more subtle marketing approach, raising awareness of books which users can then lookup and buy from the iBookstore if they choose.

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Last week, users in China mysteriously saw the iTunes Movies Store and iBooks Store shut down. At the time, it was unclear why the services went down, but now, The New York Times reports that the two stores were ordered to shut down by the Chinese State Administration of Press, Publication, Film, and Television.

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Well, the e-book case that began in 2012 when the US government accused Apple of price-fixing finally ended yesterday  when the Supreme Court declined to hear Apple’s appeal. That left the original ruling intact, meaning that Apple is officially guilty of anti-competitive behavior and will have to fork out $450M in compensation.

There’s no doubt in my mind that the correct result was reached in law. Apple did deliberately set out to fix prices, it did strike secret deals, and it did intend to manipulate the e-book market. Emails from Steve Jobs confirmed the government’s claim that Apple struck the deals in the belief that consumers would end up paying more for e-books.

Throw in with Apple and see if we can all make a go of this to create a real mainstream ebooks market at $12.99 and $14.99. [Up from the typical $9.99 at the time.]

So far, so good. If you’d brought that evidence to me at the time Apple did the deals, I’d have agreed with the government that the company’s behavior was both illegal and morally wrong. But I’d argue that by the time the case was finally brought to court, it was already abundantly clear that it was not in the public interest to pursue it …

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Apple will be on the hook for $450 million after losing its appeal in the e-book price-fixing case, Bloomberg reports. The United States Supreme Court released the decision after Apple appealed the prior ruling. The high-profile case dates back to a 2012 lawsuit from the United States, which Apple appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, but the justices declined to hear the case which leaves the prior ruling intact.

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Apple has released the fourth OS X 10.11.4 preview for registered developers to test ahead of its expected release next month. The software update to the Mac will likely be released around next month’s March 15th event and is expected to coincide with a new version of iTunes. For Mac users, the latest version of OS X El Capitan adds enhancements like being able to view and share Live Photos originally taken on the iPhone 6s or 6s Plus as well as the ability to lock notes behind a secure password. We’re check out the latest beta and update with any changes.

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The U.S. Justice Department has said that is now satisfied with Apple’s measures to guard against any repetition of the type of anti-competitive behaviour ruled illegal in the long-running ebooks trial. Bloomberg reports that the department has recommended that the court-appointed monitor is no longer necessary.

In a letter to the Manhattan federal judge who found in 2013 that Apple illegally conspired with publishers to set e-book prices, the U.S. said Apple has “now implemented meaningful antitrust policies, procedures, and training programs that were obviously lacking at the time Apple participated in and facilitated the horizontal price-fixing conspiracy found by this court.”

The letter did, however, note that Apple “never embraced a cooperative working relationship with the monitor” … 
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A notable omission from the iBooks library has been Harry Potter, the most successful literary book series. JK Rowling, the author of Harry Potter, has kept eBook rights exclusive to her own website until today. This morning, Apple announced that all seven of the books are finally available to buy in the iBooks app to be read on iPhone, iPad and Mac.

The books include more than just the text of the story. The ‘enhanced editions’ feature brand new interactive elements, animations, ‘elaborate’ artwork, notes from the author and exclusive covers.

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