The laptop could be taking a big leap forward for reading books as Apple has made a Maverick move that could be a winner in bringing its iBooks platform to laptop and desktop computers.
iBooks has been available only for iOS devices such as the iPad, so widening the reach of its catalogue of nearly two million ebooks to computers running OSX systems could extend its market massively. The move seems to be particularly aimed at laptop-toting students.
OSX Mavericks is the new Apple operating system release planned for the autumn, finally moving away from the highly confusing series of big cats. I was never sure whether I was running Mountain Lion, Cougar, Puma, Panther or just a plain old tabby. Mavericks is apparently a favourite California surfing area, I’m getting a headache already. I suppose it’s too much just to call it OS11.
Anyway, Apple says Mavericks begins a new chapter in the iBooks story and books that have already been downloaded to your iPad, iPhone or iPod will automatically appear in iBooks on your Mac.
It claims that reading books on a laptop or desktop will be as intuitive as on an iOS device and adds that students can keep as many books open as they want and search through them easily. iBooks can add a citation if you quote an excerpt while writing a paper and highlighted passages or bookmarks can be pushed to all your devices automatically, with iCloud remembering which page you’re on for any device you use.