iBooks iOS5- dictionary not working?

[desiking75]

Hi I'm new to the forum. I installed iOS5 a few days ago, and was extremely surprised to find out that my dictionary works in almost every app on the iPad even on mail and safari, but it stopped working in the iBooks app. What happens is when I try to go and define a word, a blank bubble pops up as opposed to one with text in it defining the word. I tried this on several books and did everything short of restoring the iPad. Anyone else experience something similar or know a fix? Much appreciated!

 

[Kfred]

I can confirm that this is a very real and very annoying bug in iOS 5 beta 1.

I am running the beta on a wifi-only iPad 2 and experience the same exact issue. I even tried restoring, to no avail.

It's somewhat surprising that no one else has noticed this yet. I've searched and only found this thread on the issue. I really hope this bug is fixed in beta 2 because I use iBooks a lot.

 

[desiking75]

Good to know. I was almost sure this was an isolated incident since I couldn't find any Ndola online about it. It helps knowing that restoring won't help as I was close to resorting to that. I hope it fixes soon as well as iBooks is a native apple app that I so frequently use.

 

[scorpio2007]

Hi I'm new to the forum. I installed iOS5 a few days ago, and was extremely surprised to find out that my dictionary works in almost every app on the iPad even on mail and safari, but it stopped working in the iBooks app. What happens is when I try to go and define a word, a blank bubble pops up as opposed to one with text in it defining the word. I tried this on several books and did everything short of restoring the iPad. Anyone else experience something similar or know a fix? Much appreciated!

I have the same issue. Surprisingly, it works fine on my iPhone and iPod 3G. Only affected candidate seems to be my iPad (1st Gen). In iBooks, upon first time use, it is supposed to prompt us to download the dictionary and that never happened. Hence this issue, I guess.

 

[Knightoftheapp]

For those of you that have the iOS 5 beta, how do like it overall? I currently have the most recent version of iOS 4. Would you suggest that I get the beta version now or just wait until the regular version comes out in the fall?

 

[Kfred]

The beta rocks and so does iOS 5. However, if you read a lot in iBooks, not having the dictionary is a deal breaker. I will probably downgrade later today. It's just not worth it. I use calibre to pull in magazine feeds and read them in iBooks. As cool as Safari's reader feature is, having all the recent magazine issues in iBooks is better. And not having a dictionary makes reading useless.

I hoping one of the two following things happens very soon:

-iOS 5 beta 2 is released, fixing the iBooks dictionary issue.

-iPad 2 jailbreak is released for iOS 4.3.3.

There are already Cydia packages that offer universal dictionary look up, so I don't care which comes first. But I'm getting really annoyed that iPad 2 users currently have no solution to this.

 

[miket5au]

Why do you need a dictionary in iBooks?

I just don't know what the issue is and would like to understand it.

 

[thewitt]

I had the same question.

I always have one or two books in progress and I've never even used the dictionary.

-t

 

[scorpio2007]

For those of you that have the iOS 5 beta, how do like it overall? I currently have the most recent version of iOS 4. Would you suggest that I get the beta version now or just wait until the regular version comes out in the fall?

It is a version that we have never seen anything like it before. It is just fantastic and very stable in spite of being in beta1. Feature rich andi love it. No need to wait. Upgrade and enjoy. Minor issues like youtube and safari apps occasional crashes are there. But it is beta.

 

[Batnun]

iOS 5 beta 2 - still have this bug...

 

[Kfred]

I finally downgraded to 4.3.3 because I couldn't take the lack of an iBooks dictionary any longer. Another unimpressive addition to iOS 5 beta 2 is the new definitions in the universal dictionary--they are horrible! They are dumbed down and filled with synonyms. I really hope Apple goes back to the first iteration for the final release. If not, at least jailbreaking should be able to fix it.