Help an apple noob out

[Zugzwang]

I have a couple of questions...

1. I have ebooks in several formats. Kindle, google play books, and iBooks now. Is there any way to consolidate these in iBooks?

2. Tell me about Ifiles. Is it a good file manager? I have some movies and books in ePub and mkv formats over on my android. Could I move these files to the ipad via Dropbox, and then use ifiles to move them where they need to go? Do generic readers like moon reader or aldiko exist on iOS?

 

[Mickey330]

I have a couple of questions...

1. I have ebooks in several formats. Kindle, google play books, and iBooks now. Is there any way to consolidate these in iBooks?

No, I'm afraid not. Each company you mention (Apple, Amazon and Google) use Digital Rights Management (DRM) software encoding on their e-books, making it impossible to use in another app. It's an anti-piracy tool used by the publishers and companies.

However, if the book is DRM-free, then yes, you can use it in another app, as long as that app can read that type of file (e.g. iBooks cannot read Kindle .mobi files and the Kindle app cannot read iBook files such as .ePub). Yeah, it's a mess, but that's because there are different e-book formats.

2. Tell me about Ifiles. Is it a good file manager? I have some movies and books in ePub and mkv formats over on my android. Could I move these files to the ipad via Dropbox, and then use ifiles to move them where they need to go? Do generic readers like moon reader or aldiko exist on iOS?

No. Yes. Well, in a way. See, there is no central file management on the iPad. So, your best bet is to go ahead and put the files you want on the iPad into Dropbox. But then, use the free Dropbox app (that you'd install on the iPad) to open the files in the appropriate app. As long as an app can run the type of file you wish to open, you can open it in (or send it to) the app you wish. Remember, the iPad is app-centric, not file-centric.

in a search of the AppStore, I don't see either of the two apps you mentioned. However, there are a lot of "generic" e-reading apps in the AppStore; I am sure a search there will help. Just remember to keep in mind that the app has to be able to read the file (very few can/do read .mobi files that are the ones from Amazon).

Hope some of this helps.

Marilyn

 

[Zugzwang]

Thanks Marilyn. It sounds like ibooks should be able to open all the epub books I have. They are drm free.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk

 

[Mickey330]

Thanks Marilyn. It sounds like ibooks should be able to open all the epub books I have. They are drm free.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk

Yes - and sorry I wasn't clearer. If the ePub books are DRM-free, you should be able to consolidate them into iBooks. So, you can either sync them via the Cloud, e-mail them to yourself for opening in iBooks or use iTunes to load them into the iBooks app.

Marilyn

 

[twerppoet]

Hold in mind that non-iStore ebooks are not backed up from the iPad's iBooks app.

If you don't want to lose your ebooks in case of iPad failure either: Save them elsewhere (computer or cloud services) as well as in iBooks. Or, Add them to iTunes on the computer first and then sync them. They will be stored in the iBooks library in iTunes. If you have a Mac running the newest version of OS X, you'd use the new iBooks app on the Mac instead.

I use the second method, storing all my ePub ebooks in iTunes (now iBooks) on the computer. But I've been using iTunes for a long time, so moving to another method would be considerable effort.

A second copy on a different device or location is always good practice, even if you have a backup.