iBook unstable with too many books loaded

[planemechanic]

Just as the title says. I have over 3700 epub formated books loaded on my iPad. iBooks seems to forget which page I stopped reading on, quits unexpectedly and is generally just not working well when I have all my books loaded. I have no problems if I load 100-200 books, but all my books only in total only take about 5gb, out of 64gb. So I want them all there, no telling what I am interested in reading at any given time.

Anyone have similar issues? Anything I can do to fix this? I loaded the B&N reader because it says it "supports" the epub format. Well, it may, but you can't upload your own books, only purchased books. How stupid is that. Probably just delete that program.

thanks,

 

[stever]

OK....
FIRST, let me say that I DO support your right to do outrageous things.
When asked ""Why would you DO that??", as far as I am concerned, "Because I can." IS a perfectly acceptable answer.

But having said that,

• Are you planning for a post apocolyptic society, and want to have masses of stored human knowledge?
  You may want to make sure to carry a handcrank generator with you.
• My reaction to this dilemma, is similar to how I would react if you asked us for help because
  when you loaded 48 people into your PickEmUp truck, It would not still pull the trailer.

But serious answer:

• I don't think we will be able to tell you a trick to make it work with as you said "too many books".
• I have a feeling the DataBase for keeping track of bookmarks for each item, probably has a finite number of entries. (like 1024, or 2048 entries)
• Probably it would not be a huge redesign to increase the size of the possible database, just increase the number, and increase the size of a file needed to track the entries.
• But the only people likely to make such changes will be the iBooks Devs. I expect you would need to convince them to do so.
• I don't know if such a change would make everyone else's iBooks app take a lot more space, or not.

Good luck!

.

 

[kheldour]

3,700 books ..... how the heck to you manage those......

I did already send a feature request to Apple to enhance the "Bookshelf" with folders, so I can have a "kids" folder, "business" and so on.

But 3,700 books sound crazy.....you will never be able to read them. Try to use the very helpful select feature on iTunes.

And I agree with stever, the database can presumably only hold 1,024 books.

 

[Bremen]

I have about 1400 books, but only keep a few dozen on my iPad at a time...

There is really no need to have every single book, movie, song, picture... That you own on a portable device. If that is what you want to do fine, but as you found out, you will run into issues.

You sound like you may be one of those who downloads torrents just because you can. I some how doubt you actually read all those..... But, to each their own...

 

[planemechanic]

Why do I want all the books I have on my iPad? Because I can. Why do I keep all the t-shirts I own in my closet and not in a box in the garage? Because I have the space in my closet. I have the space on my iPad too.

The same reason I have 8,000 songs (yes, all legally purchased between myself and my wife with a few purchased off iTunes from my daughter). Why you may ask? Because I like all sorts of music, from rap to rock, from classical to show tunes, to famous speeches. Any one catagory may have only 20-30 files, rock has thousands, classical has hundreds, rap has maybe 50. People who question why remind me of the people who questioned why anyone would ever need more than a 40mb hard drive, then they questioned why you would ever want more than a 500mb hard drive because is was HUGE!! And now here we are where you can easily have over a terrabyte in your laptop (no, I am not quite there yet, I have 800gb in my laptop, between a 160gb C: drive and another 640gb in my second bay). My iTunes folder is easily over 200gb.

So why you ask? Because I can. And because I travel for a living, and am rarely at home, so I like to keep it all with me. My iPad is used by my whole family as well, so I have books on there for everyone, just as I have music on my iPod that appeals to everyone.


But seriously, enough about why, riddle me this: Why would Apple limit how many books I can keep on my iPad. Memory is cheap, at the size of the files you are talking about it is essentially free. As more and more poeple purchase and use their iPad as reference devices I am sure my paltry collection will look small in comparison. Imagine the computer repair tech who needs thousands of reference sources to maintain a diverse use base, and also wants to keep his continuing education files as well. There are easily dozens if not hundreds of user type who want more access to more data. To limit it is to limit their market. It would be like Amazon saying "Buy this 64gb kindle, but you can only load 2gb of books on it or it becomes unstable" How stupid would that be?

 

[planemechanic]

3,700 books ..... how the heck to you manage those......

I did already send a feature request to Apple to enhance the "Bookshelf" with folders, so I can have a "kids" folder, "business" and so on.

But 3,700 books sound crazy.....you will never be able to read them. Try to use the very helpful select feature on iTunes.

And I agree with stever, the database can presumably only hold 1,024 books.

Thanks, the folder idea is great. Why can't we have folders for each category which we can then sort by author, name, series etc... That would be wonderful.

 

[Bremen]

If you think the iPad does not handle huge numbers of books well, try one of the dedicated readers like Sony or Kindle.....

You put 4 thousand books on a Sony or Kindle it takes forever to find one and get it to open......

And of course you can put as many books as you want on your iPad, but as I said you will run into issues. There is no unlimited database for taking care of bookmarks and such ...... also did you format these ePubs yourself? Using Calibre? I ask that because sometimes there can be errors in the formatting process that will make software unstable. I would get that from time to time with my Sony reader....

The iPad is not designed to be an archival device, it is designed to be used as a portable device that is linked (via iTunes) to a regular computer.....

 

[HistoryWes]

I haven't gotten my iPad yet (Jun 9), but I experienced the same thing on my Sony Reader. It has more than enough memory to hold the 5,000 books I have, but the indexing system gets very sluggish with that many. I keep my entire library on my computer (organized with a program called Calibre) and then just load the 300 or so books I want to read, show off, skim through etc. I plan to do the same thing on my iPad. Did I mention it gets here Jun 9?

 

[Bremen]

I haven't gotten my iPad yet (Jun 9), but I experienced the same thing on my Sony Reader. It has more than enough memory to hold the 5,000 books I have, but the indexing system gets very sluggish with that many. I keep my entire library on my computer (organized with a program called Calibre) and then just load the 300 or so books I want to read, show off, skim through etc. I plan to do the same thing on my iPad. Did I mention it gets here Jun 9?

Perfect, that is exactly the way the iPad is designed to be used.... I also keep my books on my PC organized and such with Calibre.... excellent program, and should really be a paid for program. But even with my 1400 books Calibre it's self chokes a bit from time to time....

 

[iVan]

I've got around 4,500 books on the PC. Some are in two or three formats.
I used to have at least a hundred on my Sony at a time. Useless. 10, 20 books are enough. Everyone goes through the "I've got my whole library with me" phase but you get over it after a small calculation...
At the age I am, if I stay healthy, I don't expect to have enough time to read more than 500 books in the rest of my life!!! So why keep them all on board? It slows any reader down at startup!
Best is to choose wisely a small selection. It takes me on average a week to go through an average book. Even with the iPad allowing me to do most of my computing activity, I'll still go to the PC at least once a week. I can still do a good book download while printing documents from the iPad...

 

[planemechanic]

If you think the iPad does not handle huge numbers of books well, try one of the dedicated readers like Sony or Kindle.....

Because in my estimation the Kindle and the Sony are garbage.

The iPad is not designed to be an archival device, it is designed to be used as a portable device that is linked (via iTunes) to a regular computer.....

Interesting. Were you on the design team? Or are you just making excuses for the failure of Apple to plan for all user types?

 

[Bremen]

If you think the iPad does not handle huge numbers of books well, try one of the dedicated readers like Sony or Kindle.....

Because in my estimation the Kindle and the Sony are garbage.

The iPad is not designed to be an archival device, it is designed to be used as a portable device that is linked (via iTunes) to a regular computer.....

Interesting. Were you on the design team? Or are you just making excuses for the failure of Apple to plan for all user types?

lol - no, I simply read and learn and know what the iPad is . If you think it was designed by Apple to be an archival device, then go for it!

 

[planemechanic]

If you think the iPad does not handle huge numbers of books well, try one of the dedicated readers like Sony or Kindle.....

Because in my estimation the Kindle and the Sony are garbage.

The iPad is not designed to be an archival device, it is designed to be used as a portable device that is linked (via iTunes) to a regular computer.....

Interesting. Were you on the design team? Or are you just making excuses for the failure of Apple to plan for all user types?

lol - no, I simply read and learn and know what the iPad is . If you think it was designed by Apple to be an archival device, then go for it!

OK. So your original statement was in error. You don't actually "know: what the iPad was designed to do or not. You are simply making an assumption. One which I disagree with and you seemingly have no evidence to support.

Regardless, the topic here is the instability of the iPad, not my use of it. Someday someone will write an app that is not unstable and the market will be better off because of it.

 

[IpadOne]

OK. So your original statement was in error. You don't actually "know: what the iPad was designed to do or not. You are simply making an assumption. One which I disagree with and you seemingly have no evidence to support.

Regardless, the topic here is the instability of the iPad, not my use of it. Someday someone will write an app that is not unstable and the market will be better off because of it.

Hi as many people told you, too many book and absolutely useless … ‘’bremen'' he is 100% right iPad is not made as archiving device

Do i need to remind you, it’s you have the problem, all we told you our comment but seem’s until we don’t stand on your side we are wrong … so it’s ok just told us what you want to listen we will repeat it word by word if that can make you satisfied …. (but that will not solve your problem)

 

[Bremen]

Last try,

The reason you are having problems with your iPad and posting here asking for help is that you are using it in a way it was not designed to be used. The iPad is a portable device that is designed to be tied to a computer (via iTunes). It is not designed to be a mass storage device.

I could drag my desktop around the house with a long cord and come on a forum and complain about how clumsy it is to use. But the problem would not be with the desktop, the problem would be how I was trying to use it. You can continue to try to use the iPad your way, but you will continue to have problems. We are giving you the only answer there is to your question. You can argue all you want but it does not change the facts.....

If you cannot live without 4000 books on your portable device, I would suggest a laptop. But, even there you might run into some database issues, especially over time.........

The only other option to try that I can think of is to install Stanza. It is an iPhone app, and will not display all that great on the iPad.... but maybe they have a different database system... I honestly doubt it, but Stanza is free and worth at least a little time to test....

Edit: I suggested Stanza because it is the only other epub reader that will run on the iPad other than iBooks. And since your "problem" is with the iBooks program perhaps Stanza will be different. Also I would not be surprised if another third party epub reader came out as the iPad software matures....

Good luck to you!