Monday, June 28th, 2010
iBooks and Canada aren’t getting along
by Warren
iPhone 4 hasn’t even arrived in Canada yet, but for some reason (likely because the OS isn’t all that country-specific) Apple is allowing Canadians to download iBooks, the Apple branded e-reader currently found on the iPad and on U.S. iPhones.
And as of right now, it’s a complete disaster.
At first iBooks couldn’t even reach the iBookstore. Starting the app resulted in futile warnings, but searching revealed you could find public domain works from Project Gutenberg for download. All well and good, because who DOESN’T want to read Wuthering Heights on their phone….except that your iBookshelf iEats all your iBooks. Keep downloading them, and they’ll simply disappear. SOme people have had luck syncing their books through iTunes, but I haven’t.
More to the point, I’m chompng at the bit to actually BUY some books, but Apple won’t let me. I suspect whenever the phone is introduced in Canada (presumably at the end of July) the store will be populated with bestsellers and other goodies, and it may not even be Apple’s fault. Canadian publishers, like most of the old print guard, aren’t exactly know for forward thinking and bold new strategies.
In other news, getting rid of custom wallpapers dramatically speeds up the performance of my jailbroken iPhone 3G. Weirdly, having a nice bit of background on my home screen seems much more challenging than multitasking several programs at once. Who’da thunk it?
2 Responses to “ iBooks and Canada aren’t getting along ”
It’s not just the iPhone, but iBooks for iPad has the same issue with inventory for purchase. And I’m afraid it’s not Apple preventing it, it’s the holdups with rights holders. I think even Apple was surprised at how entrenched they are in not making it easy to buy their stuff/
I’m having the same issue with content not showing at all in my iBooks — I don’t even get the free Winnie the Pooh title showing up, and when I add some of my ePubs it doesn’t work either.
At this point I’d be thrilled if I could even get Wuthering Heights.