Draumr Publishing Forums: Draumr Publishing Forums -> Apple reminds me why I never liked them

(sigh) And here I thought my love-affair with the Apple iPad would make everything all better between Apple and me.

See, I've had a lot of years of experience with Apple, being that I used to work in the computer industry, and I was required to support multiple users on Apple technology. At the time, I felt Apple had its place, but was generally overrated, overpriced, and over-hyped. But I was being paid to support the equipment, so I did my job. Often, with grumbling. And my dislike of their product continued beyond my technology career. The things that Apple can do, Intel-based equipment could do as well. And less expensively. And for a broader audience. And honestly, having grown up on Intel equipment, I found Apple to have a high learning curve for those who spent their time on Intel-based technology.

So I know people who've used and liked Apple technology. That's their right. But I never went for it.

Until the iPad. As I said recently, in this blog, I enjoy the iPad. I find it to be a neat piece of equipment--although still overpriced--and I've enjoyed the opportunity to use it for multiple things. Reading stuff, watching movies, playing some games... And I still feel that when the price comes down, many people will enjoy owning an iPad for many reasons.

But Apple has once again reminded me why I don't like them. They're uppity, and they think they're better than everyone else. I'm not saying they're the ONLY technology company like that, they just happen to be the one I'm seriously pissed at right now. Apple announced that their ebook software, iBooks, would be using the ePub format as its standard. And ePub is the current "standard" format for ebooks. It has rules--standards, if you will--so that publishers can attempt to make their ebooks look readable across the majority of platforms. Well, the initial release of iBooks looked great to me...our ePub books looked clean and neat, and we did our very best to follow the standards. In viewing our ePub ebooks across multiple platforms, the output was as close to the same as possible. Awesome. Standards, they rock.

Then iBooks put out its 1.1 update. Which, incidentally, I discuss in the same blog, because I was thrilled to see the iPad able to natively read PDFs. I still believe PDFs are the best option for ebooks, as they allow readers to see the beauty in ebooks as if they were print books, including full-color covers and other interior images. I will note that the native reading of PDFs on iBooks is still rough, but there is the hope that Apple will work on that in the future. (Although, now I'm not so sure.)

Anyway, now with the iBooks 1.1 update, I went to look at a newly finished ePub book to see how it looked. And suddenly, stuff wasn't right. PANIC! I didn't understand, as I hadn't made any formatting changes since the last time I'd viewed this particular book. I'd only made typographical corrections. What could I have done to screw up the formatting? I spent quite some time checking back on what I'd touched, how I'd exported, how I'd converted...and found nothing. And somewhere in the back of my mind, I remembered that I'd updated the iPad software since the last time I'd opened the ePub ebook. And so the thought that there was a bug in the new software crept into my mind. And I so I set off on a Google search to find out if others had found the same bug. And found nothing. So I set it aside and did other work. And then went back to the iPad, took it to my laptop, and synced the two. I knew I hadn't touched any of the ePubs on the iTunes on my laptop, so that would tell me whether it was the new iBooks software, or my ePub document.

After syncing, I found that it had to be the iBooks software, because things weren't showing up properly from the laptop iTunes iBooks either. Dammit. So I once again set out on Google, and I was determined to find SOMEONE who was seeing the same thing I was. And I found someone. And they explained. Apple said they were using the ePub standards, but they lied. They're saying they're using them, but only when it's helpful to them... Technically, Apple is forcing certain formatting on readers, because it's what they want to do. And damn and to hell with the ePub standards. They're not allowing publishers to select a font family, so when you open iBooks and look at an ebook, APPLE is selecting the font family you're seeing. What do I mean by font family? To explain simply, a publisher can say they want the fonts to be serif (which means it has those little feet...fonts like courier and times new roman), but APPLE is forcing the reader to see and read SANS SERIF (no feet...like Arial and Helvetica). That's against ePub standards. Additionally, APPLE is forcing a justification on the reader. Meaning the words will either go all the way to the end of the page in a line, or not. Doesn't matter whether the publisher has set his/her ebook to be justified or not, centered text or not, APPLE is forcing the reader to see the text in the ebook to be justified/not, centered/not, etc. That's against ePub standards.

And it's screwing up publishers.

We're trying very hard to make our books clean and easily readable, and we're trying to make them look pleasing to the eye. By APPLE taking away their compliance to the ePub standards, they're screwing up our efforts. So when you open any of our ePub ebooks on the iPad in iBooks, you'll see that some of our text at the front of the book is left aligned when it should be centered. And we have absolutely no control over this. It is eternally frustrating. iBooks has few settings on the iPad, and one of them (new in 1.1) is "justified", which is by default ON. If you turn it off, that fixes the centering errors, but then takes away full justification of all the text in the book. Which looks horrible. Make note, leave the "justified" option ON, because then at least the body of the ebook is easy to read, even if our name (and sometimes the author's dedication and other things) is not.

So when you see that some books like odd in your ebook reader, don't automatically blame the publisher. Sometimes it is a bug in the reader's software, and sometimes it is a bully exerting its powers.

Maybe, maybe, with enough pressure, Apple will finally comply with the ePub standards, as they said they would. And at that point, our ePub ebooks books will look as spiffy as we wanted them to. But if you want them to be as beautiful as our print books, buy them in PDF. So far, Apple hasn't screwed that up. Yet.