Apple Upgrades iBooks And iBooks Author [Updates]

As part of its much-anticipated iPad mini release event on Tuesday, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook also demonstrated the update of the iOS iBooks app and version 2 of the multimedia and publishing application, iBooks Author. Cook noted that more than 400 million iBooks have been downloaded since the release of the iOS iBooks reader.

iBooks Author is a Mac-based professional and consumer-based authoring software for creating textbooks, cookbooks, history books, picture books, etc. that can be downloaded and read on the iPad. iBooks Author now incorporates multi-touch widgets, interactive photo galleries, 3-D objects, as well as text, and the books are sold through the app in the iTunes Store.

The latest update of iBooks Author includes new themes for portrait-only books, custom fonts and control over text appearance, new Scrolling Sidebar and Pop-over Widgets, support for mathematical expressions with new native equation editing using both LaTex and MathML notation, automatic optimization of media for the iPad, additional Apple-designed templates, and much more.

Cook also showcased coming new features to the iBooks reader, which now supports more than 40 languages — including Korean, Chinese, and Japanese. All downloaded and purchased iBooks books will now be archived on users’ iCloud account, as well as a feature for syncing to the last page read between devices.

The iBooks 2 Reader is available for free download from the iTunes Store, and iBooks Authoris also free on the App Store. Authors can publish and upload their approved iBooks to the iBooks Store and make them available for purchase.