Why Apple iBooks Sucks

I was working on my Mt. Rainier NP photo guide and found a recent book with some good information on hikes in the NP, namely scrambles and summit climb routes, "Washington's Highest Mountains" by Peggy Goldman, and I found iTunes sells the book for $12.95 versus Barnes and Noble's $17.95.

So I bought it, downloaded it and discovered I can't read the book on my Mac, only on my iPad. This sucks, and I mean royally sucks because I can and have bought B&N's books and they offer a Mac reader, NOOK, for free to read your books on a Mac. I haven't bought any e-books from Amazon for the Kindle since I don't own one, but they offer a free Mac reader for Kindle e-books.

So, why in the world doesn't Apple offer a free reader for iBooks? Just why? They offer iBooks Author for writting e-books but even those books are only viewable in the application since it doesn't have a reader for the Mac to read any book you produce with iBooks Author. How really stupid can Apple be?

In addition the iBooks reader also sucks. Not as bad but still sucks. For one thing, you can't lock the mode of the view, either in landscape or portrait. The book I bought has text in portrait and maps in landscape, so I read in portrait mode (one page per view), but when I turn to view the map, the iPad changes to two page view mode and the map resorts to landscape in two-page portrait view.

In short, I can't view the map correctly and there is no zoom in/out function with the iBooks which is handy with maps. Well, this is all very stupid and the last time I'll buy an iBook. I'll spend the extra bucks getting a book I can read on my Mac and read easier on my iPad. Or better yet, I'll buy the print version and get a real book.