Today, Apple emailed iBooks Author users to inform them that the iBooks Author Mac app is being discontinued on July 1st. The app was released on January 19, 2012 and last updated to version 2.6.1 on September 24, 2018.
Thank you for being a member of the iBooks Author community. We have some news to share with you about the future of book creation.
Two years ago we brought book creation into Pages. With key features such as the ability to work on iPad, collaborate with others on a shared book, draw with Apple Pencil, and more, Pages is a great platform for making books.
As we focus our efforts on Pages, iBooks Author will no longer be updated and will soon be removed from the Mac App Store. You can continue to use iBooks Author on macOS 10.15 and earlier, and books previously published to Apple Books will remain available. If you have iBooks Author books you’d like to import into Pages for further editing, we have a book import feature coming to Pages soon. — Apple
Apple says that iBooks Author will continue to be available on macOS 10.15 and earlier for those who have already installed the apps, and books that were published to Apple Books will remain available.
In the future, Apple plans to add an import feature to Pages to allow books to be imported into the app, and a support document covers details on how users can transition from the iBooks Author app to the Pages app.
MacDailyNews Take: R.I.P., iBooks Author. Long live Pages!
So, after driving all of Pages’ original page-layout users away, Apple wants them to convert their files yet again and come back. Good luck with that.
Pages ’09 was light years ahead of the “updated” Pages. Apple has had half a decade to fix what they broke in order to offer a unified Mac OS/iOS experience, but it’s not even close at this stage, they don’t even seem to be trying. I hate having to use Word but it’s the standard for most work, I don’t even waste my time starting a document in Pages beyond something simple that I know I’ll never need to convert to Word. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple had a tacit agreement with MS not to offer too much competition as a quid pro quo for some other business cooperation that isn’t public.
I often wondered the same. Pages 09 was truly on par or above Word at that time. Apple had enough faith in their product they offered a formal certification and training book for users to aspire too, that went away too. The team now in charge of Pages, doesn’t seem to know what direction they want to take it or they’re just scatter brains, moving in all directions while MS and Google eat their lunch. Hell, they could even be working secretly for the other guy to ensure Pages remains a total cluster F#$%K app.
I have created a long document (900+ pages) and because of the document size, I can no longer use Pages because of severe typing lag. Therefore I have converted it to Word that does not have this lag. Pages is good for typical shorter documents but not for long documents such those used in writing books.
It’s hard to get adequate support for larger books. Mine is around 1100 pages. Tough to get support from printers and publishers as well as software that handles it smoothly. I have been using Scrivener but even there have to sometimes wait hours to compile in Word format, as is sadly required by too many others.
1000 pages!! That’s too long. Keep your book to under 100 pages…easier to read! 🤣
I, too, am a published author writing a large reference work well over 1000 pages and growing. Pages has served me well over the years. But whenever it gets too big or too complex, working the project becomes terribly slow and frustrating (especially in the endnotes, for some reason). And it gets slower the longer you have the App open.
I figured it was my old (2014) MacBook Pro. So I bought a new 16″ with every option Apple offered completely maxed-out (it was time). But there was literally no difference.
I sent feedback to the Pages team and back in February they asked me to send them a copy of my manuscript (so they could work out the issue). I haven’t heard anything more, but perhaps this update they are planing will step things up. Frankly, I can’t work this way much longer. If things don’t get fixed this summer, I’ll need to switch back to Microsoft Word (which I don’t want to do).