iPad Hardware FAQ: what are iBooks and the iBookstore ? Can the iBooks app display PDFs or ePub files that didn’t come from the iTunes store?

what are iBooks and the iBookstore ?

iBooks and the iBookstore are a system for users to purchase and read books—not magazines, not newspapers, but books. Book publishers will be able to supply ePub-formatted books for sale in Apple’s iBookstore, but magazine and newspaper publishers will need to find their own way onto the device, either by building their own apps or by contracting with an app developer or service to publish their content via a third-party app.

As of this writing, there are already some fascinating iPad news apps in the App Store, including ones from the New York Times and Reuters. We’re sure more are on the way, too. But the newspaper and magazine industries will need to do a lot more work to take advantage of the iPad, and the results will be more scattershot than what we’ll see from the book industry.


Can the iBooks app display PDFs or ePub files that didn’t come from the iTunes store?

iBooks doesn’t do PDF. It will display DRM-free ePub files, as well as ePub files that come from iTunes. To sync them to iBooks, just open the Books tab in iTunes and drag your ePub files in.