The revamped app coming in iOS 12 will feature an iBooks Today section that promotes books, authors, and other reading-related content on a daily basis.
iOS 12 iBooks App
This news comes via Japanese blog Mac Otakara, which made the report that Apple is in the process of hiring employees from several different publications in order to make an editorial team that would be responsible for curating the content featured in the iBooks Today section coming with iOS 12. This seems to be backed up by the fact that Apple has posted a series of iBooks editor job listings on LinkedIn in the past few months. It was initially unclear as to the reason of these sudden hirings, but if iOS 12 is truly to feature this new iBooks Today section, the team will be a necessity to make sure users have a fresh lineup each and every day to explore.
Outlets have previously reported that Apple plans to redesign the iBooks app in order to bring it more in line with the App Store revamp that came with iOS 11. Considering that the App Store features a similar format with its own Today section, it would make sense that the iBook Today section would also be coming with this new revamp coming in iOS 12. The App Store Today section highlights apps, games, developers, sales and other content each day – driving traffic towards deals and increasing profits for both developers and Apple by drawing attention towards key topics.
In its current implementation, iBooks has five tabs: My Books, Featured, Search, Top Charts, and Purchased. The redesign would likely change this up a bit, with the iBooks Today section combining a couple of those tabs such as Featured and Top Charts.
In the first iOS 11.3 beta, iBooks was renamed to Books. For one reason or another, the app returned back to iBooks in the fourth beta and has remained that way to this day. With the release of iOS 12, there’s certainly a possibility that it will be renamed to Books once again, but we anticipate that the iBooks name will remain as is considering the company’s decision to revert to the original name over the course of a single beta.
Struggling To Compete
The Apple iBooks app has been reasonably successful, but has failed to compete in a significant way with apps from more successful book peddlers such as Amazon with their dedicated Kindle store. With the attention drawn towards the iBooks Today Section coming with iOS 12, it’s possible that we’ll see increased sales and a rededicated focus to further refining the app and bringing more features to users. It’s unlikely that the app will ever be as big or well developed as the Amazon Kindle, but considering the integration the iBooks app offers across multiple Apple platforms, there’s definitely room for more than one app – especially for those committed to the Apple ecosystem.
Release Date
There’s no word on when exactly we’ll see iOS 12 release, but we anticipate that the software update will be previewed and enter testing following WWDC 2018 – scheduled to be held in early June. As far as features go with iOS 12, we don’t know too much yet. We should expect it to be a relatively major update, however, considering it’s a full jump from iOS 11 to iOS 12, rather than a more minor bump such as moving up to 11.x. With iOS 11.3 hotly anticipated due to the introduction of the Battery Health feature, it will be interesting to see how Apple manages to one-up themselves with the introduction of a brand new operating system.