Apple has released a major update for its iBooks app for iOS. There’s a new full-screen mode that lets you read without viewing your status bar, a new night theme with a dark background and light text for reading at night, and new font selections.
There are also new covers for public domain books, support for pop-up footnotes, and performance improvements in iBooks 1.5.
Honestly, most of these features are already available in third party eBook apps such as Amazon’s Kindle or Stanza apps for iOS. But it’s nice to see Apple playing catch up.
Thanks to changes Apple made to its rules for third party apps this year, iBooks is also the only digital book app for the iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad that includes an integrated bookstore. You need to use a web-based bookstore to purchase titles for the Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble NOOK, or Kobo apps.
You can download iBooks 1.5 for free from the App Store.
