Apple Working on Redesigned Books App With 'Simpler' Interface and Overhauled Store
After changing the iBooks app to simply be called "Books" in the iOS 11.3 beta that released to developers yesterday, a new report out today by Mark Gurman at Bloomberg states that Apple is preparing to revamp the internals of the iPhone and iPad app as well.
In an update coming in the next few months -- potentially with the public release of iOS 11.3 in the spring -- Apple will redesign Books with a "simpler" interface aimed at highlighting books you're currently reading in a "Reading Now" section.
On the store side of things, Books will gain a marketplace that looks like the new iOS App Store that debuted in iOS 11, tying more of Apple's apps in together aesthetically. There will also be a dedicated tab for audio books.
According to Gurman, this major update to Books is Apple's move to take on Amazon and the Kindle digital book market again. The Books redesign will come nearly five years after Apple and five publishers were found guilty of conspiring to inflate the prices of e-books to weaken Amazon's dominant position in the market.
Apple is working on a redesigned version of its iBooks e-book reading application for iPhones and iPads and has hired an executive from Amazon to help.
This will be the biggest upgrade to Apple’s e-book service in several years and provides renewed competition in a market that Amazon has dominated.
In its preparation to fight against Amazon in the e-book market, Apple last month hired a senior vice president away from Amazon's Audible business. The VP, Kashif Zafar, had also previously worked at Barnes & Noble on its Nook e-reader. His new title at Apple is "Global Head of iBooks," and he'll help Apple with "general management responsibility" across the company's global digital books unit.
Popular Stories
You'd think things would be slowing down heading into the holidays, but this week saw a whirlwind of Apple leaks and rumors while Apple started its next cycle of betas following last week's release of iOS 26.2 and related updates.
This week also saw the release of a new Apple Music integration with ChatGPT, so read on below for all the details on this week's biggest stories!
Top Stories
i...
Apple hasn't updated the Apple TV 4K since 2022, and 2025 was supposed to be the year that we got a refresh. There were rumors suggesting Apple would release the new Apple TV before the end of 2025, but it looks like that's not going to happen now.
Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos.
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said several times across 2024 and 2025 that Apple would...
Next year's iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max will be equipped with under-screen Face ID, and the front camera will be moved to the top-left corner of the screen, according to a new report from The Information's Wayne Ma and Qianer Liu.
As a result of these changes, the report said the iPhone 18 Pro models will not have a pill-shaped Dynamic Island cutout at the top of the screen....
Since the beginning of December, Apple has been pushing iPhone users who opted to stay on iOS 18 to install iOS 26 instead. Apple started by making the iOS 18 upgrades less visible, and has now transitioned to making new iOS 18 updates unavailable on any device capable of running iOS 26.
If you have an iPhone 11 or later, Apple is no longer offering new versions of iOS 18, even though there...
The European Commission today praised the interoperability changes that Apple is introducing in iOS 26.3, once again crediting the Digital Markets Act (DMA) with bringing "new opportunities" to European users and developers.
The Digital Markets Act requires Apple to provide third-party accessories with the same capabilities and access to device features that Apple's own products get. In iOS...
Apple is significantly increasing its reliance on Samsung for iPhone memory as component prices surge, according to The Korea Economic Daily.
Apple is said to be expanding the share of iPhone memory it sources from Samsung due to rapidly rising memory prices. The shift is expected to result in Samsung supplying roughly 60% to 70% of the low-power DRAM used in the iPhone 17, compared with a...
There has been a whirlwind of rumors over the last few days, sourced from leaked internal software designed for the iPhone and the Mac, and news sites like The Information. Below, we have a quick recap of everything we've heard this week, which serves as a guide to Apple's product plans in 2026 and beyond.
We've organized the info by likely release date, though there are some products that...
