Title says it all really. Books in iOS12/macOS Mojave won't sync with it's counter part in iOS11 or macOS High Sierra. I appreciate they have updated the structure of the app but to not even keep page syncing is pretty ridiculous.
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Books in iOS 12 won't sync with iOS 11 or macOS 10.13
- Thread starter CaTOAGU
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Looks that way yeah. What's more annoying, is there's a section in the iBooks settings on iOS12, where it tells me to upgrade my 2011 MacBook Air to macOS Mojave. Which of course I can't do because it's not compatible. All I want is page number sync.
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If you look the changes in iOS 12's Books it's pretty easy to see why the syncing isn't compatible. Not the first time either as I believe one of the Notes versions wasn't compatible with older versions once you updated (iOS10??). When you make data structure changes, continuing to support older versions oftentimes creates too many issues.
On a different note, Books in iOS12 is so much better (loved that they've brought back the Wish List with the "Want to Read" section). The whole browsing and viewing the store has been greatly improved as well.
On a different note, Books in iOS12 is so much better (loved that they've brought back the Wish List with the "Want to Read" section). The whole browsing and viewing the store has been greatly improved as well.
Yeah. I'm aware changing data structures can make things tricky. The problem is they don't tell you until after you upgrade a device to ios12 or macOS 10.14 that your other devices will need to update, even if some of those devices are incapable of running said upgrades. It's the blanket assumption they everyone will have a compatible device that's the issue not a data structure one. Although, for a company that wants to do more services, only supporting the most recent release is overly narrow.
This has been an issue since Developer Beta #1 and Public Beta #1. I've left Feedback via the Feedback app, though I highly doubt Apple will do anything to fix this issue, other than to tell people to upgrade. I do agree with achappy in that Books is much improved in iOS 12.
Nice to know I'm not the only one who's left feedback, thanks. I agree it doesn't look likely that they'll fix it. And also agree books is definitely much improved overall. Would be nice of 10.14 got a bit more of an update, they're still using the old layout and store on that.
There's just no pleasing me.
iOS12 and Mojave are being supported on a large number of devices up to 7 years old. How long are they suppose keep supporting OSes? As a software engineer, when you opt to continue supporting older devices/schemas/OS, you make design sacrifices that aren't needed if you just do a hard cutover. Building in support, even for something as simple as page syncing, so you can sync across devices to older OS versions often leads to less than optimal code and design choices. Given everything that's in iOS12 Books, it was no surprise when I saw the warning about syncing.
It was the same thing with iOS 9 and Notes which was not backwards compatible and it was documented quite a bit as well as on the Apple's support site.
I know. I'm not talking about supporting devices with the operating system. Obviously they can't be supported for ever, there are technical limitations to overcome, CPU architectures progress etc. But there is an incongruity between the devices that will support reading and buying a book, and the devices that can support syncing the page location. So for example if I buy a book on a device that won't support iOS12, I can quite happily do that and read it, it just won't sync the current page with an iOS12 device. This doesn't seem like an advanced feature, this seems like table stakes in the ebook business to me. Amazon manage to keep location syncing working between devices many years older and across many different OS's.
Apple want to get into services, well people like their services to keep working dependably day in day out, not suddenly and seemingly arbitrarily stop working because they've upgraded one of their devices.
I'm not asking for my 7 year old device to run the latest and greatest, I'm just asking for it to sync a simple location in a book. That should not be beyond the ability of the richest company on the planet. The fact that it is, seems to be pretty contrary to Apple's stated aim of delighting their customers. As someone with a computing background, I can understand that maybe it's down to a changed data structure, or maybe an engineer hasn't got round to implementing backward compatibility yet, perhaps it's on their development roadmap. But the vast majority of Apples customers don't have that background, they won't understand, all they'll want to know is why their page location doesn't sync anymore when it did yesterday.
Simple solution (According to Apple) ... buy a new MacBook. Dayum. That sucks. I have a 2011 MacBook Pro which is just fine for what I use it for but it won't run Mojave so I'm stuck too.
It still syncs the books, but does not seem to sync bookmakrs, hightlights and last page. Guess that's why there are two Books apps in icloud drive now.
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