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I've purchased some books that make epub and mobi versions available for download. What are the main differences and which is better supported in iBooks?

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Oracle docs are available in PDF, Mobi and ePub. Which format for iPhone/iPad? docs.oracle.com/cd/B28359_01/server.111/b28286/toc.htm – fyodor78 Mar 5 at 13:27
This is getting some spam traffic and it also needs to be refined to explain what "better supported" means to be of continued use to the site. Several answers have been added and none are selected, so feel free to ask a more detailed follow-on question or edit this one if you are still seeking help. – bmike♦ Apr 10 at 13:57

closed as not constructive by bmike♦ Apr 10 at 13:57

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3 Answers

up vote 6 down vote

ePub is the newer standard and is supported by the Apple iBooks app, but Apple only supports it's own FairPlay DRM wrapper used to encrypt the ePub files to protect the books from being copied or read on unauthorised devices.

Most other (non-Apple) eBook stores sell ePub books encrypted with Adobe's Adept DRM wrapper, which you can't read with the iBooks app (although certain other eBook apps do support the Adobe DRM system)

Mobi is for other reader systems (I believe the Kindle uses this format) and is not supported by the iBooks app. I expect there are other iPhone apps that support mobi files.

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up vote 6 down vote

The latest version of iBooks supports the PDF format. The support is excellent. You can drag ePub or PDF files to your iTunes library.

http://www.apple.com/itunes/itunes-news/2010/04/using-itunes-to-add-epub-files-to-ibooks.html

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up vote 4 down vote

There are differences that are covered in great detail in this article:

Worse-is-better in e-book formats

I do not think that an end user should care about this until the seller offers the books in all formats, in your case in EPUB as that is the format supported by iBooks

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protected by bmike♦ Apr 10 at 13:56

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