Now iBooks For iTunes Is Offering Samples Through Push Delivery
June 19, 2011
After including access to the iBookstore in iTunes, Apple has now extended the service by adding samples, right there in iTunes. The catch is that you won't be able to read these on your desktop, but only on an iOS device running 4.3.3 or higher with enabled automatic book delivery.
As part of iCloud, Apple added automatic delivery to all their devices last week. It allows you to buy an app, a song, or a book on any of your devices, and have them appear automatically on all your other devices connected to the same iTunes account (given that you activated the feature in settings, under App Store). It works really well, and is a great feature. Today, we're seeing Apple leveraging this technology for additional content, namely book samples.
Indeed, iBooks on iTunes previously only allowed you to buy complete books, and have them pushed or synced to your devices. But, iTunes on your desktop won't let you read these, which is why Apple didn't include samples initially. Now, with this push delivery system, Apple allows you to select samples of books you might be interested it, and have them sent straight to your device for free. It's an extremely convenient feature when shopping for books, and we're looking forward to see what else Apple might do with it. We just wish they made these samples open automatically on our devices, to save us a few taps. Yet, that's really not that big of a deal.
Any other great things Apple could do using this? Tell us in the comments!