Why you should avoid iBooks for your medical ebooks

Recently, my younger brother, who is a 3rd year medical student, purchased a medical review book through iBooks. He spent more than $50 on the book, and was using the highlighting feature and other annotation feature available in iBooks.

Then he asked me how he could access the book he purchased on his computer so he could have it open while he was in a lecture in class. I told him he was out of luck. By purchasing a book through iBooks, you lock yourself into Apple’s ecosystem, which is a walled garden.

The Kindle app by Amazon has a feature set that rivals iBooks, and most importantly, it’s device agnostic. This is crucial because the books you purchase through Amazon can be accessed on Android, iPhone and Kindle devices.

The most important part of this is you can view ebooks purchased through Kindle on your Mac — by downloading their app in the Mac App Store. Medical textbooks are usually not “casual reads”, and as mentioned above, having the ability to read the book on your desktop or laptop can be crucial.

Further, Amazon’s ebook section is vastly more populated with medical ebooks than Apple’s.

So if you’re going to purchase a medical ebook on iOS or Android — go through the Kindle app — it gives you significantly more flexibility and less buyers remorse.
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