009Apple has come out with a shiny new version of iBooks, which adds a number of important new capabilities. These include the ability to print PDFs and your own annotations via the AirPrint printing system, support for fully-illustrated books, organizing books into Collections (much like you can organize apps into folders in OS 4, I guess), and also hyphenating text (on OS 4.2 or later).

As the above screenshot shows, the hyphenation really looks good, cutting down on rivers quite significantly even in facing-pages mode. I might just have to start reading fully-justified.

The new version also asked me on startup whether I wanted to sync my notes, bookmarks, and collections information to the app store servers, and hence to my other devices. I’m not sure whether that means the device would also keep my place between devices, if I had multiple devices, as with the Kindle’s whispersync.

While I still doubt I would do much buying from the iBooks bookstore, the app itself makes a great device to read EPUBs I’ve already bought elsewhere—for instance, from Baen.

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