Among Apple’s bevy of upgrades to its new desktop operating system, there is one change that likely caught the attention of the folks at Amazon.
The new OS, named Mavericks, will see the arrival of iBooks on the Mac desktop. Any book a user is able to get on their iOS device will also be available through the desktop app, and users will be able to purchase new books straight from the desktop app, without having to go through iTunes.
This means added competition for Amazon’s Kindle. It’s a notable move in part because a majority of e-book owners use a desktop to do their reading, and now Mac desktop users will be able to do that with iBooks.
Amazon once had 90 percent of the e-book market before Apple debuted the iPad, and now the Seattle retailer has just 60 percent. That number very well could drop ever lower with Apple’s addition of iBooks to the desktop.
Meanwhile in court, Apple continues to contest allegations that it conspired with major book publishers to fix prices in the e-book industry and has called out Amazon as a “monopolist.”
And in related news, Barnes & Noble ended support for its Nook apps for Macs on Tuesday, focusing instead on Windows 8, iOS, Android and its web app. The Nook app already didn’t support the latest versions of Apple’s Mac OS X.
Previously on GeekWire: Reading revolution: e-book market set to pass print books by 2017
