The Tragedy Of The iOS Books App: Landscape With PDFs

Look:

That’s a Google Books PDF opened in the iOS Books app on an iPad Pro 11″ in landscape mode.

That’s the only possible view! There’s no way to show two pages — otherwise known as Facing Pages — at a time. What a waste of space! What a waste of iPad Pro potential!

This is tragic. In landscape, an iPad Pro 11’s screen is almost like having two iPad Mini screens. Most Google Books PDFs could be read on it that way just fine.

Here’s the same PDF on my Windows notebook, using PDF X-Change Viewer (click images to enlarge):

The difference is this option:

Apple might protest that the Books app is just for basic PDF reading.

And that argument might have flown — until iOS 13.

Because Apple added capabilities to the latest version of its Photos app that enable the kind of editing previously available only with a separate app from a third-party developer. So there’s really no reason — or excuse — for not adding some similar oomph to the Books app too.

It’s actually very surprising that it hasn’t been done yet! Others have asked for it too — for years.

Now is the time to do it. The iPad Pro needs to handle PDFs in the Books app like a pro.