Comment by akho
3 years ago
I don’t understand. All Kindles I had — from Kindle 2 to Voyage — mounted as external drives when connected via USB, and copying mobi files just works (but their email delivery works fine, so I usually use that). From a brief Google search, Libra is the same (with epub).
I feel like I’m missing something every time Calibre comes up. People seem to love it, but I just found it confusing and unnecessary when I dealt with it.
When I connect the Kindle via USB to a MacBook Pro running macOS Monterey, I do not see a mounted drive with files in it, just the device itself. To email the files to Kindle, I first need to convert them anyway to mobi files.
For the Kobo Libre, I can indeed see a mounted volume, but copying a file into it does not consistently make that book available for reading.
Given I don't have these problems when I use Calibre, I'd definitely say it makes my life easier.
Then you need to provide more details. I have used many versions of macOS with Kindles including 12.4 and attaching a Kindle has always shown it as an external drive (called Kindle)
What do you mean by the device itself - how does a device show up on macOS?
I'm totally fine with Calibre, so not going to bother digging any more, but thanks for the offer.
It's iTunes for eBooks. If you're someone that has 19 different readers, wants to keep them synced to the same page, make the metadata perfect, rate books, write notes about them etc. it makes a lot of sense.
For me it's basically a way to use two plugins and occasionally fix a book cover. It's a bit bloated IMO.
With iTunes, you were forced to use it to manage an iPod, iPhone, and any media bought from Apple. With Calibre, you can use it or not use it to manage your ebooks as much as you like.
That's a very important distinction.
Also, as an avid reader (average five books a month), I also cannot see the need for calibre.
Contrary to music, I consume my ebooks on one device: my e-reader. My laptop, phone and tablet are terrible for reading. Why would I need my ebooks on my phone or tablet.
The only thing I do want, is to process my annotations on my computer. Which calibre cannot do (but a python and bash hack does provide me).
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