iBooks 3: Apple Surprises iPad Mini Event Attendees With New Software Features

Many were expecting the first announcement out of Apple's media event to be about the iPad Mini; instead, Apple CEO Tim Cook decided to talk about education, books, and the iBookstore.

"iBooks makes it a pleasure to read on any iOS device,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook at his company's media event in San Jose on Tuesday. “We now have over a million and a half books on the bookstore, and these cover any kind of subject you can think of. Customers have bought more than 400 million of them since the inception of the store.”

"Today, we’re announcing a new version of iBooks, and this includes a really cool new reading option with continuous scrolling," Cook said. "Now, when you flick the page, the words scroll by, just as you’d expect."

The new version of iBooks is also better integrated with iCloud. Now you can tap a book and begin reading exactly where you left off on another device.

iBooks 3 also makes it incredibly easy to share book quotes, any quotes, with any one on Facebook, Twitter, or email. iOS 6 has extremely crisp fonts and beautiful print, even in languages like Chinese and Japanese, with the pages turning the correct direction.

The new version of iBooks is available today as a free app in the App Store.