How to Install iBooks Author on Snow Leopard
Let’s say you’re a publisher of homeschool textbooks and you want to give iBooks Author a try. Let’s also say you’re only running Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and not 10.7 (Lion). This could be because you don’t want to spend $29 just to test an application or your hardware doesn’t support Apple’s latest OS.
Fear not! I’ve got a method for you to install iBooks Author. Now, this is not officially supported by Apple and you’re supposed to have OS X Lion in order to sell books in the iBookstore. Also, if you brick your computer because you did this I can take no responsibility or provide you with any support. In other words: proceed at your own risk!
- Update iTunes to 10.5.3
- Open Finder
- Click on your hard drive
- Double click System
- Double click Library
- Double click CoreServices
- Right click (or Control Click) SystemVersion.plist and select copy (leave this window open or minimized)
- Right click (or Control Click) on your desktop and select paste item
- Now open the file from your desktop by double clicking
- Now change the two places near the bottom of the file where they say <string>10.6.8</string> to <string>10.7.2</string>. Your version may differ such as 10.6.x
- Click File->Save
- You will be asked to overwrite, select overwrite
- Right click (or Control Click) on the file you just edited and select copy
- Open the window that you copied SystemVersion.plist from and select Edit->Paste Item. (You will be asked to authenticate, select authenticate) and if you would like to replace the file. Select replace. Enter your password if it asks)
- Now go to the Mac App Store and search for iBooks Author and install (Don’t Run Yet)
- Be sure to close the Mac App Store (yes you can close as app downloads)
- Open the SystemVersion.plist that you edited on your desktop and change what you did previously back to your original version. Example: change both instances of <string>10.7.2</string> to <string>10.6.8</string>
- Click File->Save
- You will be asked to overwrite, select overwrite
- Right click (or Control Click) on the file you just edited and select copy
- Open the window that you copied SystemVersion.plist from and select Edit->Paste Item. (You will be asked to authenticate, select authenticate) and if you would like to replace the file. Select replace. Enter your password if it asks)
- Now, Go to your Applications folder under your Snow Leopard Hard drive
- Right Click (or Control Click) iBooks Author and click Show Contents
- Double click Contents folder
- Double click Info.plist
- Search for 10.7.2 and change to your version of Snow Leopard, in our case 10.6.8
- Go to File in the Menu bar and select save
- Now open iBooks Author, you should be good to go!
- iBooks Author may seem not to work when you open it, but just click File->New to start
