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Apple Books began as iBooks, the iPad's launch-day answer to the Kindle — page-curl skeuomorphism and an agency pricing model that briefly rewired the ebook business and then put Apple on the losing end of a landmark antitrust case, United States v. Apple (2013). The rename to Apple Books (2018) came with a calmer store and a growing audiobook catalog.

Books never dethroned Amazon and stopped trying; its modern role is the ecosystem's reading room — a polished reader with Read Now continuity across devices, audiobooks (including AI-narrated titles for indie authors since 2023), and the store as a steady iTunes Store-lineage storefront. The price-fixing case remains its historical footnote: the moment Apple's content-market playbook met its legal limit.