Looking for help from Mac people

[carbonel]

I am very much not a Mac person, but my mother (who is) is asking for help. I know how to do most of what she needs, but the step that I'm stumbling on is finding the actual book files that are downloaded by the Kindle for Mac application. The books have actually been downloaded, so they need to be around *somewhere*. But searching on *.azw doesn't find them. One website says they should be in a "My Kindle documents" directory, but I can't find any such thing in her Finder.

I suspect this is because the Mac protects the user from anything so crass as actual files. But can anyone help me help my mother without my having to wait until I get back to my own computer?

Comments

[timill]

On the PC Kindle, under tools/options/content it will tell you where it puts them.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

I'm going by my general Mac knowledge, since I don't use Kindle and I'm 2 major OS updates behind...but there ought to be a Downloads folder. Mine is in my user profile thingy, the one with the house icon. You know, I think it might actually be called Home. If they're not in there, look in the Applications folder.

[mcwetboy.livejournal.com]

If she downloaded the Kindle application from the Mac App Store, the files will be in a sandboxed location that is a bit obfuscated from the user. When in Finder, select Go to Folder (under Go) or press shift-command (⌘) G and enter the following:

~/Library/Containers/com.amazon.Kindle/Data/Library/Application Support/Kindle/My Kindle Content

If she didn't use the Mac App Store, try entering the following after shift-command-G:

~/Library/Application Support/Kindle/My Kindle Content

("~/" means the user home directory. The Library folder has been hidden from the user in recent OS X releases on the don't-you'll-break-it principle.)

I think that'll work.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Nope, it won't. At least if using the latest Kindle app.

Amazon noticed people were looking for the .azw files in order to strip DRM, and hid them better.

What happens now is that when you run the Mac Kindle application, it mounts a disk image file which contains the ebooks!

It is possible to arm-wrestle the Kindle app into storing the Kindle ebooks somewhere sensible (like, oh, the Library/Application Support/Kindle/My Kindle Content folder it used to use). Because I already did this, I can't tell you where to look for the disk image, dammit.

Emphasis: this is not Mac OSX trying to protect you from anything as crass as files; it's Amazon being shit-heads.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Is the disk image a .dmg file? (If this is the wrong filetype, here's a list of others: http://www.fileinfo.com/filetypes/disk_image
)

[autopope.livejournal.com]

When I ran into this, I couldn't find a .dmg file anywhere I looked; the simplest solution was to run the Kindle app and look for the mounted directory (then grab everything and strip the DRM off it and store it somewhere else). Then I wised up and told the Kindle app to start stashing books somewhere sensible again -- it's still available in the Preferences (you can tell it what folder to use to store content).

I fear this is all part of their gradual move to transition the Kindle platform to a cloud-based system.