What happened to Lonely Planet?
 

For a number of years now Lonely Planet has released its destination travel guides not only in book format, but also as a PDF which can be downloaded onto your computer, tablet, phone or whatever. You could even buy separate chapters as PDF files. Suddenly this feature has disappeared and PDF downloads are no longer available. Now, this is a real nuisance because by storing them on my iPad it really saved not having to carry the heavy paper versions of the guide around. Any idea why this has happened and whether it will be temporary? I know LP isn't perfect, but their hotel recommendations tend to be pretty solid, as are all the museum and sight seeing suggestions. But it has definitely become more oriented to the yacht club crowd in recent years.

Had various changes of ownership over the years.
International travel shut down for ~2 years due the pandemic would not be good for the travel guide book business. As would increasing internet access even in remote places: all on-line in an instant
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonely_Planet

They have it a san e-book - e.g. Kindle.

Yeah, I saw that but I don't have a Kindle. My friend has the German Tolino on the other hand. Maybe they felt people were sharing the PDF files too much and they thought they were losing money.

maybe you have a device that can install the Kindle app, doesn’t require the specific Amazon device. Something to look into.

ahh reread, your initial post, I use the kindle app on my iPad.

You can also use the free instead of a device if necessary.

Used to go to thorntree (their fellow traveler Q&A website) for rando' bits of travel advice. People on their seemed to know the score a lot of them time -- IIRC one of the former mods in FlyerTalk's China forum used to post a lot there -- and it was so much preferred than whatever the hell TripAdvisor spit out (not to mention, those "this thread has been closed due to inactivity" posts).

Is it still around? Meh.

Wikipedia

A lot of their content is available on local public library apps. Libby, Overdrive. Cloud Library, etc.

US centric answer.

you reminded me of the FT member: jiejie .

I read all of my books on the Kindle app on my Ipad

I am old school ... I buy the books. Much easier to read and mark up.

I had no idea this was possible, so thank you very much for the suggestion.

This is one of the wonderful things about the US that I really admire, namely the quality and availability of their public libraries, as well as the wealth of information available. This, along with the amazing National Park network (but that's another story!)

Wonderful idea, I will try this, although my iPad is getting on in years. I presume Kindle is fairly user friendly to work with. One day I must get the iPad Professional and read my music scores there, although I do like paper when it comes to music.

Just as I wrote above, I still tend to prefer paper when dealing with books and music. But I just wonder how much of that is a misplaced reluctance to change!

The Kindle app is also available on Windows and MacOS too, so you can read Kindle content on a laptop/desktop if you prefer. With respect to the Lonely Planet series, many of their titles (~700) are available for free with a Kindle Unlimited subscription.

Thorntree was an amazing resource for travel. Really miss first hand accounts