I recently bought RKT 6th edition as an ebook on Amozon, because I much prefer my illegal pdf copy to my paper copy and I wanted to support the endeavor as well as getting the 6th edition.

However, the amazon e-reader app on mac and ipad is slow to turn pages, even slower to scrobble through pages and the search function is just horrible.

I much prefer my PDF copy, so I've been toying with changing the mobi to pdf and so far have managed to strip the copy protection and make some rather hideous looking PDF's.

Any of you guys been through the same and managed to make a pretty pdf? Or an .epub that ibook reads correctly (ibook has a tendency to ignore fonts, which messes up the kanji)?

My friend what you need is Calibre! You can get a plugin for it to strip the drm, and then convert it. This tutorial here shows you how to install the drm plugin. And this one here talks about converting it.

After installing the plugin it will automatically strip the kindle drm from the book. Then all you have to do is convert it. I myself am using Ubuntu Linux and I can't get it to work, so if you are using linux you may have to switch to windows or use virtualbox (what I do). Another thing I recommend (it actually might be necessary I don't remember) is get the Kindle For Pc app. Then you can download your books from there to your computer and they will be stored in My Documents/Amazon Kindle Content. You need to grab the azw, azw3, or mobi file and use that in calibre. I don't recommend taking the file from your tablet or reader as it usually won't work with calibre.

One more thing, I converted my RTK6 copy to epub, and occasionally a kanji will show up wrong, but so far the stroke order diagrams have been right, so I can tell if it is wrong that way. But I would imagine converting it to pdf will fix that issue. But I don't know.

If you have any trouble let me know, I have done this a thousand times.