Where do I start with the letdown iBooks on the iPad has been? Let’s see- the books are very expensive, there are hardly any available for non-US owners and you cannot customise the appearance apart from font size, font type and brightness. You are stuck with a bright white background and that’s it. It is far from easy on the eye and my eyes were straining within a few minutes. It looks nice, as you would expect from Apple, but fails in all of the important areas that eBook readers like the Kindle succeed in.
It’s not all lost though because there is an alternative and that is the Kindle app. There is a huge range of books available with many at very good prices and you can sample any book by downloading the start for free. This is a great way to test a book before you buy and the only downside is that you are transported to Amazon to buy and peruse books. It is slickly implemented though and books are cleverly sent to the iPad with little manual intervention.
The most important area for me is that you can customise the look of eBooks and the sepia theme is perfect, in my opinion, for long periods of reading. It’s a simple feature, but one which should be standard in any eBook device or software.
As it stands I still haven’t bought an eBook from the iBooks store and can’t see a purchase happening anytime soon. eBooks cannot be sprinkled with Apple dust; they are just a collection of words and the presentation, availability and price are all important. Apple has somehow managed to miss out on all three and completely missed the potential of the iPad as an eBook reader. Thankfully Amazon got it right so I am eReading again as much as I was before the dreaded geographic restrictions took hold last year.
Doesn’t Kindle have geographic restrictions?
I live in Israel and was going to buy the international version last year but it wouldn’t download in Israel.
Will pick up my HTC Desire tomorrow and wondering if the Kindle has an app for that.
Ereader is almost useless not for new titles with the restrictions.
I agree, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the Kindle app, although I am still nervous about their ability to remotely remove books. Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy – £6.99 on iBooks, $5.78 on Kindle store. What a difference! Oh, and Kindle works on more than one device.
I saw a Kindle reader app for PC the other day, and I did muse the idea of reading books on my netbook… in fact I have been anyway lately (I’ve been pretending it’s an iPad… it’s been a challenge – Ha ha!) But I couldn’t find any clues on geographic restrictions and some of the prices seemed equivalent to buying a hardback. Are you guys buying books through Amazon UK? Do you know if this is open to the rest of Europe (I’m living in Spain at the mo)? I can (for example) buy normal books, and I have. Maybe I just need to bite the bullet and try it out myself huh?!
I’m buying through the Amazon US store, I’m not sure there’s another way. They’ve opened up to overseas but I’m afraid I’m not sure of restrictions either.
@Eliyahu the Android Kendle is in development and Amazon claim it’ll be here durinng the summer.
I have a feeling when I purchases books from amazon.com I did have any geographic restrictions applied, but when I tried to purchase from the iPad I did get a notice of geographic restructions. Overall, Amazon & Kindle are my preferred option, but a bit annoyed that I can’t read my Mobipocket ebooks now even though Amazon own Mobipocket!
In the US there doesn’t seem to be any difference in pricing between the iBook store and the Kindle Store.
As far as each app goes, neither is perfect, but I prefer iBooks over the Kindle – even the white background in the Kindle app seems murky to me. I much prefer the crisp white in the iBooks app. I also like the search and dictionary functions in iBooks.
But the the biggest advantage for me is having a choice of fonts, as this really affects readability. In iBooks you can choose from 10 different font sizes vs. only 5 in the Kindle app, and there is a choice of fonts, too. Cochin in iBooks is far more readable than the single default font used in the Kindle app.
For me, the choice of whare I purchase a book comes down to availability. If it is available in both stores, I buy the iBook version because of the reasons above.
Agree with Shaun. The prices are high and I dont like the options. Kindle is much better in my opinion.
I tried out “stanza” on my loaner ipod touch; works well, might make reading ebooks more pleasant.
there’s a reason why e-ink is the way it is, not just power consumption. sure, an e-ink device has only really one use, but it does it very well. even a S-IPS lcd can’t compete with one for being easy on the eyes.
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Stanza for iPad was just released. This was the best ebook reader for the iPhone/iPod touch, looks great on the iPad. You can add ePubs from your computer directly using Stanza.
The Kindle app is also very nice, just purchased our first book. Can share among my family members, ideal for summer reading. Amazon has the best inventory of electronic books as far as we can tell (compared to iBooks, Barnes and Noble/Fictionwise, etc).
We figure these two apps pretty much cover the playing field. Stanza lets me add my old books from Palm days, Kindle gives me the latest online options/eink device.
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another source of reading material is Tor Books
http://www.tor.com/