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Apple Launches Twitter Account for U.S. iBookstore
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I encourage everyone to contact Apple and request an update to iBooks that allows users to read their iBooks on their computers, not just their iOS devices. With the cross platform ability and the larger book selection, Amazon's Kindle app is just outright beating Apple at this point.
The cheapest Kindle is $114. (And fits in a quart-sized ziplock...).
I won't be following. 260,000 new titles are published in the US every year. I don't want to get 712 tweets per day telling me about a new book. (Okay, I know they won't all be at the iBookstore, and they probably won't tweet everything. But it still seems more annoying than anything else.).
The same reason why Microsoft is in bed with Facebook. Although the companies are different, Apple chose Twitter integration while Microsoft favors Facebook for Windows 8.
As someone who has been reading books on electronic devices going all the way back to 2002 or so on my old Treo 90, I'll weigh in here:
Reading Kindle books on an actual Kindle is somehow a rather dull experience. The same thing that makes the Kindle great (long battery life) is also a buzzkill (the horrid black-on-grey e-Ink technology). I got the Kindle when it first came out, and did use it and enjoy it--but still felt the thing was lacking somehow.
Another thing that absolutely drives me nuts about the Kindle is how the much-touted footnote feature doesn't work at all. I read a lot of non-fiction. Amazon made a big deal about how you could click a footnote, read it, and return to the main body of the book. In my experience, the only time this actually worked was in the "Welcome to your Kindle" tutorial that pops up when you first unbox your Kindle. Otherwise, clicking (that which are supposed to be) hotlinks for footnotes on a Kindle gives you no response from the device at all. Another thing that works poorly on an actual Kindle is reading any kind of newly-published fantasy novel (such as Game of Thrones or similar, if you're into that sort of thing). Books like this always have a map or two of the fantasy world in question. Renderings of these kinds of maps look like crud on a Kindle.
Once I got an iPad, I purchased a book or two from the iBooks app and compared it with the same book on the Kindle for iPad app. In each case, the presentation of the book was better, crisper, and cleaner with the iBooks version. I don't pretend to know what kind of OCR technology is used by Apple vs Amazon--but they both have occasional errors, as compared with the original printed work. What I do know is that Apple's virtual books have fewer errors than Amazon's. The very latest trend is for what they call "enhanced books", such as the recent non-fiction "Berlin 1961" (about the construction of the Berlin Wall). Books like this have actual television news coverage of the events in question, charts, etc, served up as part of the book itself--almost as if somebody stuck a YouTube link in the middle of your book. I took a look at the samples of Berlin 1961 in the Kindle app and the iBooks app. Again, advantage Apple.
As a large consumer of virtual books, I am frustrated from time to time. If I find that Kindle is my only choice, well, the problem is "solved" (or at least moot). If Apple and Amazon both offer it, I have a choice, but each one has its drawbacks: Buy the Kindle version, and have it available to be read on iPad, Kindle, or Mac or PC. Buy the Apple version (generally somewhat better on quality of presentation of the material in my experience), and have it available only on any of my iOS devices, but not available on my computers. Yuck.
Either way, this stuff is always a little bit of a gamble, as well: Right now, it looks like Apple and Amazon are both behemoths, facts of life, taken for granted as if they will both always be with us, etc. But who knows? There could come a day when one or the other company is no longer with us. Every time I buy any kind of virtual book, there's a little voice in the back of my head that says, "How do you know that you'll have access to those books tomorrow? How do you know that you will always have a device that is capable of reading those books?" Meh. I buy them anyway, but I always feel like I've made a devil's bargain. Case in point: There is in fact a legacy iPad app for those old Palm reader digital books of mine. Theoretically, I should have access to all the old purchases I made. For whatever reason, only some of them are accessible. I don't know why, and haven't yet needed to access one of them so badly that I wanted to go to the effort of e-mailing a semi-zombie company to get them to unlock material which is "mine". But whenever you buy a book from either Apple or Amazon, you're kind of betting on the longevity and legacy support and good will of that company (or its potential successors). I got sort of stiffed by Palm/Handspring. It could happen again.
Reading Kindle books on an actual Kindle is somehow a rather dull experience. The same thing that makes the Kindle great (long battery life) is also a buzzkill (the horrid black-on-grey e-Ink technology). I got the Kindle when it first came out, and did use it and enjoy it--but still felt the thing was lacking somehow.
Another thing that absolutely drives me nuts about the Kindle is how the much-touted footnote feature doesn't work at all. I read a lot of non-fiction. Amazon made a big deal about how you could click a footnote, read it, and return to the main body of the book. In my experience, the only time this actually worked was in the "Welcome to your Kindle" tutorial that pops up when you first unbox your Kindle. Otherwise, clicking (that which are supposed to be) hotlinks for footnotes on a Kindle gives you no response from the device at all. Another thing that works poorly on an actual Kindle is reading any kind of newly-published fantasy novel (such as Game of Thrones or similar, if you're into that sort of thing). Books like this always have a map or two of the fantasy world in question. Renderings of these kinds of maps look like crud on a Kindle.
Once I got an iPad, I purchased a book or two from the iBooks app and compared it with the same book on the Kindle for iPad app. In each case, the presentation of the book was better, crisper, and cleaner with the iBooks version. I don't pretend to know what kind of OCR technology is used by Apple vs Amazon--but they both have occasional errors, as compared with the original printed work. What I do know is that Apple's virtual books have fewer errors than Amazon's. The very latest trend is for what they call "enhanced books", such as the recent non-fiction "Berlin 1961" (about the construction of the Berlin Wall). Books like this have actual television news coverage of the events in question, charts, etc, served up as part of the book itself--almost as if somebody stuck a YouTube link in the middle of your book. I took a look at the samples of Berlin 1961 in the Kindle app and the iBooks app. Again, advantage Apple.
As a large consumer of virtual books, I am frustrated from time to time. If I find that Kindle is my only choice, well, the problem is "solved" (or at least moot). If Apple and Amazon both offer it, I have a choice, but each one has its drawbacks: Buy the Kindle version, and have it available to be read on iPad, Kindle, or Mac or PC. Buy the Apple version (generally somewhat better on quality of presentation of the material in my experience), and have it available only on any of my iOS devices, but not available on my computers. Yuck.
Either way, this stuff is always a little bit of a gamble, as well: Right now, it looks like Apple and Amazon are both behemoths, facts of life, taken for granted as if they will both always be with us, etc. But who knows? There could come a day when one or the other company is no longer with us. Every time I buy any kind of virtual book, there's a little voice in the back of my head that says, "How do you know that you'll have access to those books tomorrow? How do you know that you will always have a device that is capable of reading those books?" Meh. I buy them anyway, but I always feel like I've made a devil's bargain. Case in point: There is in fact a legacy iPad app for those old Palm reader digital books of mine. Theoretically, I should have access to all the old purchases I made. For whatever reason, only some of them are accessible. I don't know why, and haven't yet needed to access one of them so badly that I wanted to go to the effort of e-mailing a semi-zombie company to get them to unlock material which is "mine". But whenever you buy a book from either Apple or Amazon, you're kind of betting on the longevity and legacy support and good will of that company (or its potential successors). I got sort of stiffed by Palm/Handspring. It could happen again.