Does anyone else think that the selection of books is ridiculously bad? I tried searching 'Lee Child' - came up with nothing. Ok, maybe he's an obscure author in America. I then tried searching popular books - Harry Potter, Dan Brown, the Twilight series. Nothing. What the hell?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
iBooks first impression: - Terrible
- Thread starter Callum
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Harry potter is still old school! No official ebook or digital edition! JK Rowling is totally against Harry potter series coming as ebooks!
iBooks on 2G Touch...
... is glacially slow. Opening a 50-page PDF file takes several minutes to get to the first page. I have no interest in the eBooks myself (because I can get a paper book for roughly the same price), but Winnie the Pooh isn't any faster, taking at least three minutes to open it.
I was hoping to put various small PDFs (fair flyers, technical manuals) on the device and read them remotely, but the performance is so extremely poor I don't think it's usable. I assume it must be much better on the iPad or iPhone 4?
... is glacially slow. Opening a 50-page PDF file takes several minutes to get to the first page. I have no interest in the eBooks myself (because I can get a paper book for roughly the same price), but Winnie the Pooh isn't any faster, taking at least three minutes to open it.
I was hoping to put various small PDFs (fair flyers, technical manuals) on the device and read them remotely, but the performance is so extremely poor I don't think it's usable. I assume it must be much better on the iPad or iPhone 4?
An iPhone / iTouch isn't an iPad it's sort of pointless trying to compare iBooks on both devices.
I've downloaded a few Ian Rankin books and I'm getting on with iBooks fine, however I think the cost for ebooks is a little steep.
I've downloaded a few Ian Rankin books and I'm getting on with iBooks fine, however I think the cost for ebooks is a little steep.
It is bad but. My wife gave up after buying a couple books and not finding some. But having several thousand dollars worth of gutenberg classic literature makes up for it, IMO.
NogbadTheBad said:
I read books on both my iPad and my Touch and enjoy both. As for price, I couldn't agree more.
Sort of off-topic, but I was talking with a novelist this morning. She was cooing over my iPad, undecided whether reading books on it was a good or bad idea. Something about the tactile experience of reading a physical book, and will they go the way of physical CDs? Anyway, she told me generally authors make a whole 25p (about 40 cents) per £10 novel sold. An author really needs to shift a LOT of novels to make any money at all (unless, I guess, you are a J K Rowling or Ian Rankin and can negotiate good rates AND sell lots).
I really hope that iBooks/Kindle and other digital distribution formats can actually mean a little more money for the writer, and not just the publisher, printers etc.
full disclosure: I'm a wannabe novelist.
I really hope that iBooks/Kindle and other digital distribution formats can actually mean a little more money for the writer, and not just the publisher, printers etc.
full disclosure: I'm a wannabe novelist.
I think with the multiple options for purchase....B&N, Kindle App, iBooks...that prices will come down due to competition. At least that's my hope. Because I had assumed that with e-delivery and cost reduction, they would have been cheaper from the jump, but it doesn't appear so.
Agreeing with the OP, my experience so far has been that the iBooks store selection is pretty limited as compared to Amazon's, so most of my (paid-for) eBooks still come in via Kindle. I do like that the iBook app added support for PDF viewing, however, since a lot of the free documents/books that I want to read are in PDF format (and the presentation's better IMO than it is in, say, ReaddleDocs or GoodReader).