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.
Which comic book app should I get?
- Thread starter melman101
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Haha.... there ya go.
It's painlessly easy to drag and drop them and view them in other readers as well. 😛
pooryou
macrumors 65816
True but where does it end? Maybe it would be even easier not to read them at all 😉
If I find a worthwhile comic reader someday maybe I will stop converting, but compared to the effort of actually acquiring them in the first place it's pretty negligible. It could easily be made into a folder action: comics download into folder, automatically get converted.
It's strange how you people think I only talk about cloud readers when I'm the only in this thread that has used all comic readers and have given reviews of all of them , I don't see people talking about Meeep or Comicpad now renamed ComicRad. Also I don't see any in site on the comic apps, I constantly give updates to these apps, even talk to the developers.
I also wrote a review about the advantages of all zip,rar,cbr,cbz.
pooryou
macrumors 65816
That had absolutely nothing to do with my post you quoted. Maybe you should get some fresh air.
MikeCase
macrumors member
I wouldn't exactly call this monstrosity of text a "review". How does it have anything to do with our choice of a reader?
I have been following this thread from page 1 while I anticipate my impending iPad purchase, as reading comic books (CBR/CBZ) will be one of my primary uses for the iPad... and I have to say I am somewhat confused due to recent application updates, removals, etc that I am unable to verify as I do not yet own an iPad. This thread has devolved several times into a war of opinions and I would like to bring it back on track.. Some answers to the following questions / statements would be appreciated, and if we may stick to the facts please that would be great:
- Comic Zeal is currently the only app categorized as a "comic book reader" available for purchase that reads CBR/CBZ files?
- Comic Zeal offers its own method of importing files [sync] in addition to importing files via iTunes (elaboration / differentiation on these two methods would be appreciated).
- Comic Zeal performs some sort of compression on CBR/CBZ files?
- The compression done by Comic Zeal results in a discernible drop in image quality?
- Comic Zeal has poor file-management implementation? (elaboration on its functional capabilities would be appreciated).
I am aware that you can convert CBR/CBZ files to PDF. To me this is a workaround. My opinion is that a developer creating a comic reader app is going to have a different goal in mind and implement different functionality within the app than that of a developer creating a PDF reader app (e.g. file-management capabilities, meta-data implementation, UI, etc). I know there are plenty of PDF reader apps out there, and once the discussion moves to converting CBR/CBZ files to PDF, this thread essentially turns into a discussion (or argument) regarding which is the better PDF reader app, to me that is off topic.
Thanks for your comments.
- Comic Zeal is currently the only app categorized as a "comic book reader" available for purchase that reads CBR/CBZ files?
- Comic Zeal offers its own method of importing files [sync] in addition to importing files via iTunes (elaboration / differentiation on these two methods would be appreciated).
- Comic Zeal performs some sort of compression on CBR/CBZ files?
- The compression done by Comic Zeal results in a discernible drop in image quality?
- Comic Zeal has poor file-management implementation? (elaboration on its functional capabilities would be appreciated).
I am aware that you can convert CBR/CBZ files to PDF. To me this is a workaround. My opinion is that a developer creating a comic reader app is going to have a different goal in mind and implement different functionality within the app than that of a developer creating a PDF reader app (e.g. file-management capabilities, meta-data implementation, UI, etc). I know there are plenty of PDF reader apps out there, and once the discussion moves to converting CBR/CBZ files to PDF, this thread essentially turns into a discussion (or argument) regarding which is the better PDF reader app, to me that is off topic.
Thanks for your comments.
Well if you compare that to what otter people say, yeah I don't like cloud reader because I look over someones shoulder and it sucks.
You approve of this
A friend of mine tried cloud readers, I watched over his shoulder. There isn't much to it, I wasn't impressed.
MikeCase
macrumors member
pooryou
macrumors 65816
The comic-specific functions are only really relevant on the iPhone where workarounds are needed due to lack of screen real estate. There is no functionality that comic-specific apps on the iPad have that makes them inherently superior when it comes to actually viewing the pages. In essence, on the iPad, a PDF reader IS a comic reading app. Sorry if you feel it's off topic but in my opinion you are wrong about that.
For someone with so many questions, you should be less quick to judge what is off-topic.
Thanks for answering my questions.
For some, converting to PDF is not an option, as CBR/CBZ metadata is lost. I do not own an iPad so I do not know, but do PDF readers provide a way of categorizing / managing files into collections? You chose not to answer any of my other questions but instead find one statement in my post and flame me for it? Thanks for the warm welcome.
Agreed. A cbr/cbz file is usually just a collection of images (each page is a separate image), so converting then to PDF really doesn't change anything at all.
Wimmachine said:
If you want to pay, then yes, at the moment cz4 is the only paid one. There are free ones.
Cz4 has it's legacy sync tool which is meant for the iPhone as it resize images to 1024px. However, the preferred method is to drag and drop filesin the pro with iTunes. It's faster.
If you use iTunestransfer no compression is done, however when you start the app after you've transferred files, the app will decompress all files and create coverthumbnails of each file.
I've found a bug where the itunes transfer becomes very slow after you've transferred more than 10GB of files.
Yes, GoodReader allows you to create folders and organize your files (move, rename, etc).
pooryou
macrumors 65816
First of all, I didn't flame you at all. Don't be oversensitive. I could have taken your comments about PDF being an off-topic argument as a flame towards me as well, couldn't I? However I did not.
Second, I have not used ComicZeal on the iPad, so my answering of those questions would be inappropriate.
Third, there is no metadata lost when converting CBZ/CBR to PDF, because there is no metadata in the first place. It's just a compressed folder of images. It might be possible to embed metadata, but no file I have ever seen has contained any. What metadata do you need anyway?
Fourth, yes as stated previously in the thread Goodreader has nice capabilities for organization. I'm sure other apps do as well.
Thanks for the informative reply. I have a few other questions:
- How does CZ handle 2-page layouts?
- Are the free apps (I do not know of any specifically) contenders in this category? i.e. do they offer comparable functionality to the paid apps or are they somehow limited and thus written off as "junk free apps'? I am not aware of any free apps for reading CBR/CBZ so elaboration would be appreciated (I do not have access to iTunes atm).
There 4 comic book reader, just type comic in search
Meeeep: elegant Ui I think it's the one that feel the most different, in some ways it makes you read differently, problem is it only reads, zip and jpegs, pngs.
Price : Free
ComicPad / ComicRad : reads most formats but you can get comics only by download them from the app no way to sync with iTunes yet. ComicRad has been summited to Apple and includes syncing but hasn't been approved yet. we have to wait.
Price : Free
Comic Zeal: First version for the iPad was bad, since then transfers are much better, and I think they have fix there resolution problem, with every update it gets better. In my opinion there UI is to chunky.
Price : 7 bucks
Clould Readers: Simple UI, reads all formats, currently it chokes on huge jpegs at times, 1.4 will fix that issue. With on volume of Beserk I experienced page problems, but must have been the comic since all the others work fine.
Price :Free
Comic Reader Mobi : Banned
It was a good reader, had a feature to just expand text that's useful in comics with tones of text, was fast to turn paged forward but slow to go back a page.
Developer says he wanted to implement a method to stream comics.
Price was 15/ 9.99
pooryou
macrumors 65816
What is contained in them and how do the apps mentioned in this thread actually use the data (if at all)?
I assume it is an XML file in the folder?
PDFs can also contain metadata, wouldn't surprise me if Jomic carried it over.
Yes. Series name, issue number, total issues in series, publisher, date, etc. Similar to MP3 ID3 tags. Thanks for your post above jodorowsky00 -- very informative.
pooryou
macrumors 65816
If you organize the comics and can see the covers, it provides most of that.
I have not heard of any of the actual apps using the data anyway, though I wouldn't mind being proven wrong.
At least in Goodreader I can organize the files and even do a search for them.
Dorv
macrumors 6502
Dorv
macrumors 6502
I don't know if it's metadata technically, but I'm pretty sure there's some type of data thats carried, though it could just be a scraping of the file name. Comic Zeal organizes items into groups automatically if they're formatted correctly.
OK sorry I got distracted last night, so didn't get the chance to play with it until now.
good things about Cloud Reader: fast and smooth page turning. can change reading direction with a simple button (the manga i'm reading goes from right to left). free and it supports zip.
bad things: i added a bunch of rar files in iTunes but Cloud Reader can't read them (more on this later), so i deleted them in iTunes, but the files remain in my bookshelf. so i have to delete them manually in Cloud Reader. Very annoying!
So the reason why the rar files won't read is because there is a folder inside the rar container (i.e. the person who did this put the jpeg into a folder, and rar the folder), and apparently Cloud Reader doesn't like it. I did a test and extract the rar file, and zip only the folder that contains the jpeg, and it reads fine. however i put the same "problematic" rar file under CRM and it handles it just fine, so CRM is more robust in that regard.
overall Cloud Reader has potential, but i hope the dev can fix the two bad things in the future release soon.
Daremo
macrumors 68020
For what it's worth...
I purchased Comic Zeal and Comic Reader Mobi on day one. After trying them both, I hated Comic Zeal. THe slow uploads, the compression... Didn't like it, and deleted it from my iPad. I loved Comic Reader Mobi. After reading today about CRM basically being banned for at least a year, and no upgrades and so on, I decided to give Comic Zeal another try. This time, I LOVED it. The updates make this fantastic. Actually, I like this much more then CRM. I did like the text window zoom feature, but I can live without it.
For those like me who were on the side of CRM, I HIGHLY recommend you try Comic Zeal now with the updates.
I purchased Comic Zeal and Comic Reader Mobi on day one. After trying them both, I hated Comic Zeal. THe slow uploads, the compression... Didn't like it, and deleted it from my iPad. I loved Comic Reader Mobi. After reading today about CRM basically being banned for at least a year, and no upgrades and so on, I decided to give Comic Zeal another try. This time, I LOVED it. The updates make this fantastic. Actually, I like this much more then CRM. I did like the text window zoom feature, but I can live without it.
For those like me who were on the side of CRM, I HIGHLY recommend you try Comic Zeal now with the updates.