ShuBook upgrading vs. ShuBook SE? Avoid this mistake!

[robinson]

Faced with a decision between an in-app purchase to upgrade the free ShuBook (i.e. adding Package A) vs. buying ShuBook SE, I made a big mistake!

ShuBook has a notice about upgrading that explains well what can happen with in-app purchases and having to restore prior purchases, including on different devices. It explains that this can be a two-step process and that sometimes the Package A upgrade will have to be restored.

Reading that, and not wanting to go through something so convoluted in the future, I decided to buy ShuBook SE instead. A BIG MISTAKE!

1) Unlike ShuBook, which has never crashed, ShuBook SE crashed multiple times. (It now seems stable, after several forced quits from the background tab bar and tweaking settings.)

2) ShuBook SE does NOT know what your settings were in ShuBook, so you have to laboriously go through and change each item to get back to where you were. (While this is a nuisance, sometimes this is helpful as you discover settings you had overlooked before-- or tweaked other ones into a better condition.)

3) Your library begins EMPTY! And there is no way of moving your books from ShuBook to ShuBook SE. (Package A, the upgrade, is required to give the free SB export abilities.) I hope I am wrong about this--and that someone has a trick to move my books over to SB SE.

4) What you lose by that is all the books you've been reading-- and all the bookmarks! I repeatedly bookmark passages and old words or unknown words that I want to look up later. (Of course, by leaving the free ShuBook on my device, I have access to them, but I'd like to pare this down to just one ShuBook app on my iPhone and have my library, with bookmarks in it.)


In any event, my advice is to do an in-app upgrade and not go the SE route.

Anyone else gone down this path--or discovered that there are indeed problems with the in-app upgrade?

Anyone know how to export or transfer ShuBook library ebooks over to ShuBook SE (along with bookmarks!)?

[robinson]

I have discovered one advantage to this (I think!).

It gives you two ebook readers, which is helpful if you like switching between open ebook apps rather than switching ebooks.

[Faterson]

I use 2 iPads for that. And on a single iPad, 2 different e-reader apps serve the purpose just as well. The quality of the secondary e-reader app isn't all that important, as it's usually only needed for reference purposes. I currently need to do this with a book that has many end-notes but the publisher was sloppy/amateurish enough to fail to hyperlink them. So, I read the book in Marvin, and the end-notes are open in Stanza. Sometimes, though, it's useful to see both the main text and the end-note at the same time, and for this, I prefer using 2 iPads simultaneously, with the same book open in Marvin on both iPads: main text on iPad 3, end-notes on iPad 1. This is not as crazy or extravagant as it might seem -- in fact, it's pretty standard in modern work environments to have 2 displays connected to your computer.

Another instance where I find this very useful is when I try to read a book in the original language, but need to keep a translated version open for reference/help purposes. Switching back and forth between both books on the same iPad all the time, would be annoying and inefficient. And we probably can never expect the iPad to allow for a split screen, in order to display 2 books at the same time. Here again, 2 iPads are ideal to handle this need.

I'm looking forward to getting a Retina-screen iPad mini, so that it can replace my iPad 1 as my secondary/reference iPad. I prefer reading on a 10-inch tablet, but for consultation/reference purposes, 10 inches seems like overkill -- 7 or 8 inches would be ideal. At the same time, I'm not willing to pay the very high price of $330 for a non-Retina iPad mini, so I have to wait for now.

[robinson]

Neat approach--and nicely explained!

Your approach reminds me of the wonderfully old-fashioned have the dictionary at hand. It also beats the old hunt for the endnotes in a printed book routine!

Now, it suggests that an ebook app needs to have a quick switch feature built in--to move between the two screens with just a swipe-slide.

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by robinson

Your approach reminds me of the wonderfully old-fashioned have the dictionary at hand.

Yes, it's very similar.

Unfortunately, I need to read many books, especially old ones, in photographed PDF editions. I avoid PDFs whenever I can, but sometimes it just can't be done. So I read those photographed PDFs in GoodReader but -- naturally -- looking up words from those texts by tapping them with your finger can't be done. So I'm forced to be "old-fashioned", because there's no other way to look up words in such photographed/scanned PDF files.

So, I could either have a paper dictionary at hand -- or the second iPad. The second iPad seems like the better choice -- especially because dictionary apps "predict" what word you might be looking for. Start typing the word, and suggestions instantly pop up. This saves time, compared to looking up the word in a paper dictionary. A second iPad is also easier to handle than the thick tome of a comprehensive, quality dictionary.

And, using a second iPad seems definitely preferable to me over constantly flipping back and forth between the PDF app (GoodReader) and a dictionary app on the same iPad. Not if the two apps interact -- that would be different. But if there's no interaction and you need to manually type in the word you wish to look up -- then using a second iPad seems more efficient.

Originally Posted by robinson

Now, it suggests that an ebook app needs to have a quick switch feature built in--to move between the two screens with just a swipe-slide.

Well, Apple already gives us something similar: you can use 4 fingers to swipe-slide between two open (e-reader) apps on an iPad. This is very nice. (Although it's not nice at all that this gesture does not work on the iPhone, never mind the smaller screen.)

No matter how quickly an app or an OS allows you to switch between two views -- sometimes it's just more efficient to view both passages at the same time. I'm afraid we'll never get to see this on modern-day tablets. The general assumption is that a 10-inch screen as such (let alone a 7-inch screen) is so small that a split-screen view for e-books is not necessary. The assumption is likely wrong... but we're probably not going to persuade software developers to think otherwise.

[robinson]

Thoughtful reply! I agree with you-- a resizable split screen view, with an active dictionary could be quite good, especially for older texts.

I keep waiting for an iPhone app, especially an ebook reading app, that would provide the 1913 Webster's Unabridged (public domain). Had that on the Palm and it was great for learning vintage word definitions!

[kyteflyer]

Originally Posted by robinson

Thoughtful reply! I agree with you-- a resizable split screen view, with an active dictionary could be quite good, especially for older texts.

I keep waiting for an iPhone app, especially an ebook reading app, that would provide the 1913 Webster's Unabridged (public domain). Had that on the Palm and it was great for learning vintage word definitions!

You could download from Gutenberg, couldnt you? There is also http://machaut.uchicago.edu/websters where you can use a web browser to access definitions.