I'm gearing up for my iPad purchase. I currently have a 1st Gen. iPod Touch that I read ebooks on, and I've recently started reading comic books on it, too. It works better than I thought it would, but i can see where a bigger screen will make for a much better experience. In the mean time, I've been exploring digital comic book reading options on the iPod Touch and digital comic managing options on my Mac. I'm sure others have done the same, so I'm wondering what your experiences are and your preferred programs.
What I would love to see is a totally iTunes-like approach with 2-way syncing of files and, more importantly, information. I don't know if that's a possibility yet, but I'm imagining a situation where I'm reading my way through a series on my iPod/iPad, and every time I sync to iTunes, it removes the issues I've read, and replaces them with the next in line. I can manage similar transfers with audio books and music files using iTunes' smart playlists, but I haven't seen any book or comic book related options. It may be that iBooks will do it, but at present my iPod cannot support iBooks, so I don't know. I've used Stanza and Calibre to put books on to my iPod, but if removing them is an option, I haven't found it yet. And what I really want to sync back to my computer is information about when I last read it and where I stopped.
For comic books, here's what I've looked at:
Panelfly is what I started with. It seems like a great way to get digital comics directly to your iPod/iPhone/iPad without syncing, which is nice, but it seems the buying new comics from the device is your only option. I don's see a way to add content from other sources, nor does it look like you can back up your purchases to your computer or read them there. It's not even clear to me if you can download a comic to multiple devices without paying for it multiple times. I like the idea of a digital comic book shop you can access right from your reader, but beyond that, Panelfly seems pretty limited.
ComicZeal seems pretty good. Navigation is good. It says it supports pdfs as well as .cbr/.cbz files, but I failed in my attempt to sync a pdf file yesterday. It puts a smaller-sized file on the iPod, rather than loading something more space-intensive that the iPod's smaller screen wouldn't be able to take advantage of, which is nice. But, as near as I can tell, the desktop application exists entirely to support the mobile application. Not a huge deal if you plan on doing most of your reading on your device, but since your digital collection can quickly outstrip your device's storage, it seems like better desktop management might be helpful. Also, while it supports standard formats, it looks like it actually converts those to a different format for transfer to the device, which means you're storing your files twice and there's virtually no chance of syncing back information on what's been read and bookmarks because the ComicZeal files are not the .cbr/.cbz files that you started with. On the mobile application, however, it seems to do a good job with bookmarks, collections, and keeping track of what's been read.
Comic Book Lover is the other one I tried. It has a very iTunes-like interface on the desktop application with what looks like a pretty robust support for metadata editing of the various comic fields. The metadata seems to reside in a proprietary database, so careful tagging of a .cbz file is lost if you transfer that file into another program, but that may be a limitation of the file format rather than the program. At any rate, it looks very much like you can add all sorts of data elements to files in Comic Book Lover as long as that is your primary program. The mobile application doesn't seem too different than ComicZeal's. Both have different UI elements that I prefer, so it's hard to pick just one. But, like ComicZeal, I don't see that there's any backwards syncing of information between the mobile and the desktop applications, so I guess there's no reason to prefer the mobile application over the ComicZeal mobile application if you prefer it, although I suspect that if you stay within the Comic Book Lover's suite of aps, you will retain more metadata in the transfer. Also Comic Book Lover had no problem moving the pdf comic that ComicZeal seemed to choke on. The desktop application also has a nice reader functionality, but, apart from that, it seems visually pretty bland. Unless I'm missing some settings (which could easily be the case), items are listed textually only until they're opened in the reader. Some way of viewing covers might spruce that up a bit.
Longbox Digital is the solution I've heard about for the longest amount of time, but only just now seems to have officially come on to the market. It has a lot of potential, but still seems to lack a lot of key features. There aren't any tablet/iPod/iPhone mobile solutions yet, but they are in the works. Longbox seems to take all your other formatted files, but it first converts them into its proprietary format. There also seems to be a limit to the number of computers you can install Longbox on. I don't know if that's a way to prevent file sharing of the comics, or if it's a way to keep people from sharing the program itself. At the moment, the program seems to be free, so I would assume it's a file-sharing-prevention/DRM scheme much like Audible and iTunes use. The potential pitfalls of being limited by Longbox's DRM would probably take it out of contention, but it does have some other things going for it, mainly a store built right in to buy digital comics. The store is tied to your account, which might mean that you could buy comics on any device/computer and access them from another that was tied to the same account. This isn't clear yet because of lack of support for mobile devices and, as near as I can tell, lack of actual content for sale. It's still very new and buggy, but if they get it all together along with some content deals, and make sure the DRM restrictions are reasonable, it might become a viable option. The UI looks prettier than Comic Book Lover, but I haven't compared the metadata situation.
I've also read that Stanza will handle .cbr/cbz files, but I've not tried it. It is my go-to application for non-DRMed e-books, but it seems like you'd want something with a comic-focused UI for comic book reading. Is there any reason to prefer Stanza over other solutions. I love the program, so I'm certainly not opposed to trying it.
Does anyone else have experiences with these or other programs? I know there are some publisher-specific applications(like Marvel), but these seem like they'd suffer from the same pitfalls as Panelfly. Still, I'd love to hear how other people are dealing with this issue and what their preferred applications are and why.