@arcadata, I think the reason that more readers don't support ADE is that the licensing costs are exorbitant. I inquired about licensing the code earlier this year, but their quote was 1-2 orders of magnitude beyond what I, as a small developer, could afford. This doesn't make sense to me, as I would think they would want to have their DRM supported in as many readers as possible.
@murraypaul, I'm not sure how txtr supports ADE DRM. Either they were able to negotiate better terms with Adobe or they are taking a big loss or they found some kind of workaround. It might be worth my reengaging with Adobe to see if anything has changed.
@arcadata, You can download the free books and samples from Smashwords directly, but, they don't currently support a Bookshelf to access books that you have bought. I've raised this with them and hopefully it is something that Smashwords will support in the future.
@HarryT, Yes I'm working on an iPad version. If you are interested in being a beta user, contact me via
www.megareader.net/contact or
www.quickreader.net/contact.
@leebase, I have a lot of respect for the contribution the Stanza/Amazon guys made in laying the groundwork for OPDS, which is how we connect to the online catalogs. I'm not as crazy about their reader. People who prefer MegaReader/QuickReader over Stanza cite the simple interface, nice graphics, amount of customization you can do, and (for QuickReader) the improvement it has made in their reading speed. Another unique feature is it tells you how long it will take to complete a chapter and, in an upcoming release, how long to complete a book. Ultimately it comes down to preference. For most people, $1.99 is practically free, so "commercial vs. free" isn't a significant factor.
Great questions!
-Patrick