Quote:
Originally Posted by kyteflyer
Faterson loves it (I think) because its probably more a researcher's tool than "just" for readers.
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Aah, I suppose Jack was asking for it, so here's my ode on Marvin:
Marvin's
academic background is as palpable as the
commercial background is palpable for iBooks and the Kindle app. (It then wasn't surprising to learn that the Marvin developer was a university lecturer.) Marvin seems to suggest to the user, "I want you to enjoy reading this book as much as posible, and offer you the most useful tools known to mankind to assist your reading," whereas iBooks and the Kindle app seem to be suggesting to the user, "We want you to spend as much money as possible on buying books from us... oh, and by the way, here's an app so you can then read the books in one way or another." The iBooks and Kindle apps seem like unpleasant afterthoughts, distracting their creators from their main object: selling books and making money. The priority is not to please the reader -- the priority is to fill the respective corporation's coffers. The difference in focus and emphasis is palpable when you use Marvin as opposed to using iBooks or the Kindle app. The lack of certain obvious features in iBooks and the Kindle app is so jarring it borders on user contempt, as if the app was jeering the user: "No, I'm
not gonna give you this obvious feature! You've bought the book, now read it and shut up." iBooks and the Kindle app strike you as tools created by technocrats, contemptuously and lovelessly thrown like bare bones to the crowd just so the crowd doesn't starve to death. They condescend to give the crowd the absolute required minimum, but little more. Whereas Marvin looks like a tool created by "one of the crowd's own" -- a book-lover first, and book-"seller" second; someone who actually
reads e-books, rather than just creates bare-bones tools for others to read them.
(As to "being loud" and "a broken record" in "every thread", it's definitely not
every thread, and I trust each mention and recommendation of Marvin at least has been appropriate and on-topic for each thread where it occurred, not artificially introduced. I hate spamming and promotional campaigns as much as Jack and everyone. It's just difficult to contain one's enthusiasm regarding Marvin. It's easily the best Christmas gift I got this year, even though it arrived in early December. In fact, I see the release of Marvin as one of the top events of 2012, period. Here I was slowly, depressingly getting used to the fact we'll never again be reading books in such quality environment as Stanza offers, which has kept all my iOS devices on iOS 5 so far -- when out of the blue, an app arrives that is even better than Stanza, removing all reading concerns for the foreseeable future. It almost seems like miracle.)
