Not much if any development in recent years, eh?
It's too bad Kris stopped Marvin's development midway, so to speak, but it is what it is. We must certainly be grateful to Kris for what Marvin already delivers.
The last iPad I purchased was in the fall of 2015. Well, all three of them, actually: the 8-inch mini 4, the 10-inch Air 2, and the 13-inch Pro.
I ditched the iPhone in the fall of 2017, switching to Samsung's Note 8, subsequently also purchasing Samsung and Huawei tablets. A very good decision. iOS has been getting dumber with every annual release, whereas Android has been getting better – primarily thanks to offering freedom to its users, whereas Apple has been taking more and more freedom away from its users each year.
I vowed never to purchase another Apple device again, but I may, tomorrow, purchase the iPad mini 5 that has just been released. I digitize books, and my favourite app to do that, on the handy mini, is the Russian app ABBYY Book Scanner (from the makers of the world's best OCR software, FineReader). ABBYY's Book Scanner only exists on iOS, not on Android; ABBYY's FineScanner mobile app exists on both platforms, but is more advanced on iOS.
In terms of e-reader software, I'm afraid no professional-grade e-reader software currently exists – neither on iOS nor on Android. Marvin is very good, but not great (lacking certain essential functionality); the same can be said of Moon+ Reader on Android. MapleRead on iOS has been (unlike Marvin) making steady progress in recent years, surpassing Marvin in quite a few areas, but it's not there yet, either. All 3 of these apps are, to me, 3-star software (or 3.5 stars, to be generous); Kindle or Apple Books would be 2-star; but there is, I'm afraid, currently no e-reader software that I'd rate 4 stars, let alone 5 stars.
In terms of missing functionality and Marvin, the elephant in the room is (and has been since Marvin's initial release in 2012 or so), of course, the lack of annotations syncing. This is must-have functionality offered by practically every Marvin competitor, but Marvin still lacks it. It was said to be in development 5 years ago or so, but it just never happened. Again, I'm not blaming anyone, just stating the facts.
In spite of this glaring hole in functionality, I still use Marvin (but not just Marvin) to this day to read e-books on iPads. I can't help it, but e-books (not all of them, but many) simply
look better, to me, in Marvin than in MapleRead (let alone the odious Kindle or Apple Books). This, of course, has a lot to do with the wealth of customization options available in Marvin. Marvin's killer feature in this respect, to me, is the option to customize the book's headers and footers to your liking. This is severely lacking in MapleRead, for example (let alone the dumb Kindle or Apple Books).
But, I must say, some (not all) books look even nicer in Moon+ Reader on Android than in Marvin. Again, thanks to the wealth of customization options available in Moon – many of which surpass those in Marvin. Then again, Marvin seems to execute the books' internal code in a more faithful manner than Moon does it (not always, but typically). One area where both Marvin and MapleRead painfully lag behind Moon, is the inability to use your own custom fonts. Whereas in Moon, you can easily use dozens of your own fonts – it's unlimited.
A similar and very bad shortcoming in Marvin is the ability to store only 5 custom backgrounds – and inability to use custom background textures to do so. MapleRead is much better here, but the real star and model for everyone else in this functionality is Moon+ Reader: again, it gives you the option to store an
unlimited amount of custom backgrounds, and use your own custom background textures to do so, if that's what you prefer.
Now, a common glaring hole in functionality that all three of these – Marvin, MapleRead and Moon+ Reader – share and that prevent them from being "professional-grade", is the inability to export annotations in a reasonable manner. All three apps
ruthlessly mangle annotations upon exporting them: forcefully converting everything to plain-text (deleting bold or italic from the source text, for example), deleting paragraph breaks in the exported excerpts, etc. This is completely unacceptable to any professional user – student, scholar, or connoisseur of literature. Until this dysfunctionality is seriously addressed by the app makers, you can't even begin to talk of "professional-grade" in relation to an e-reader app.
Well, that about sums up my overview of the e-reader apps landscape as of spring 2019. A rather sad state of things, isn't it?
Well, let's not despair – it's "only" 2019, after all. I'm pretty confident that by the time 2039, or 2050, arrives, the world will have at least
one truly great, professional-grade e-reader app at its disposal. It may well be one of the 3 current front-runners – or a completely new app. On a current platform or a new one yet to be born. We shall see!
