iPad vs Sony Reader

[scottjl]

Originally Posted by tomsem

...and what about embedded SWF files? Like Adobe Digital Editions supports? Oh, that's right...

yeah, it's well know the iPad doesn't play flash. yawn. thanks for playing..

btw. i'm sure you're enjoying those SWF files on your k2 there.. Oh, that's right..

[frabjous]

Originally Posted by scottjl

Apple does not market the iPad as an ebook reader, it is a media device that also does ebooks.

I didn't say they only market it as an ebook reader, but they definitely do market it as, among other things, an ebook reader. If not, then why is iBooks featured, e.g.,:
http://www.apple.com/ipad/features/

I can read any of my 500+ stored eBooks with little difficulty, so I'd say it's got decent support out of the box.

Decent support of those 500 ebooks. Geez. It's clear that it will support certain kinds of books and not others.

So customers shouldn't have to buy other applications? Then why have the App store?

They shouldn't have to buy applications for doing things that Apple advertises that it can do natively.

Should I expect Apple to cater to everyones whims and include every application I can think of bundled into the OS? Oh wait, Microsoft did that and got investigated for being a monopoly. My Mac didn't come with a word processor or spreadsheet, I really should go back and complain to Jobs about that.

I never said anything like that.

Wait, so you expect Apple to include software that does everything you want, perfectly, but no one else has to meet that obligation?

People have to meet the obligations that they advertise that they meet yes. People do not have to meet obligations that they do not advertise.

You excuse Microsoft because you say they are incompetent, maybe they are,

I wasn't excusing microsoft. Their incompetence is inexcusable. I was claiming it wasn't relevant to this thread, which is, after all, only a comparison between the ipad and the Sony reader.

As for Android, so you expect mom to go and code up her own open source application because Google didn't include it? As I said, funny how you have different standards for different companies.

I don't expect Granny to do it. I expect her to be able to do it if she had the expertise. Perhaps the Woz was right in saying that this is a device for grannies and children. It is not a device for the intelligent user.

The iPad is only available in the US at this time. The US has one official language, English. English has one character set. Apple met their obligations to include this character set in the US available iPad.

Abject silliness. How dare someone in the US want to be exposed to another language? Next thing we know, people might actually try to think for themselves! Apple used to be a company interested in education. How can we use tools to educate people about the world when it won't even display other language? Or technical mathematical formalism?

Did you really expect Apple to include a rosetta stone in the box? Be happy with the Apple stickers.

No. Please read my posts. In comparison to the Sony, the ipad is better in terms of what characters it supports natively. Sony is terrible. But at least Sony gave people a way around it: if you want a different character, embed that font. Apple, as is their modus operandi, takes away that ability, and in general takes away your choice as a user.

Remember, Jobs said people don't read anymore. They're marketing it as a media tablet, e-books is just one part of that, and one they aren't focusing a lot of marketing on.

They are definitely pitching it as something for students, and students would be using it for reading. But really, if you're coming into a thread comparing the iPad to the Sony Reader, reading should be the focus of the comparison. If the issue is which is better for watching movies on, you won't hear any disagreement.

For most people out there, I strongly suspect the iPad is all the eBook reader they will need.

But there is a large segment of the population--the segment perhaps which is both most technologically savvy, and stands to be one of Apple's largest client bases, which is left out. I mean, a device like this could be great for higher-ed. But not if it's so limited in such capacities.

Agree 100%. For most people text is text. But this is an e-book site so you have to deal with the die hard hobbyists who are much pickier.

I'm not "hobbyist". I'm a college professor. I don't know... I have this crazy idea that if I post something to my course website or distribute an ebook to my students that uses mathematical symbols or a characters from foreign languages, and am willing to actually provide the fonts necessary for displaying these things (not expecting the device to have them natively), then, maybe, just maybe, a device marketed to students should be able to display it. Or... (even!) failing that... if I want to write the software that will display it myself, I should be able to provide it to my students freely, both on my end and on theirs.

Not being an avid reader, I'd be better off (and get annoyed less often) than at this site which is for avid readers.

Yes, educated people are annoying like that.

I did, by the way, check out one at the store a couple hours ago. The SVG support seems OK. It has the same flaw that both Safari-Desktop and Google Chrome has that the background of the SVG will appear white even when it's set to transparent and the page background is non-white, but that's a fairly minor problem compared to the usual poor support for SVG in other contexts.

[scottjl]

Originally Posted by frabjous

I didn't say they only market it as an ebook reader, but they definitely do market it as, among other things, an ebook reader. If not, then why is iBooks featured, e.g.,:
http://www.apple.com/ipad/features/



Decent support of those 500 ebooks. Geez. It's clear that it will support certain kinds of books and not others.

As I pointed out, it certainly reads many epub files well. If it doesn't read your files well, maybe you should take it up with Apple's tech support. They are certainly in a better position to help you than anyone on this forum.

They shouldn't have to buy applications for doing things that Apple advertises that it can do natively.

And I pointed out it read some 500 epub files that I have just fine.

I never said anything like that.

No, what you did say was:

People are going to expect to get decent ebook reading support out of the box. They shouldn't have to buy another application, and when, e.g., a perfectly valid ePub doesn't display right on the iPad, the customer may well think it's a problem with the book rather than their software.

And I have pointed out several times that iBooks does seem to read many ePub files just fine, after they download iBooks that is.

People have to meet the obligations that they advertise that they meet yes. People do not have to meet obligations that they do not advertise.

I'm sorry, I didn't read anywhere that Apple promised to read 100% of everyone's epub files and have them display 100% correctly. Again, you might want to contact Apple's tech support and not this forum. AFAIK MobileRead has no affiliation with Apple.

I don't expect Granny to do it. I expect her to be able to do it if she had the expertise. Perhaps the Woz was right in saying that this is a device for grannies and children. It is not a device for the intelligent user.

You might want to point Granny at the Apple Developer Program. She can join for $99/yr, develop any application she wants, and even sell it on the App Store! Anyone else can join as well. I think most intelligent people can pick up programming skills.

Abject silliness. How dare someone in the US want to be exposed to another language? Next thing we know, people might actually try to think for themselves! Apple used to be a company interested in education. How can we use tools to educate people about the world when it won't even display other language? Or technical mathematical formalism?

Then you might want to look for a device that is marketed at this time in another language, or one that is marketed as supporting mathematical formulas. The iPad isn't marketed as either, but please, provide links if I'm wrong.

No. Please read my posts. In comparison to the Sony, the ipad is better in terms of what characters it supports natively. Sony is terrible. But at least Sony gave people a way around it: if you want a different character, embed that font. Apple, as is their modus operandi, takes away that ability, and in general takes away your choice as a user.

Apple can't take something away if they never gave it to you to begin with. The device is a week and a half old. Maybe instead of complaining on this forum you could take your complaints to Apple and help them improve their device. Or get granny to write a better ePub reader application.

They are definitely pitching it as something for students, and students would be using it for reading. But really, if you're coming into a thread comparing the iPad to the Sony Reader, reading should be the focus of the comparison. If the issue is which is better for watching movies on, you won't hear any disagreement.

Well, I seem to be reading on my iPad just fine, and I think some other people around here are as well.

But there is a large segment of the population--the segment perhaps which is both most technologically savvy, and stands to be one of Apple's largest client bases, which is left out. I mean, a device like this could be great for higher-ed. But not if it's so limited in such capacities.

You might want to take this up with Apple's Marketing department, and the iBook development team.

I'm not "hobbyist". I'm a college professor. I don't know... I have this crazy idea that if I post something to my course website or distribute an ebook to my students that uses mathematical symbols or a characters from foreign languages, and am willing to actually provide the fonts necessary for displaying these things (not expecting the device to have them natively), then, maybe, just maybe, a device marketed to students should be able to display it. Or... (even!) failing that... if I want to write the software that will display it myself, I should be able to provide it to my students freely, both on my end and on theirs.

You had better make sure that all your students have readers capable of support embedded fonts, because Apple isn't the only one who doesn't.

I'm just going to make a blanket statement here, the iBook application (not to be confused with the iPad, which is a piece of hardware) does not support embedded fonts. This is a known limitation at this time. If you require this feature, then I suggest one or more of the following:

1. Make a request to Apple to support this feature in a future release of iBooks.
2. Make this request to developers of other reader applications such as Kindle, GoodReader, Kobo, etc. that they support ePub files and support embedded fonts within ePub files.
3. Do not buy an iPad for reading these files, but a different device which supports these files at this time.
4. Enjoy reading on your other devices.
5. Complain elsewhere, we've heard it already.

[Amalthia]

Does anyone know if the Ipad reads html files? I mean I figured it would have to since it has a built in browser? I'm not sure if epub or other file formats are needed if you have the html document.

[dmikov]

Originally Posted by scottjl

you're absolutely right tamara.. there is an infestation of trolls on this forum who do nothing but go from message forum to message forum stirring up trouble and then crying when someone calls them on it. if you look at a person's personal profile on here you can see their posting history, and if you read a few messages it is pretty easy to see what they're really about. i can only guess they are just unhappy individuals in life and just want to spread their misery as far and wide as they can because they have nothing constructive to do with their lives. as many have pointed out, this should be a forum for people who own, or want to buy, apple devices to be used as ereaders where they can engage in positive discussion. there is no reason to repeatedly post negative opinions about a device or a company. it adds nothing constructive to discussion and pretty much flags people and their agendas.

why the administration on here puts up with this is beyond me, i don't see this type of behavior on other web forums that i'm on.

Mr. Pot are you calling Mr. Kettle black much?

[scottjl]

Originally Posted by dmikov

Mr. Pot are you calling Mr. Kettle black much?

i'm just guessing you're trying to troll here because i really don't see your point.. if you know of some posts i made in my sleep where i bashed anyone's product please feel free to point them out. in the meantime i'll point out just a few of the constructive contributions i've made to this forum..

Airport Express Guide
iPhone and iPad charger information
A review on the Alice iPad application

even some non iPad postings like..

A review on the Sony 600 cover with light

[dmikov]

Originally Posted by AprilHare

I am a long time fan of eInk and I was wondering: what does the casual user think of the difference between what the iPad offers in terms of quality of display compared to a good eInk display for good old plain eBooks?

Back to original poster question. First off let's not compare iPad to 3 year old device Sony 505 or poorly implemented screen on 600. Let's compare it to new wave of e-ink devices. And let's keep it to book reading, I am sure iPad is a magical device for some people because of other things.

My latest reader is IREX 800 and it has a few thing better then iPad which for me makes it a better reader device.
1. Screen. IREX screen is much sharper. Resolution is the same as iPad (1024x768) but on a slightly smaller screen 8.1 vs 9.7 dpi count is higher. Contrast without putting backlight on iPad to highest (to burn the back of your head) also seems better on IREX almost like one month old laser printout.
Plus although IPad supposedly have IPS and should be viewable 178 degree, I see brightness falling toward edges on the screen, which is annoying.
Plus for me the screen shimmers a little, LCD refresh is a refresh after all, but I know there is not many people who will notice that.
2. Screen is smaller, which for me coupled with small bezel and light weight is a boon. It allows for one hand operation (comfortable). Some people will see it as disadvantage of course and will be right for their purposes.
3. Portability and battery life - IREX wins and wins again.
4. Software: IREX is not perfect, but it's getting there with new firmware, but it wins over iBook even now, the inability to change fonts and remove margins on screen is unacceptable. IPad is already have ginormous bezel adding to it margins and fake real book trappings puts the usable readable area to less then what I have on 8.1" IREX 800 and that on device that is twice as big by itself.
5. Ergonomics, now here your mileage will vary. For me one handed operation is a must. I left paper books because of this few years back and don't want to go back to it again.
6. Page refresh, since I tested only text and min graphics - they were about the same imperceptibly small. I would imagine however that on graphic rich pages iPad will pull quite ahead.

So for reading experience it looks like new e-ink crop like Onyx or IREX is better then iPad.
Some features of iPad like big screen or backlit or page refresh might be more important for some people even not considering additional features though.
But I certainly wouldn't recommend it to my friends if they are interested in book reading.

P.S. I read all previous posts, so please don't feel obligated to extol the virtues of video player or game platform of iPad... AGAIN. I was answering the original poster question.

[dmikov]

Originally Posted by scottjl

i'm just guessing you're trying to troll here because i really don't see your point.. if you know of some posts i made in my sleep where i bashed anyone's product please feel free to point them out. in the meantime i'll point out just a few of the constructive contributions i've made to this forum..

Airport Express Guide
iPhone and iPad charger information
A review on the Alice iPad application

even some non iPad postings like..

A review on the Sony 600 cover with light

Trolling has nothing to do with bashing "products", trolling is more like bashing somebodies feeling whether by personal remarks or patently controversial statements etc. I would say calling everybody who disagrees with you a "Troll" just in this thread alone certainly qualifies you. The quoted post just proves my point btw.
You might be an upstanding and helpful forum citizen otherwise, but I call what I see on this thread.

[scottjl]

Originally Posted by dmikov

Trolling has nothing to do with bashing "products", trolling is more like bashing somebodies feeling whether by personal remarks or patently controversial statements etc. I would say calling everybody who disagrees with you a "Troll" just in this thread alone certainly qualifies you. The quoted post just proves my point btw.
You might be an upstanding and helpful forum citizen otherwise, but I call what I see on this thread.

well. if someone feels i'm bashing them personally, there's always that "report post" button and they are free to use it. but i think if you look at my posts, i don't resort to the personal attacks that others make frequent use of on here. other than pointing out the obvious trolls that's about it for name calling, it's never been someone who just disagreed with me.

[dmaul1114]

Originally Posted by frabjous

Yes, educated people are annoying like that.

1. I'm a college professor too, so nice dig.

2. I was meaning that I get annoyed as I don't fit the demographic of the site here. I'm not an e-book enthusiast by any stretch of the imagination.

I like e-books as I read more when I don't have physical books to get rid of, but I'll never be an avid reader as I'd mainly rather do other stuff in my free time with all the work related reading us professors have to do!

So I get tired of all the bickering over fonts, e-book formats, e-ink vs. lcd for long term reading etc. It's just stuff as a casual e-book user that I couldn't care about.

So as I said here or elsewhere, I'd love some links/suggestions of good tablet forums, iPad forums, or general tech gadget forums so I can have a place to discuss these devices that's not centered on e-books. So I can avoid that bickering, and focus more on the features of the tablet that I'd use more than e-reading anyway. I just haven't had any luck finding active iPad forums, or gadgets that weren't to tech heavy and aimed more at people hacking their devices etc. in terms of the topics. So again I welcome any suggestions!


As for posting stuff with equations--just post them as PDFs. That's what I do with all documents that I post for my students. I've not seen any problems on the ipad with displaying equations etc. in PDFs--at least ones that are just images.

[dmaul1114]

Originally Posted by dmikov

Trolling has nothing to do with bashing "products", trolling is more like bashing somebodies feeling whether by personal remarks or patently controversial statements etc.

Trolling can be both.

It's any kind of flaming or flame bait. People posting something like "Crapple" are just trying to stir crap up.

Or the thread bashing Jobs for how he got his liver transplant a while back etc. Or coming here with the same tired criticisms about Apple being closed, rehashing the lack of Flash ad naseum which are all things everyone knows and have been discussed to date.

Or coming here--to a forum for LCD screen devices--and bashing LCD screens for reading etc.

Trolling is just any posting where the poster isn't contributing to constructive criticism, but is rather posting inflammatory crap to try to rile people up and start arguments.

The device forum areas should be places for owners to discuss the pros and cons of their products , software, news about them etc., and for people who are interested in the device to ask questions of owners and learn more about the device.

Not a place for people who dislike the company, screen technology etc. to come and slam it to stir stuff up. If those debates have to take place, they should be in general discussions, not the device specific areas.

[dmikov]

Originally Posted by dmaul1114

Trolling can be both.

It's any kind of flaming or flame bait. People posting something like "Crapple" are just trying to stir crap up.

Or the thread bashing Jobs for how he got his liver transplant a while back etc. Or coming here with the same tired criticisms about Apple being closed, rehashing the lack of Flash ad naseum which are all things everyone knows and have been discussed to date.

Or coming here--to a forum for LCD screen devices--and bashing LCD screens for reading etc.

Trolling is just any posting where the poster isn't contributing to constructive criticism, but is rather posting inflammatory crap to try to rile people up and start arguments.

The device forum areas should be places for owners to discuss the pros and cons of their products , software, news about them etc., and for people who are interested in the device to ask questions of owners and learn more about the device.

Not a place for people who dislike the company, screen technology etc. to come and slam it to stir stuff up. If those debates have to take place, they should be in general discussions, not the device specific areas.

I don't think you right, about device forum area part that is.
People coming here as you said interested in device, so I think it's ok for them to hear both sides of the story. Especially when they ask about comparison, what now god forbid if there will be two sides /gasp?
Just because somebody said they don't like iPad or LCD for reading on this thread - is NOT a flame bait.
Plus, it is not iPad forum people with iPhones allowed here are they not?
And for god sake, will it make a difference for you if an owner of iPad starts making negative comment about magical device vs the one who played with it for an hour at apple store? Or all negative = flame bait for you?

[dmaul1114]

It's not all negative, it's the type of negative comments.

It's the minority of people posting insulting comments, immature comments etc.

It's fine to say one doesn't like reading on LCD--though I'd be curious why they're posting in the Apple area since the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch are all LCD.

But it's not fine to have the lame, and often used line on this site of "if it glows it blows."

OR coming in here and referring to Apple as Crapple and that type of stuff.

Simply put there's a difference between trolling and posting constructive criticism.

There's no reason for people who loathe Apple and will never buy a single one of their products to come here spouting vitriol about the company and their products.

But absolutely anyone who's owned one, played around with one etc. is welcome and encouraged to discuss the shortcomings they found. As long as they do it in a constructive manner that facilitates debate. And not try to be jerks and bash the product in as inflammatory manner as they can so that the thread just turns into an argument rather than constructive discussion of the pros and cons of the device.

Just my 2 cents anyway. This site doesn't seem to work that way, and I don't plan on spending much more time here thanks to links scott provided in the other thread.

[Latinandgreek]

Originally Posted by scottjl

hey. it was my posting. i'll flag it as a win if i want to.

seriously though.. the only thing missing, at this time, is the ability to support embedded fonts. which someone will probably take care of soon enough. it might be a big thing to some people, but to the majority, i doubt it is. the ipad can change text colors, background colors, and choose among several font faces. in addition to the look of the page graphic itself (stone tablet, parchment, computer CRT, heck, they could even make it look like an eInk screen!), include beautiful full color graphics and animation (see the new Alice book), animate page turns (some people seem to love it). and the list goes on with respect to what the iPad can display on it's color LCD screen that something like my sony 600 8 level grey scale eInk can't.

the iPad can display everything an eInk screen can right now, and is only missing one feature, working with embedded fonts. I'd say that's a win for the iPad.

This might be a stupid question, but here goes: Do embedded fonts work on text-based PDFs on the iPad? I am considering the iPad as it looks like it might be a good choice of device for marking up PDFs, but I have to say that embedded fonts would be a deal breaker for me, as I am happy reading novels on my Sony 505 and would be purchasing the iPad to primarily to read scanned PDFs and journal articles / textbooks, and texts that I am translating, and most of these PDFs would use "foreign" characters.

[jharker]

It would be nice to keep this conversation on topic instead of discussing the definition of "trolling". With that in mind...

I'm think I'm in a good position to provide input on this topic. I don't own a Sony, but I bought a v1 iLiad way back when, and last year I bought a Kindle DX. I absolutely loved my Kindle and used it every day, mostly for reading public domain fiction (Charles Dickens rocks!). But a few days ago I broke down and got myself an iPad.

What do I think? I enjoyed the Kindle's e-ink screen: the low contrast didn't bother me and I liked the ability to read outdoors. But having said that, I don't actually read outdoors very often and I find that the iPad is perfectly readable 99% of the time. To me, the question of eyestrain is not very significant.

I think the more important question is software and functionality. Generally speaking, the iPad can do most of what my Kindle did: read and annotate books, dictionary lookup, etc. It can also read PDFs. And some iPad apps do support PDF annotation, which the Kindle lacked. So that's a plus. In addition, the web browsing experience (Flash issues aside) is MUCH easier and more satisfying on the iPad than the Kindle.

I was a big proponent of e-ink for a long time, but my opinion now is that the slow refresh rate is really holding it back. It's fine for reading fiction, but in my field (science) most interactions with literature are very dynamic. You want to highlight, annotate, flip quickly back and forth... these are all either difficult or impossible on an e-ink screen. From a reader's perspective, the iPad makes interaction with the text much easier.

I won't go into detailed drawbacks and limitations of the iPad, although there are several. My biggest problem is the difficulty of getting documents onto the device. Also, app sandboxing makes it hard or impossible to access the same documents from multiple apps.

So, am I happy with the iPad? Yes. My fiancee has inherited my Kindle and I now use the iPad exclusively. I think this hardware paradigm has undeniable benefits for readers. The software, though, could still use some improvement.