iBooks 1.1 out for iPhone and iPad

[astrodad]

athlonkmf, your links are broken.

I was really looking forward to a true night reading mode with a dark background and white or red letters. It's the only reason I haven't switched over to iBooks, despite it's superior ePub rendering qualities (as compared to Stanza, readMe, etc.). That, and the fact that I cannot wirelessly sync my books from calibre like Stanza provides. And for some reason, and maybe I'm doing something wrong, ePubs downloaded from MR in Safari don't give me the option to open in iBooks. That seems odd to me.

[drofgnal]

Generally nice application and I like it. It needs some work. Does anyone else find the page turns by tapping to be a little slow. The Kindle app zooms through page turns, ibooks seems to have problems. Page turns seem to hesitate and are slow compared to the kindle app.

[foghat]

Originally Posted by drofgnal

Generally nice application and I like it. It needs some work. Does anyone else find the page turns by tapping to be a little slow. The Kindle app zooms through page turns, ibooks seems to have problems. Page turns seem to hesitate and are slow compared to the kindle app.

I guess there is a bit of hesitation, but I don't mind it. What I think is a little off is once the page does turn, it turns a little too fast.

Overall I agree a pretty solid first (for iphone) effort. Just give me:
1. the ability to set all 4 margins (and allow for the book title to be replaced by actual text)
2. Collections management
3. better sorting options on Bookshelf view.
4. The letter index on all list views - really can't believe this isn't there - Apple is usually pretty good about including that.
5. A way to set the orientation to lock for ibooks only.
6. Some sort of latest reads list.

I am coming from stanza. Stanza does some things better, ibooks does some things better. Think I will give ibooks an honest go for the time being.

[athlonkmf]

Originally Posted by jplumey

athlonkmf, your links are broken.

Just fixed them

I was really looking forward to a true night reading mode with a dark background and white or red letters.

Ehm... that's already a builtin feature since like forever. You can set "white on black"-mode in the settings (General->accessibility).
If you set the Triple-click shortcut up for that mode, you can quickly change mode. When reading a black&white text (in any app, incl browser) you can then just tripleclick "home", and the whole screen turns negative. Black=white, white=black.

For iBook, if you're using sepia, it'll turn white on dark blue.

[drofgnal]

i also get a lot of errors loading books like "..unable to load as the required resource wasn't available".

All in all I'll stick to the kindle app I think until a more stable version is out. I do like the Project Guttenberg public domain books from ibooks better than the same public domain book from the kindle store, so I hope they come out with another version soon.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by drofgnal

i also get a lot of errors loading books like "..unable to load as the required resource wasn't available".

All in all I'll stick to the kindle app I think until a more stable version is out. I do like the Project Guttenberg public domain books from ibooks better than the same public domain book from the kindle store, so I hope they come out with another version soon.

If out of copyright classics interest you, you really should take a look at the "hand crafted" versions you can download free here at MR. Generally speaking, they are better formatted than any of the free commercial versions.

[bookfanmd]

Has anyone found a way to lock iBooks in landscape, 2 page view? It doesn't make sense that there isn't but I just can't find it. I like to read in bed and if I tilt the iPad it goes to portrait mode.

Thanks.

[kjk]

Originally Posted by bookfanmd

Has anyone found a way to lock iBooks in landscape, 2 page view? It doesn't make sense that there isn't but I just can't find it. I like to read in bed and if I tilt the iPad it goes to portrait mode.

Thanks.

The orientation lock above the hardware volume keys?

[bookfanmd]

I'll try that. I never even noticed that button. Thanks.!!

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by bookfanmd

I'll try that. I never even noticed that button. Thanks.!!

I don't mean to be rude, but I'd seriously suggest downloading the iPad User Guide from the iBookstore (it's free) and reading at least the introductory stuff in it. You'll probably find all sorts of things that aren't obvious - I know I did.

[kjk]

Originally Posted by bookfanmd

I'll try that. I never even noticed that button. Thanks.!!

Always new stuff to discover!
What I find jarring it that the volume keys on the iPad are on the opposite side from the iPhone...that and the orientation key on the iPad is a "mute" button on the iPhone.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by joeru

This is looking pretty good on the iPad. Anyone try the sync feature?
- Joe

Yes, the syncing does work. It even syncs your bookmarks/highlights.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by cmdahler

The biggest problem I see so far is just the bare-bones basic handling of PDFs. iBooks will display the PDF and give you page thumbnails and that's about it. As far as I can tell, there's no way, for example, to access the TOC in the PDF. Goodreader has iBooks beat by a huge margin and still remains my reader of choice for PDFs.

I'll give another for Goodreader. It's gotten a lot nicer with the new update.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by athlonkmf

Yup works great. Of course, both the iPad and iPhone's iBooks needs to be bought from the same account. And you need to have connection.

Reading a book on the ipad and continuing on the iPhone and vice versa is going to be great.

They just have to be linked to the same account. I tried it with a book that I put on the iPad and iPhone and it did sync just fine. One thing I would love to see in iBooks is a switch to turn off 3G and wifi without having to open iBooks, sync the book, close iBooks, go to settings, turn off 3G and/or wifi and then have to back out of setting to then have to go back to iBooks.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Beanski

Actually, iBooks syncs between my iPad and iPhone for all books!! - I've never bought a book through the Apple bookstore, but I can close a (de-drm'd epub) book I've added through iTunes on the iPad, and open it on the same page on the iPhone (a 3G)

This is really good news - and one up on Amazon!! In fact, it may have convinced me to upgrade to the next iphone - was looking at moving to Android

(Only tried epub though, don't know about anything else)

You have an iPad. Why would you want a phone that was Android based instead of an iPhone?