Apple iPad Showdown: Battle of the eReader Apps
Apple’s iPad has arguably become the ultimate eBook reading platform, with several reader apps and stores that are now supported on the device. Here’s the lowdown so you can make the best choices in which eBook app software to use on your iPad.
Since the iPad’s introduction earlier this year, it has quickly become one of the most popular platforms for reading eBooks, simply due to the variety of content providers which have provided applications for the device.
However, the average iPad user may not be aware of features or limitations in the various e-Reader apps available on the App Store, so I’m going to try to boil this down so that you can make the appropriate choices which best fit your reading lifestyle.
iBooks
By virtue of being Apple’s preferred book-reading platform, iBooks has quickly become one of the most popular e-book reading applications for iOS. As of version 4 of iOS, iBooks will run native on the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, giving it some of the largest consumer reach of any e-book reading platform available.While there is no doubting iBooks’ success in terms of its widespread use, of all the reader applications we’ve looked at, it is actually the least functional. Apple designed iBooks to behave and act like a real book, and focused more on the aesthetics and UI than actual App functionality with the initial release.
One of the main benefits of iBooks is that unlike the two other major e-Book reading applications, Kindle for iPad and Barnes & Noble e-Reader, iBooks supports syncing of DRM-free EPUB and PDF content directly to the iPad thru iTunes. This is an excellent feature, but essentially locks the user down to using iTunes as the primary data transfer mechanism and thus requires a host PC or Macintosh in order to maintain the library.
Additionally, EPUB and PDF content synced into iBooks’ library is not accessible by other e-Reader applications. Generally speaking, every e-Reader app for iPad maintains its own separate database, and are not compatible with each other.
Unfortunately, iBooks doesn’t scale very well as the size of your EPUB library increases. While iBooks is perfectly fine for a few dozen or perhaps a hundred or so books purchased from the iBooks Store or synced into iTunes, it is extremely unwieldy once you approach 300+ titles loaded into the database.
In casual testing we uploaded over 1000 full-length EPUB novels to iTunes which we synced to the iPad. We encountered a number of connectivity/timeout issues with the iBooks sync on Windows, plus we discovered that iBooks performs badly when browsing in “Bookshelf” mode when many titles have been loaded into the application.
We found that the less aesthetically-pleasing “list” mode actually works better for browsing a large content library, but as the iPad only has 256MB of RAM, caching that many titles into the database still causes the app to perform very slowly, so I wouldn’t recommend using iBooks for storing your entire personal library in EPUB format.
The aesthetic focus of iBooks is also in my opinion one of its most serious weaknesses — much time has been spent by Apple’s developers on how the app looks in terms of eye-candy and very little time was spent on how well the application works for actual text reading.
One glaring omission is the lack of color themes, especially a white-on-black inverted text motif. To read text inverted on iBooks, you actually have to go into the iPad Settings applet for Accessibility and choose “White on Black”, which changes the color scheme of the entire device globally.
[Update 6/21: Apple has added a sepia tone color theme, the ability to full justify and an additional Font, Georgia, to the latest version available in the App Store]
Additionally, there is no way to set iBooks to maximize the most use of screen real estate and adjust margins, or to remove the pagination graphic which uses up about a half a centimeter wide of screen space on the right hand side and about a quarter of a centimeter on the top and bottom of the reading area.
It doesn’t sound like a lot of wasted space, but when you compare it to the other reader apps we looked it plus the lack of the ability to adjust the margins and have a simple “plain paper” look when reading, it is.
By far iBooks’ best asset is the iBooks Store, which has a familiar interface similar to the App Store. It’s very easy to search for content and you can get free reading samples for just about every book in the store before you decide to purchase.
Kindle for iPad
The Kindle application is something of the red-headed stepchild for eBook reading. For Apple and the iPad platform, it remains something of a necessity, this despite Apple’s desire to control as much content as possible, as Amazon still has the widest array of paid ebook content in existence, with well over 600,000 titles in inventory.However, from a feature perspective, the Kindle software is pretty weak when compared to its hardware counterpart — you can’t import other file formats into it (such as PDFs or .MOBI files) and it only works with titles you’ve purchased in the Kindle store.
Obviously, if you’ve made a substantial investment in Kindle content in the past, you’ve got access to your entire paid library with this app. Over the years I’ve evaluated several Kindles and purchased content in the store, and all my books appeared in the application instantly, this despite not owning an actual Kindle.
While it does make better use of screen estate than iBooks does, you can’t adjust the margins. Unlike iBooks, you also cannot switch the screen font — while the software does have the ability to use different system fonts, they are pre-set by the publisher.
Kindle for iPad has six different font sizes that you can choose from and three different color schemes, including inverted white on black, which is nice to be able to switch quickly to during the evening.
While Kindle for iPad has a huge amount of material you can buy in the Kindle store, the actual in-app book purchasing experience is simply a Safari browser session to Amazon.com. I really think Amazon can do a lot better than this, as many iPad users will want a fully native store browsing experience like in iBooks.
Barnes & Noble eReader
Of all the paid content readers, by far the best one in existence is probably the Barnes & Noble eReader application.About the only negative thing I can say about it is that like Kindle for iPad, the application is limited to content purchased on the B&N website, and uses the same Safari web interface for purchasing.
Other than that flaw, I love this app — the reading experience is far superior to that of the Kindle application, as it has five customizable themes for different colors of text and background and has the best reading fonts I’ve seen in any of the apps I looked at, especially when viewed in the “Earl Grey” theme that almost has me convinced I’m looking at e-Ink and not an LCD.
Margins can be adjusted directly from page view to make maximum use of the screen if you’d like. The content browsing interface is also much more elegant than that of iBooks or Kindle for iPad.
The only thing that would make the B&N application perfect is that if you had the ability to import your own EPUB content, which unlike their Nook reader device you can’t do yet.
Other than that, I would say that if you are shopping around for e-books to read and have to choose between iBooks, Kindle and B&N, and when B&N comes in around the same price per title, then definitely use the B&N reader.
Kobo Reader / Borders eBooks
Kobo Reader for iPad is something of a dark horse when compared to the three major paid content eReader apps, but it’s extremely polished and very well-designed.Kobo’s main benefit is that it supports many different computing and smartphone platforms, so you can have all of your content available with you wherever you go. Like Kindle and B&N, your content is stored in Kobobooks.com’s cloud, so it doesn’t matter if you are using Kobo for iPad, iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Palm, PC or Mac.
Kobo also produces its own brand of e-Ink reader, which you can purchase from their web site. It looks like it has some very compelling features, which includes the ability to bluetooth sync Kobo books from your smartphone device.
The Kobo reader application is one of the nicest looking on the iPad platform, although it isn’t nearly as feature rich as B&N’s or Stanza from a pure reading perspective. However, the text display is very nice, and you have four scalable fonts to choose from plus a White-on-Black “Night Reading” mode.
Margin adjustment is not supported, but otherwise this is an excellent application, and has a vastly superior book purchasing experience than either Kindle or B&N’s iPad apps, as it it completely integrated with the application, like iBooks.
We found that pricing on major bestsellers was comparable with the other three major paid content apps, so Kobo should be a good choice if you’re the type that wants to read paid content on multiple devices.
[Update 6/21: Borders Books is now using a rebranded version of Kobo as their iPad app with a red motif, otherwise it appears nearly identical in function and in titles offered.]
Ibis Reader
Ibis Reader is a cool application, but it isn’t actually an “App” which you can get on the App Store at all.Ibis Reader is written in HTML5, and is a combination of a web-based service and a locally cached web application running on the iPad’s mobile Safari browser which allows you to read DRM-free EPUB files that you can upload to the ibisreader.com web site, or connect to an OPDS-formatted book repository anywhere on the web, including ones you can create yourself.
Since Ibis Reader is written in HTML5, it also works on iPhone/iPod Touch and Android devices, and of course standard desktop web browsers for Windows, Mac and Linux such as IE 8, Safari, Chrome and Firefox.
Eventually, it should also function on RIM BlackBerry devices once models using the latest Webkit-based browser engine are released.
By default, Ibisreader.com allows you to connect to Feedbooks, the Internet Book Archive, Smashwords and the Pragmatic Bookshelf. But perhaps the coolest aspect is creating your own OPDS repositories, which you can host on free Cloud storage services such as Dropbox.
If you have a very large EPUB collection, this actually is a pretty cool solution, especially if you want to share content with a group of people with different types of devices.
[Update, 6/23/2010] Compared to the other reader apps on this list, the reading features within Ibis Reader are pretty spartan, but the application is maturing quickly. Font size adjustment is supported, and as of the iOS 4 launch, all of the “System” fonts supported on the iPad and iPhone in Mobile Safari can be selected for viewing text, 19 total.
As of this writing, you can’t adjust the margins or change to white on black without going into the iPad Accessibilty settings, as with iBooks. However, the interface is very clean and simple to use, and the reading experience is actually pretty good when compared to the native apps.
Stanza
Of all the applications listed here, Stanza is actually a very mature e-reader app, this despite only very recently being made iPad-native with version 3, in early June.Originally launched as Lexcycle Stanza, it was one of the very first applications for iPhone and was listed as Apple’s favorite free application in their “App Store Turns 1″ list of favorite apps in 2008.
In February 2009, Lexcycle was purchased by Amazon.com, and many thought that the technology would be used in a future version of the Kindle for iOS, but so far, the Stanza application and its development remains separate.
Stanza is by far the most sophisticated e-Reader application for iPad, as it supports not only the open EPUB format but also the legacy Mobipocket, PalmDoc (DOC), Microsoft LIT formats as well as HTML, PDF, Microsoft Word and Rich Text Format (RTF). This built-in compatibility eliminates the need for book conversion to EPUB with applications such as Calibre.
Like iBooks, Stanza can be synced with iTunes, but it also has the capability like Ibis Reader to connect to OPDF repositories as well as Calibre Content Servers. This makes Stanza an excellent solution for storing your entire content library, as you can access it via clouded storage (such as thru Dropbox) and only locally store the books that you want to carry around at any time.
In addition to its connectivity features, Stanza has access to a wide variety of free book feeds, such as Feedbooks, Random House, Harlequin, Project Gutenberg, Munseys, BookGlutton, Mutopia and PanMacmillan. Additionally, it has the ability to in-app purchase books from BooksOnBoard, Fictionwise, O’Reilly, All Romance and Smashwords.
Stanza also has the widest array of text and readability configuration options of any e-Reader app on this list. It has a wide array of font styles and color themes, and many options for text layout.
Stanza has an integrated dictionary and an instantaneous “Night Theme” white-on-black color scheme inversion mode that can be accessed directly from the control bar. It even has the ability to send a Twitter or FaceBook message of what book you’re reading and how far you’ve gotten though it.
If you have lots of content that you’ve collected over the years, Stanza is definitely a must-have app. There’s absolutely no downside, it’s free to use and does more than any e-book reader app on this list.
vBookz
VBookz is the odd-man-out of the e-Reader group, as it isn’t really an e-book reader per se, it’s primarily an interesting text to speech application.Unlike the other applications on this list, which are all free, vBookz is a paid application which costs $2.99.
Like iBooks, vBookz features a “Bookshelf” UI and also has a in-app “Bookstore” in which you can search and download over 30,000 titles for free from Project Gutenberg.
This application is primarily targeted towards those who enjoy Audible.com books or books on tape, and as the content is public domain, you can’t listen to bestsellers or your own EPUB or text content yet. However, the application is certainly enjoyable, aesthetically pleasing and well-done.
However, I will note that I’ve encountered a number of stability issues with the app as it is highly demanding of the iPad hardware, particularly as it uses high-definition voice “fonts” and I’ve seen it crash if I try to page forward too fast.
Still, vBookz is an extremely interesting and exploitative iPad application, and one which may be good for getting children interested in classic literature and also a useful app for the visually impaired.
Have I missed any aspect of any of these applications or forgotten another major e-Reader app for iPad? Talk Back and Let Me Know.
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