blog
Using the iPhone as a Reader
August 26th, 2008 by Kate
A while back, I wrote a review of the Amazon Kindle, basically concluding that it was neat, but not something I personally wanted to spend several hundred dollars on. However, I was willing to spend several hundred dollars on a first generation iPhone, and since the release of the fancy new iPhone 3G, my phone has been updated with the ability to do a lot more tricks. I was very excited to learn that I could theoretically use my iPhone as a reader, without having to jailbreak it,therefore voiding my contract and warranty, and running the risk of messing my phone up beyond repair without having the necessary skills to fix it. (For the uninitiated, “jailbreaking” the phone would entail hacking into it and installing applications it was never meant to have, creating something of a Frankenphone.)
I took a virtual trip to the Applications Store, and was pleased to find a free application called eReader. Sweet, I say to myself! This should be just the thing! The application works with hardware I already possess, and all I have to do is pay for the content! I’ll never make a panicked trip to Barnes and Noble, or have to express ship something from Amazon ever again! I’ll be the most literate person in the world, since I’ll have every book ever written in my little hand bag! O, the life problems this solves!
See if my literary hopes and dreams get squashed, below the fold…
To put this to the test, I went to purchase a play I’d been wanting to read. I didn’t have time to purchase through normal, non-technological means, because I’d been hoping to read said play before auditioning for it in a couple of days. So I’ll just go to www.ereader.com, hop into their “plays” section and– Oh, wait, they don’t seem to have a “plays” section. Or “drama” or “theater” or anything like that. Okay, no biggie, I’ll just throw it into their search and– Huh, my search returned the following results: “No items matched your search.” Well, so play scripts aren’t their thing. That’s fine. I need to catch up on my classics anyway. I should probably go ahead and read War and Peace, so that people like Jeff and Marissa think I’m fancy and intelligent. And there’s no way the paperback version would fit in my tiny handbag. Hey, it’s a featured title! Everything’s coming up Kate! I’ll just click on it, and see if they want 99 cents or the full $1.99, and– Wow, it’s on sale. For $22.46. You heard me. Twenty-two American dollars, and forty-six cents. I’m not paying over $20 for War and Peace unless it comes with the complimentary ghost of Tolsty, ready to read it aloud to me while I fold my laundry. So I give eReader two enthusiastic thumbs down.
I have, however, had some good success downloading the books themselves as applications. There are currently about 150 books available for purchase through the iTunes application store, ranging in price from free to about five bucks. The titles are fairly limited now, but the selection is growing. I purchased Jane Austen’s Emma for ninety-nine cents, and I’m pretty pleased with it. I doubt that right now they’d have what you were explicitly looking for, but if you need something to casually read on while on the Metro, I’d recommend giving it a look. The text is comfortable to read, and there’s a handy search feature that will highlight the bits of text you’re looking for. My understanding is that it comes nowhere near the Kindle’s highlighting/note-making feature, but it will do in a pinch.
The gem of all the applications I’ve stumbled across so far has been the “Shakespeare” application. It’s not in the application store’s “Books” section: You’ll have to seek the bard in “Entertainment.” While you won’t have access to the Sonnets and the Minor Epics, you will, free of charge, have all of Shakespeare’s plays hanging out in your phone, taking up minimal space. I really like the interface for this application. It has scrolling action, rather than the “let’s pretend you’re reading a real book by having you ‘flip’ a ‘page’” option that’s so popular with the kids nowadays. You don’t have to worry about that split second of load time between “pages;” you just read through the end of the scene, and then click on the next scene. This application has done a great job of transforming my irritating idle time into something productive and enjoyable. It turns out that that Shakespeare guy was pretty good.
Post Script: So I was whining about my irritating eReader experience to some of the good folks at Beaconfire, and Rahul pointed out that I’m clearly not getting the most out of it. Instead of choosing to go to “eReader sites,” I ought to be choosing to go to “another site!” And then I apparently can get into The Guttenberg Project, or some other decent ebook site. Then I could just read my free War and Peace on my eReader application, rather than having to pay them my hard-earned dollars. This sounds much better, and I thank Rahul for the tip. I still have that bitter eReader taste in my mouth at the moment though, so I’m going to keep on with my paperbacks and eShakespeare until I get up the gumption to give it another try.
In conclusion: the iPhone as a reader = good. The eReader website = bad. And depending on how you go about trying to read books on your iPhone, your experience can fall anywhere on that continuum.
