Petr Šourek I don't know how to start this review, maybe it's just that I like to read a lot, but I don't like to carry books with me that might get damaged or deteriorate. When I bought the HTC, I thought about reading books on it, but at the time I used public transport so sporadically that the idea fell through.
About a year later, I bought an iPhone and found the free Stanza app on iTunes (you can read the review read also on our server). The application got me excited, so since then I read exclusively on my iPhone and in bed. It's not intrusive and works beautifully. Of course, Stanza also has its drawbacks, and one of them is the fact that after adding more than 50 books to the iPhone, iTunes backups become unusable. They last several hours.
I was looking forward to iBooks with great enthusiasm, but as is often the case, our expectations are not always fulfilled. The application surprises us with its nice and elaborate UI, unfortunately it is not quite enough.
After starting, we are greeted by a screen that looks like a small bookcase, on the shelves of which we can find beautiful books. After the first launch, the application will ask us for an iTunes account so that it can keep our bookmarks online so that we can read on devices other than the iPhone and always have an up-to-date status.
This is probably my favorite feature. The second is the option to buy books immediately. After a cursory look at the store, I found out that the books on display are from the Guttenberg project and therefore free, but you won't find many Czech books among them. After browsing for a while, I found RUR by Karel Čapek and immediately downloaded it.
The book looked nice, but somewhat incomplete. The rest of each page was missing even though I used the smallest font. This is where I noticed another problem. On my 3GS, the app has impossible lags when reading, which freezes. Furthermore, I couldn't find the option to lock the landscape orientation, so lag-o-rama occurred every time I jumped, or extended my arms.
In my opinion, the guys from Apple still need to work on it. After my experience with RUR, I tried a few other books, but the problem of not being able to read the rest of the page did not occur, so I could continue reading just fine. Probably the RUR book is just badly formatted. Perhaps one more problem has arisen. When rotating from landscape to portrait and vice versa, the book always moved several pages forward for me, which is also not the right thing to do.
The verdict is that the app is pretty easy to use and I'll keep an eye out for new versions, but until they catch on I'll stick with a combination of Stanza and Caliber.
Jáblíčkář about the iPad version: We tried the iBooks application in the iPad version as well, and here it must be said that the iBooks application has no competition on the iPad. There are no delays here, the position can be locked to the landscape position (thanks to the position locking button) and you will welcome the news of iBooks version 1.1 such as adding notes or bookmarking.
The support for PDF files was also pleasing, although other readers work faster with PDF files, so I'm not entirely sure if iBooks is the best for reading PDF files. But for now, I'm definitely sticking with this app.
And while the UI isn't everything, the flipping animation in iBooks is just perfect, and this animation alone makes me enjoy reading more on the iPad. :)
So I don't know if there is something wrong with my iPhone, but iBooks is completely unusable for me. iPhone freezes for 3-5 seconds every time you turn a page. There's no point in trying to rotate the image to landscape, I can just restart the iPhone.
Now the only advantage iBooks has over Stanze is syncing. Stanza also has a page-turning animation, although it's true that the ibooks one is nicer, but that's not something that would make me read more or less.
But ibooks is incapable of any formatting and appearance modification. Night mode is missing the most (Somehow I don't understand why they add sepia, but not black and white. Either they are completely ignorant, or they paralyze us with the claim: I wasn't the first, but our night mode is the most breathtaking of all... just disgusting...). Also, in ibooks, the margins are fixed, so if you enlarge the font, you have three words on a line and huge spaces.
Apple guys would have to do a lot of work to make ibooks equal to Stanza or other readers.
At the time I wrote the review, I didn't remember one thing. If you can manually synchronize music, movies, etc. So, if you buy a book for iPhone, then it is NOT possible to drag it to itunes on Mac :(
I was very pleased with iBooks, but Czech books are not so well represented yet, and reading books in PDF is not the right thing to do. I use Stanza, but I have a question, and that is whether it is possible that the books that were in Palmknihy about a year and a half ago are missing, e.g. Jules Verne's books, etc... I would like to download them, but they are nowhere, can anyone help? Thank you :-)
I've also noticed a significant decrease in books on palmknihy.cz... and that's pretty cool, I liked to read in my room and now palmknihy.cz is unusable as a resource.
Does anyone have a similar experience?
The way I think about it is that I download ebooks and put them in Caliber, I have sync and in Stanza, so it's cool ;) Palm books, when I looked, most of the things I wanted or have at home in the library have "Index" and some things weren't even there, so palm books .cz/stanza unusable for me ;(
Where can I find the Caliber? I couldn't find it in the AppStore, so it will probably be via PC, right? :D
My experience with the RUR book is also negative. the work was absolutely unreadable. However, after downloading other titles in English, the iBooks application appeared to me to be perfect. Whatever I tried, I also handled a PDF document (port from .docx) just fine and quickly. In addition, there is a huge novelty for the entire phone, namely the fact that you can search for text in PDF documents. The iBooks application immediately displays the results and, after clicking on one of the results, directs you to the exact place in the document. So it has a perfect use, e.g. for quickly orienting yourself in large trucks to school :)
I was very curious about iBooks, but then it's a disappointment for me until they fix the flies. I'm a classic reader, that is. that I don't like to read electronic books, but I prefer normal ones :), but there are situations when a person does not have a physical book with him and feels like reading. Then I have a stanza.
RUR is unusable (inaudible) even on the iPad. The fault will be in the book, not the app.
For me, iBooks is also a disappointment. I have the same problems as others. The application is slow, it does not have a night mode, it has a lot of free space, where there should still be text, and it is not possible to lock the landscape switch. I'm staying with Stanzi for now. Someone here mentioned bad sync with Stanzi. I can't complain about this after the update. Now I just drag and drop the selected book into iTunes and it instantly plays to my iPhone and vice versa. I have about 100 books stored on my phone and the backups are fine. It's ready in 5 minutes. I have 8GB 3g and I use 6GB. The problem will probably be elsewhere. I switched to iOS4 with a full restore without restoring from a backup. Everything is running pretty decent now.
You can also block the rotation of the display on the iPhone. Press the home button twice quickly, multitasking will appear, go all the way to the left. The ipod control will appear and the screen scrolling lock will appear on the far left.
Yes, it works... except for the fact that when I'm in landscape and I rotate the phone to portrait, it rotates and locks in portrait ;( so unusable ;(
I have 3g. This is not there…
Because on 3g there is no multitasking by default in ios4 :-)
I recommend the combination of Stanza + Caliber (+calibre2opds) + Dropbox ;-) so you can always have your library available, and you don't need to have a full library of (un)read books ;-)
What is Caliber?
after installing the new version of ibooks on ipad it keeps crashing, does anyone have experience with this? I tried reinstalling and it didn't help