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Is there ANY reason to use iBooks over the Kindle App?

C

chriskzoo

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 25, 2005
368
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I'm struggling to find one other than the free Winnie the Pooh book. The page turning is a gimmick, but the Kindle App can do that as well if you like. I think the only thing iBooks has going for it is the ability to change fonts...

Bigger selection of books, lower prices on many books....am I missing something?
 
iBooks lets you search, but I don't think the kindle app has that feature.
 
Is there any reason to use Safari instead of Firefox on my MacBook? I think Apple wanted their own offering so the feature isn't dependent on a third party. I think from a user perspective, the only reason to use iBooks is if you think the look and interface are nicer, or if you like the book selection more (unlikely for now).
 
gillybean said:
ibooks gives you all the free project guttenberg books - does kindle let you get those?
Click to expand...

Bingo. Kindle charges for those.

And there's no way to sync your own ePub files with Kindle, but you can with iBooks through iTunes.
 
This is one of those fuzzy areas, but I find the iBooks app slightly more enjoyable than the Kindle. I think it's because the iBooks app looks a little bit more like reading a real book. And while the page turning part is gimmicky, I tend to fiddle with the page edges when i read, and I can do that in iBooks.

However, right now the selection on iBooks is horrible. I'll get better, but Amazon has such a lead in this race that it's hard to look at iBooks as a primary source.

However, once the iBooks app comes out for the iPhone, the feature parity between the the two will be a little better
 
Kindle pros: custom background colors (nice for reading at night), highlight and notes ability, huge selection
iBook pros: in-app purchasing, dictionary, book-spread view (landscape with two pages, as one would normally read a book), and font modifications
 
This is totally subjective but iBooks is somehow easier on my eyes.

It took me forever and a lot of forum-spamming to figure out, but you CAN get the typically free gutenberg books for free on Amazon. For example, search for "A Study in Scarlet" (a Sherlock Holmes novel). You should get at least one search result that is $0.00. You can 'buy' that book and it'll sync automagically to your kindle app, no cost. The main difference between Amazon and iBooks/apps like Stanza is that Amazon makes you really work to find the free books, they are not collected anywhere (that I could find) and they have no Gutenberg front-end.
 
Kids got a big kick out of the color pictures in Winnie the Pooh. Is that why Apple is giving it away?
 
Being able to sync my own ePub files with iBooks is a biggie since I have a lot of ebooks I've acquired over the years.
 
For me it's going to come down to price; whichever reader's store sells a particular book for less money, that's the one I'll use for that book. I did the same thing with my iPhone. For purchased books I used the Kindle app, and for free books I used Stanza.
 
Anyone compare the lengths of the free samples in the two? If one gives substantially longer free samples that might be a factor...
 
all iBooks have text to speach, on kindle it's the publishers choice...most of whom don't opt in as their affraid to loose audio book sales.
 
I like iBooks landscape mode with two pages. You have less horizontal panning back and forth with your eyes, but still get around the same amount of content on the screen. Kindle apps landscape mode is useless IMO.

Also, I like the colors and fonts better In iBooks. But so far it makes more sense to buy books from amazon because you can read them on more platforms until Ibooks gets a desktop client.
 
jclardy said:
I like iBooks landscape mode with two pages. You have less horizontal panning back and forth with your eyes, but still get around the same amount of content on the screen. Kindle apps landscape mode is useless
Click to expand...

+1
 
richimages said:
Not sure this is useful for anyone ... but Kindle does allow highlighting, iBook does not.
Click to expand...
iBooks does support hightlighting. It's a feature called "bookmarking", but it's essentially the same thing.
I don't think the Kindle.app supports hightlighting (like the Kindle device does).


"Touch and hold any word to look it up in the built-in dictionary or Wikipedia, or to search for it throughout the book and on the web. Use the Bookmarking feature to highlight text and refer to it later."
Click to expand...
http://www.apple.com/ipad/features/ibooks.html
 
One thing I do like about iBooks, as pointless as it may sound, is that it keeps to what I believe is the actuals page structure of the book, whereas the Kindle uses a "location" designation that I believe corresponds to the line number.

Also not keen with the seeming inability to sync my entire kindle library to my iPad in one go...so far it seems I have to do each book individually if I'm on the iPad app.
 
To the extent there are maps/pictures/images in the books, do both iBooks and Kindle show these? Sorry for the dumb question I don't use Kindle right now and am waiting for my 3g iPad to come in.
 
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