Just FYI. I have a bajillion Webscription books installed on mine.
]]>Thanks for the idiosyncratic review --- I'd much rather an idiosyncratic review than the pro forma stuff that most everyone else has!
]]>Greg, tablets running windows have been around for years. (There's one sitting in the corner of my office, gathering dust; a Viliv S5. I know whereof I speak.)
Windows is a desktop OS; even leaving aside matters of personal preference, and freely admitting that Win7 is a big improvement over its predecessors, it's not designed from the ground up for multi-touch use: it's designed for a model of interaction based around a mouse, and a pointer.
This is "catching up" for values of "cheaper stagecoach can go further, faster than new-fangled Benz automobile if you add another pair of horses!"
]]>128Mb RAM (vs. 256Mb on the iPad), 600MHz processor (vs. 1GHz), 480x800 pixel TFT display (vs. 768x1024 LED-backlit IPS display), 802.11b/g (no 802.11n), 2Gb/4Gb FLASH plus an SD slot that maxes out at 32Gb, (vs. 16/32/64Gb). No 3G or GPS. No word on the battery life. Oh, and it runs Cupcake (Android 1.5) -- which is already out of date.
But hey! Webcam!
As I've said before, if I want to drive a ten year old Ford pick-up truck I'll buy a ten year old Ford pick-up truck. But don't try to convince me it's as good as a high-end BMW.
]]>What I am interested by is the fact that it's possible to advance a new paradigm for personal computing at all in an industry that most of us have, with some justification, considered to be entering a mature phase (i.e. one typified by slow incremental improvements and overall stasis -- think of airliners, for example).
Whether Apple ends up retaining its initial lead in the new class of computing devices they've launched is anybody's guess, but I wouldn't bet against them -- Jobs has been here before twice (Apple II and then Macintosh) and "third time right" is a fairly solid rule.
(Both previous times Apple came out with a strong initial lead, only to see it eroded. Now they've had a third of a century to learn those lessons.)
]]>The problem is that the papers I need to read and review are typically (for outdated paper reasons) typeset in two columns and contain a lot of formulas (typically typeset by Latex).
My impression is that "reflow + formulas + two-column = train wreck."
Apple's Preview actually handles these documents brilliantly but that's a Mac program and not, AFAICT, available on the iPad.
]]>If we take for granted that iBooks will appear across the whole family of devices, and we guess that the problems of ease of import of epub files into iBooks will be solved (for example by making iBooks a "handler" for epub file types, so that both email attachments and plain web downloads from within Safari work), then I'm not sure to what degree further work on Stanza is justifiable.
(But I have no particularly special inside knowledge. It's just an educated guess.)
Once you've got a ubiquitous and adequate iBooks app that can open DRM-free EPUB files, the only major reasons I can see for other ebook readers is to enable participation in other closed ebook ecosystems or the use of dramatically different data formats, which is why I expect that the Kindle and B&N (Nook) apps will be kept up to date (as well as PDF readers like "GoodReader" and "guided visual view magazine apps" like the excellent comiXology "Comics" reader).
The main thing I want on that front is a reader that supports Adobe's DRM, since that's what my local public library uses for e-lending. If they add that to Stanza, cool, but if not... I'm not sure why we should keep using it.
]]>http://www.teleread.com/2010/06/03/stanaz-e-reader-optimized-for-the-ipad/
]]>(Also, I use Calibre as an ebook manager, and iBooks doesn't want to know -- even though there's pretty much an existing standard for network sync between ebook clients and bookshelf software. The other non-proprietary iPad/iPhone ebook readers can cope; the ones that can't are iBooks, Kindle, and possibly the B&N Nook reader -- I can't test the latter as it's not available in the UK.)
]]>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_Book_Archive_file
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DjVu
It's nice for PDFs. I haven't tried it with the other formats (besides PDF and EPUB) yet. But, excellent, they've taken steps to ensure that there's a point to the app even if iBooks gets superior syncing and integration. It's already a "handler" for epub format files, so I've been able to go to webscriptions.net and gutenberg and so on and just tap on epub files to have them open in Stanza. Awesome.
(Of course, this puts me in the awkward situation that I've got "Accelerando" loaded up in Stanza and "The Atrocity Archives" (with DRM) loaded up in iBooks...)
]]>You have to import the books into iTunes; that's easy, far easier than adding files to an application. After that, it takes care of syncing automatically, just as it does for music and video. Since it doesn't let you make changes to the books, you don't have to worry about copying them back off. (For better or worse.) It won't automatically pick up changes or new versions, however, since it appears to copy the books to the iTunes location; perhaps that's what you meant?
]]>The movies do still have DRM, yeah, and it's a pain. Music videos too, I think, and audiobooks.
Interestingly, if you buy a free public domain EPUB via iBooks, like the ones from Gutenberg... those do not have DRM. I've been able to load them into other readers. Now, some of the free stuff like the iPad manual still has DRM on it. But the Gutenberg stuff does not!
I think they forbid you from opting out of DRM on books you sell through them for actual money. It'd be nice if it were otherwise, so authors/publishers who want to permit DRM-free book sales could do so. I pay for DRM-free EPUB files all the time (just bought "The Mall of Cthulhu" from Baen that way).
(I've been investigating how to get stuff into the iBooks store because I'm thinking of trying to put the manuals for any software I write in there. Still pondering options.)
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