cameron.simpson

Comment Threads

• Charlie Stross commented on Gadget Patrol: iPad
  Chris, I'm skeptical about iBooks because it has the same sync problem as Pages or Apple's other apps -- they're all funnelled through the bloated monstrosity that is iTunes. (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.)...
• Charlie Stross commented on Gadget Patrol: iPad
  Stanza for iPad is indeed out, and a huge improvement over the non-screen optimized version. With the additional fonts on the iPad it's glorious -- much more flexible and customizable than iBooks....
• dfjdejulio commented on Gadget Patrol: iPad
  Oh wow, yeah, the new Stanza is amazing. The thing that impresses me is, remember two of the features I was guessing could keep an alternative to iBooks healthy even in the face of a ubiquitous and improved iBooks? PDF support (like "GoodReader") and enhanced visually-oriented magazine support (like "Comics", their "Comic Book Archive" format). They both made it in, plus something called "DjVu" besides (which is apparently a format optimized for scanned documents). 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...
• Sean Eric Fagan commented on Gadget Patrol: iPad
  iBooks doesn't have the same problem as Pages et al. (Stanza does, however.) 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?...
• dfjdejulio commented on Gadget Patrol: iPad
  Chris, just in case you didn't know, iTunes songs haven't had DRM for a while now. Now they're just standard AAC files with no DRM. I routinely play mine on my Wii and my DSi and on all sorts of other devices. 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...