In case you missed Giz Explains the other day – which lays out the entire ebook format and DRM landscape – the iPad will support DRM-free ePub books, in case you’ve got some on your Sony Reader or B&N Nook. If you’ve got a Kindle on the other hand, you’re SOL, since it uses its very own ebook format. [Apple]
Sachin
Sunday, March 14, 2010 at 1:54 AMThis seems to be very useful and one of a kind features on iPad…great..
Roger
Sunday, March 14, 2010 at 2:23 PMKindle users are NOT “SOL.” Amazon has a Kindle app for the iPhone/iPod, which I imagine will run on the iPad, just like Barnes & Noble’s app will. Essentially, the iPad will be able to display any of the major e-book formats that are already out. Even if you have a Kindle, a Nook, AND a Sony reader, you’ll more than likely be able to transfer EVERYTHING to your iPad.
What I don’t like about the iPad is that it’s not e-ink. Yes, it has color; yes it does a bunch of other stuff; but I can already do that stuff on my iPhone, and I don’t care about color if I have to read on a screen that’s going to damage my eyes. Fact is, the iPad is not a reading device. It’s a multimedia device that has great support for e-book standards.
It just doesn’t have the right screen for it, BECAUSE it is meant for other things as well. Just not my cup of tea, right now. My iPhone and MacBook Pro are working just fine for me, and so are my hardcover/paperback books. I’m waiting for something bigger to happen in the e-books world (a happy medium between the Kindle, Nook, and iPad features would be great) before I take that plunge. LOL.
Fred
Thursday, March 25, 2010 at 2:43 PMThere isn’t going to *BE* something bigger to happen in the e-book world, sorry to say. If it were, Amazon or Sony or B&N would have done it and blown away the competition. The fact of the matter is, Apple is coming out with a device that is a complete paradigm shift in the same way that the iPhone changed the landscape of cellphones. Cellphone makers are STILL scrambling to catch up even today to what the iPhone did three years ago! MP3 players? Nothing compares to what the iPod does. The same will go for the iPad. How do you think that your computer screen won’t damage your eyes, your iPhone won’t damage your eyes but somehow the iPad will? It’s all propaganda by the e-ink reader companies and people who are anti-Apple, and I don’t buy it. I use a computer for 9 hours a day at work, then come home and stare at either a computer screen and/or a tv and my eyes are fine. Why would adding an iPad to that suddenly be the one that causes eye problems??