Waiting for an iPad ebook reader
I've been reading eBooks for years, ever since I had a Handspring Visor in 2000 and got my books from Peanut Press and Fictionwise.com. Peanut Press became eReader.com, and I read their books on my Pocket PC when I got that, I went through two Pocket PCs, in 2005 I got a Dell Axim X50v (still sitting on my desk), and I read many eBooks on that too. Then I got an iPhone. When apps became available it took a while, several months I think, before eReader got their act together to make an iPhone app, so in 2008 I could stop using my Pocket PC. It was great! I read even more books, really long books too, and things were good. Stanza came out which was a better app, and eBooks seemed to be coming into their own. Now *everybody* is doing eBooks. Amazon Kindle, Apple's iBooks, Barns and Noble's Nook, and the venerable eReader still exists. Things started to happen:
- Amazon purchased Stanza.
- Fictionwise purchased eReader.
- Barnes and Noble purchased Fictionwise.
- The iPad came out, and Apple started iBooks.
We have not announced a date for native support of iPad at this time. Look for future announcements in our newsletters.Calm down people! It took a while for eReader to get their act together to get their reader on the iPhone. I reckon it will take time for Barnes and Noble/Fictionwise/eReader to get their act together to get an eReader for the iPad. I can be patient.
2 comments:
It actually DIDN'T take them time to "get their act together" -- the iPhone eReader app was available on the first day 3rd-party apps were available. (The day before, actually, if you did a direct name search as I did.)
That's why I'M worried -- from Palm, etc. to iPhone was a fairly good-sized job. From iPhone to iPad is a relatively small job. That they haven't done it yet, when the SDK's been available since 1/27, is NOT a good sign.
That's for the correction, I seem to remember waiting for the eReader, maybe I was just waiting for the update that allowed 3rd party apps.
I agree that I don't understand the delay - I am an iPhone app developer in my spare time, and I managed to scale my free app to iPad size over a few weekends! I hope the delay is because they want to add fancy graphics with page turning and all that jazz.
I can't quite believe that B&N would simply let these businesses die. I reckon that their full screen reader will support Fictionwise and eReader too. I really hope so as I have a lot of books in that format now!
I would write my own reader, except I don't have the code for the horrible DRM, nor do I have the time.
In any case, Fictionwise have changed their reponse to be "just wait and see" which is a little more comforting than their previous "no plans" response.
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