Comments on: Review: Amazon’s Kindle app for iPhone/iPod Touch

By: Mark

Mark — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 16:55:02 +0000

Stanza has been my primary eBook reader for the last year and I’m quite happy with it. But the pull of Amazon’s large and reasonably priced book selection took it’s toll. Amazon’s Kindle app found its way onto my iPod Touch.

My initial impression is that the Kindle app doesn’t give the user the level of control over an ebook’s presentation that Stanza does. Using the Kindle app, it is mildly annoying that one has no choice of font or control over the page margins. Since the only font provided is a serif font (looks like Times New Roman), one has to use larger text to maintain readability.

Using Stanza, my font of choice has settled on Arial, with a point size just large enough to be comfortably readable. Since the Touch has such a small screen, having minimal margins (or none what-so-ever) makes sense. Tuning Amazon’s Kindle app with the settings available yields somewhere between half and a third of the readable text that my preferred settings with Stanza yield.

The difference is stark enough that I tend to pay the extra money to get ebooks that are readable with Stanza. Since most of my book choices available for free, this doesn’t add up to much over a year. However, now that ebooks are my primary medium, I am definitely beginning to buy more of them.

It is my suspicion that a future version of the Kindle app will include a choice of fonts and allow for adjustable margins. Unless Stanza is able to read DRMed ebooks bought through Amazon or the ebook prices at BooksOnBoard or some other provider of Stanza-readable ebooks appear, I’ll likely dump Stanza in favour of the Kindle at that point. This is a shame because the choice of ebook providers that Stanza provides really does appeal to me. However, it is hard to pay much more for a similar reading experience.

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By: SteveL

SteveL — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 06:00:09 +0000

Astroy7–

Why would I use MobipocketCreator to create a mobipocket-format version of the gutenberg text-file when I already acquired the mobipocket-format version available on gutenberg?

By: Astrotoy7

Astrotoy7 — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 03:47:10 +0000

You could try mobipocket creator, which you can get from their official site – create a non DRM mobipocket format book using the gutenberg text file. You can even add cover art and whatever metatdata you need. I havent tried this myself but did read it elsewhere. Worth a shot. Gutenberg is a great resource, and we shouldnt need to fork out anything for public domain classics IMO.

By: SteveL

SteveL — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 03:00:41 +0000

Can anyone tell me how to do get a mobi-format book, which I downloaded from gutenberg.org to my Kindle 2, from the Kindle 2 to my iPod Kindle app. I know I can download the book independently from gutenberg to my iPod, but I’d like Kindle to know about it in order to be able to synch back and forth between the versions on the two devices.

Thanks in advance.

By: Jay

Jay — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:31:47 +0000

I like the application. What worries me is that I can’t back my purchases onto my iMac, or if there is a way I’m unaware of it. I like the highlight features and bookmarking. Wish it had a ‘dictionary/thesarus function attached to it. So far, I would give it a 3 1/2 stars our of 5.

By: Kim

Kim — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 22:19:32 +0000

I’m using the Kindle app, which I just downloaded today. There is a landscape view, there is a choice of a sepia font, and I can turn the pages with a tap. I guess there have been some upgrades since this review was written.

I’m very happy with this app. I can now read my Kindle books in bed in the middle of the night without a reading light!

By: Randolph Lalonde

Randolph Lalonde — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 01:40:52 +0000

Here’s how you use Mobipocket books on your Kindle with DRM: (1)Install Kindle on your iPhone. (2)Get the Kindle PID (it won’t tell you, you have to run a script). (3)Go back to where you obtained your eBooks and get new versions containing DRM for the PID of your iPhone. (4)Run the new PRC files through a script which will make them readable by Kindle. (6)Copy the files across to your iPhone and start reading. Here are the scripts.

http://rapidshare.com/files/215202363/Mobipocket_DRM_Tools.zip

Enjoy!

By: Randolph Lalonde

Randolph Lalonde — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 01:35:04 +0000

I’m very happy to see a decent Kindle reader for the iPhone, mostly because I make a living writing science fiction eBooks and I have a number of faithful readers who are switching from phones that use Mobipocket to iPhones. Thankfully all my books are available on Kindle, so they can load the Kindle reader up and continue being a reader.

I’d like to see a few improvements to the Kindle reader, but from what I’ve seen and heard they have a good start.

Randolph Lalonde
http://www.randolphlalonde.com

By: Uwe Brauer

Uwe Brauer — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:05:45 +0000

The question of reading personal documents I could solve:
officially you can’t, but unofficially you can.

What is missing however seems to be a search function.
One of the crucial advantages of an ebook is the ability of searching text. A reader without this feature seems to me like a car without wheels.

Uwe Brauer