A number of months ago I realized that I needed to choose an e-book platform and stick with it. It made no sense for me to buy some books through Amazon’s Kindle portal and other books through Apple’s iBooks. I needed to choose one or the other and stick with it so that I was consistent in where my books were and how I could access them.
Ultimately I decided to go with the Kindle application.
My reasons for this were quite simple and clear. First, I already owned a huge number of books that were sitting in my Amazon Kindle account. Second, while iBooks will likely be accessible only through Apple’s cadre of devices for the foreseeable future, Amazon Kindle books can be accessed on a Kindle, through the Kindle iOS app, on a Mac or a PC and, just recently, on Android devices. This “platform agnostic” aspect of the Kindle made it the clear choice for me.
There was, however, one feature that iBooks offers that the Kindle app did not… in landscape iBooks give a two page layout just like a dead tree book. This layout offers a far more comfortable reading experience for me since holding the iPad in landscape for an extended period is far more comfortable and requires half the finger flicks to turn pages. Sadly it was missing from the Kindle app… until tonight.
Yup, the Kindle app just got updated to offer a two-column layout when the iPad is in landscape. Here’s how it looks…
Awesome. I love it and now am even happier that, when choosing an eBook platform, I opted for the one that is platform agnostic.
But does it still only offer full justification of text? (If so, I have to say I’m appalled that they added the landscape mode feature *before* they added ragged-right capability. I mean, c’mon, Amazon software boffins!)
I have to agree with you, Dan. I use the Kindle app for my purchases because most of my purchases were through Amazon. I have some other titles I own that I converted to ePub and I tend to read those in iBooks, but the vast majority of my purchased titles are via Amazon so that’s where I’ve mostly settled too. The thing I really like about what Amazon is doing (other than having the app available on so many platforms) is that they aren’t embarrassed to add a feature that users seem to like from elsewhere. They added page-turning animations and now the 2-page landscape layout. Excellent! The fact that they are listening to customer requests, coupled with the fact that they still have the largest eBook selection definitely makes me continue to be a customer and keep it as my primary eBook source/app. Sorry B&N and Apple and Borders – unless you start boosting your available titles beyond the NYT bestsellers, I’m not likely to switch.
While I am thrilled to pieces that you love the two-column landscape mode, you conveniently neglected to mention that they *removed* the original full-width mode. I absolutely _loathe_ the new two-column layout and cannot fathom why this wasn’t made an _option_ instead of _removing_ existing functionality.