iPad is supercool
in [Mac Systems]
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From: JF Mezei on 28 Jan 2010 18:53 Michelle Steiner wrote: > Personally, I prefer paper books to e-books, and especially since I didn't > see any SF or Fantasy publishers on the list of publishers that Apple > showed. I think this will be a big ergonomic test of tablet vs book. The IPad is light enough to hold (a laptop is way too heavy). And compared to a book, once you have it opened at a page, you don't need to hold the IpAd open like you do for a book. Whether the lighted background (as opposed to paper which reflects light) is good for reading so much text, I don't know. But the ability to resize the text is great. Can't do that with a paper book ! But the ipAD won't replace coffe table books with high quality images on glossy paper.
From: Tim McNamara on 28 Jan 2010 19:11 In article <280120100531592509%rag(a)nospam.techline.com>, "Mr. Strat" <rag(a)nospam.techline.com> wrote: > In article <4b6138a3$0$29162$e4fe514c(a)dreader22.news.xs4all.nl>, Cat > <0kevi(a)accessforall.invalid> wrote: > > > Okay, there is criticism and discussion about details, but nobody > > actually held one in their hands. Same as with the first iPod or > > iPhone. What is it for? What is an MP3? Where are the buttons? Now > > everybody uses those devices without thinking. > > > > The iPad looks very simple (to use) and you can do (almost) > > anything with it. Before long everybody will use one thinking how > > they could live without it. Moreover, like any Apple device it will > > evolve, becoming thinner, longer battery life, becoming lighter, > > newer technologies etc. > > > > Supercool. I'm sold...can't wait to get my HANDS on one... SK. > > No doubt that it's cool...I just can't figure out how useful it would > be for me personally. And the cool factor isn't enough for some of us. However, if I was looking at an ebook reader type thing this would be top of the list- competitive price and better specs than the Kindle and its ilk. And if I can find some useful reasons I may just snag one. I'm not convinced I need the 3G aspect, WiFi is probable enough for my needs. What I want is something I can use to read digitized lead sheets (music) so that I don't have to carry hundreds of pages of charts, but the readable area of the screen really needs to be 8.5 x 11 or A4 sized and this far tablet-like has that- since they are all designed for hand-held text reading that's no surprise. I need to be able to read it clearly at 3 feet away on a music stand. -- "I wear the cheese, it does not wear me."
From: BreadWithSpam on 28 Jan 2010 19:18 Lloyd Parsons <lloydparsons(a)mac.com> writes: > In article <michelle-B825A5.10374828012010(a)news.eternal-september.org>, > Michelle Steiner <michelle(a)michelle.org> wrote: > > Personally, I prefer paper books to e-books, and especially since I didn't > > see any SF or Fantasy publishers on the list of publishers that Apple > > showed. > There are a few ebook reader apps already available for the iPhone/Touch > and they are free. Try Stanza by LexCycle: <http://www.lexcycle.com/> It has built-in access to several online repositories of books, both free and not-free. And, of course, we have yet to hear about any plans on Amazon's part (or Apple's, for that matter) with respect to the existing Kindle app for the iPhone. I've used it to buy and read, well, one book. It really wasn't bad at all. Had I not already gotten the rest of the series in question in paperback, I'd likely have bought the rest of them for Kindle and read them on my iPhone, too. If they scale up the Kindle app nicely for the iPad, and Apple doesn't block them from doing so (which, I suppose, they might want to do in order to get folks to buy book from their own bookstore. which would really suck), there'd be nothing stopping you from having access to a vast vast library of books out there -- all the existing EPUB stuff, anything you can get a PDF of (PDFs will be way more useful on the iPad than they are on the iPhone - I'm really looking forward to that), as well as the entire inventory of the Kindle store. The more I look at the possibilities, the more that it looks like there's an iPad in my future. -- Plain Bread alone for e-mail, thanks. The rest gets trashed. Are you posting responses that are easy for others to follow? http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/2000/06/14/quoting
From: Jim Gibson on 28 Jan 2010 20:48 In article <michelle-881A79.18244228012010(a)nothing.attdns.com>, Michelle Steiner <michelle(a)michelle.org> wrote: > I sometimes like to refer back to something earlier in the book; I'll > remember that it was on a right page, about two thirds of the way down, so > I'll flip the pages with my thumb, looking for the passage I'm searching > for. > > Can I do that with an iPad, Kindle, Nook, or any other book reader, for > that matter? Not with a Kindle. Turning pages takes about 3 seconds each, and you can only turn one at a time. So no rapid "flipping". You can search for a specific term, however, which is something you cannot do with a p-book. > > If I have a book of short stories, I can check the table of contents to > pick the story I want to read, and flip to the page where that story > begins. Can I do that with an electronic book? (Probably can, but I don't > know for sure.) Yes. All e-books (on the Kindle, anyway) have a table of contents. You can get to the TOC by clicking the menu button and selecting "Table of Contents". From there you can select any story or chapter and go directly to the page. You can also set bookmarks as you read and return to them later. -- Jim Gibson
From: Tom Stiller on 28 Jan 2010 20:52
In article <michelle-881A79.18244228012010(a)nothing.attdns.com>, Michelle Steiner <michelle(a)michelle.org> wrote: > In article <011b3d65$0$6702$c3e8da3(a)news.astraweb.com>, > JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot(a)vaxination.ca> wrote: > > > > Personally, I prefer paper books to e-books, and especially since I > > > didn't see any SF or Fantasy publishers on the list of publishers that > > > Apple showed. > > > > I think this will be a big ergonomic test of tablet vs book. The IPad is > > light enough to hold (a laptop is way too heavy). And compared to a > > book, once you have it opened at a page, you don't need to hold the IpAd > > open like you do for a book. > > I sometimes like to refer back to something earlier in the book; I'll > remember that it was on a right page, about two thirds of the way down, so > I'll flip the pages with my thumb, looking for the passage I'm searching > for. > > Can I do that with an iPad, Kindle, Nook, or any other book reader, for > that matter? One of the demo videos I saw for the iPad showed something akin to a horizontal scroll bar that indicated the relative position within the book. You could scrub that to the two-thirds point. > > If I have a book of short stories, I can check the table of contents to > pick the story I want to read, and flip to the page where that story > begins. Can I do that with an electronic book? (Probably can, but I don't > know for sure.) The demo showed just tapping the TOC entry to go to that chapter. Probably wouldn't work for scanned books. -- Tom Stiller PGP fingerprint = 5108 DDB2 9761 EDE5 E7E3 7BDA 71ED 6496 99C0 C7CF |