Our Verdict
iBooks 3 is the latest variant of Apple ’s reading app for the iPhone , iPad , and iPod touch . Like all of its biggest competitors — Amazon ’s Kindle app chief among them — iBooks is free . In choosing your favour e - reading app , you ’re basically choosing which ecosystem you ’ll use for purchase the ebooks themselves .
Kindle is n’t iBooks ’ only competitor , but it ’s worth mentioning one complete difference between the Kindle weapons platform and the iBooks platform : Both can synchronize your place when you read ebooks between dissimilar devices . With iBooks , the only currently compatible devices are iOS devices . With Kindle , there are Kindle desktop apps for the Mac and Windows PCs , and of course the hardware Kindle devices as well . If you ’re already plug away into the Kindle ecosystem , I ’ll say at the outset that as honorable as iBooks 3 is — and it is very good — there ’s really not enough to motivate you to switch dedication from Kindle to iBooks .
That said , cliché though it may vocalise , iBooks 3 is the best edition of the app to date . meaning and minor improvements alike make the app more gratify a reading environs than ever before .
Surprisingly , one significant iBooks betterment is move up from the Kindle app : The bookshelf in iBooks now list all the playscript you own , even title you have n’t download to your gimmick . That make it nimble and painless to download books you own on demand ( allow for your iOS equipment is online , of course ) . Books in the cloud are mark with a special icon on their covers .
When you delete Quran from your bookshelf , the nomenclature in iBooks is uncharacteristically crappy . First , you ’re not really delete the books at all ; you ’re get rid of them . When you knock the thus - misname Delete push button , its two Cuban sandwich - options are even less clear : Delete This Copy and Delete . The former polish off the volume from your equipment , but leaves its cover on your ledge ( with the iCloud download image now superimposed ) . The red Delete button removes the book from your shelf entirely — though you could still get it back again by going into the iBookstore ’s Purchased tab .
Now ’s as good a time as any to note the iBookstore itself . Its selection size is steady increase ; Apple now lay claim it has more than 1.5 million ebooks uncommitted . And the iBookstore maintain one significant reward over its competition : you’re able to get at the ebook store from within iBooks , instead of being coerce out into Safari . Third - party developers are forbid from offering such deportment ( unless they cut Apple in on the ebook sale , which is n’t financially viable ) .
Also fresh in iBooks 3 is the addition of a third theme call Scroll . Unlike Book ( the skeuomorphic report that places the schoolbook upon the practical pages of a practical hardcover ) and Full Screen ( which ditches the book to give more real the three estates to the textbook ) , Scroll does n’t instantly foliate your book for you to nobble through horizontally . Instead , it repose out the Word of God vertically ; you scroll through it like you would a lengthy email or webpage , no horizontal swipe required .
The Scroll theme is decidedly unpleasant on a full - sized iPad . The scrolling is n’t smooth ; I encounter frequent stammer . The finish of any ebook app at its core should be to get the heck out of the style so that the reader forgets about the app and just gets engulf in the text . Scroll on the iPad constantly draw me out of the book with its hiccups .
On my iPhone 5 , however , Scroll performed noticeably well . And I ’ve certainlytriedvertically scroll my ebooks ( in both iBooks and Kindle ) in the past ; my muscle memory simply look to perform that scroll motion when I ’m learn on an iOS gadget for a long clip . It ’s now my default musical theme on the iPhone .
( On the iPhone , you just get two themes : Book and Scroll . But — save for its page - turn animations — Book on the iPhone is pretty tight to Full Screen on the iPad , in that there are no imitation Scripture page drawn beneath the text . )
As always , and even in the Scroll theme , iBooks ’s on - screen information display is better than its rival offers : You get omnipresent details on your current ( virtual ) varlet numeral , and how many of those virtual pages are allow in the current chapter . If you do n’t want that detail , you tap the filmdom and it languish aside . I ’m a big fan of ready access to the pages left in a chapter ; I love knowing how far I am from a good stopping point . The Kindle app does n’t offer that alternative .
Another new characteristic in iBooks 3 is its ability to share excerpts from the book you ’re record . You wiretap and drag to highlight the musical passage you ’d like to divvy up , and then pink again on the highlight section . Then you tap the share-out button ( the boxed arrow ) and choose to share through Mail , Messages , Twitter , or Facebook , or to simulate the text to the clipboard .
It work fine — with one silly caveat . iBooks try out to admit attribution information for the quote , like the Word of God ’s title and author , and a copyright bill . In some contexts , like Twitter posts , that item likely wo n’t fit , so the prepopulated tweet text gets arbitrarily truncated . It ’s not a big deal , but it ’s a bit miry .
One additionMacworlddidn’t trial is iBooks 3 ’s new supporting for more than 40 languages , including Koren , Chinese , and Japanese . It ’s there if you call for it . iBooks 3 also profit the option to download free updates to leger you ’ve purchased . That wo n’t apply to most books you corrupt , but it could add up in handy should you own one that needs updating . We were n’t capable to try out that feature , either .
Other core iBooks features persist unaltered , but still impressive : It offers an excellent selection of crisp , superb baptistery ; it volunteer black - on - white , white - on - black , and sepia - toned schoolbook / background pairings ; it has in - app brightness ascendency . Its in - book search is flying and accurate . And its support for ragged - correct text ( as opposed to the Kindle app ’s unchangeable , awkward forced justification ) is much appreciated .
Bottom line
With its latest update , and the iBookstore ’s continued growth , iBooks 3 offers an excellent reading experience , if you do n’t bear in mind limiting your ebook reading to iOS machine .
