Recently, Seth Godin blogged on his ideal iPad book app. I think I would follow suit and discuss something near and dear to my heart: my best iPad book app.
Personally, I was impressed by the iPad demo video. The hardware and the operating system are impressive. However, when I viewed Steve Jobs’ full presentation and demo, I felt that the iBooks application, while beautiful, was missing some key features.
Probably Apple is likely to incorporate a lot more features than Steve was able to show. Here are some features I’d like to see in my optimal iPad book app:
Highlighting or perhaps underlining. This is important for me. I can’t read a book without marking it up. Thankfully, the Kindle has this function, but it is really confusing. The iPad could make this 2nd character with its touch-screen technology.
In-text annotations.
In the iPad book app, I’d like to be capable to dual-tap near the text I need to annotate and type in my notices.
Go to following part. I’d like to be able to skip from part to chapter, much like I can do in a musical album once I skip from track to song. I shouldn’t need to press via every page, regardless how fast the application is.
Constructed-in thesaurus and web research.
Bookmarking and research. Even so, I am searching for something smaller here. I would like the ability to explore within the iPad book app or across all of my book apps. I would also like the capability to dog-ear a webpage and revisit it afterwards.
Text-to-speech.
The iPad book app has to be better and inflect better. Naturally, the perfect solution is usually to have a true human read the written text (i.e., audio book) and connects it with the true text.
Social networking integration.
This is how the program could really shine. So far, I have just been asking that the iPad book app match and enhance the Amazon kindle. I need to be able to focus on some text then submit to my weblog or my different social media networks. I’d also love to see what my group of buddies say when they read the book.
Show to a friend. As a creator, I think the easiest method to sell books is to enable people to test them. As a reader, I’d like to be able to e-mail a chapter or two to a friend or loan them the full book. If the book is ok, they will want their own copy.
I’m sure that most of these functions are offered today in the present edition of the Kindle reader. If Apple will likely be successful an e-book platform, they will have to match these characteristics, enhance them, and put in a few bells and whistles of their very own. Understanding Apple, they probably have a few tips up their sleeve that they don’t prefer to reveal till the product is shipping. And iPad book app is very interacting application.
