Kobo on the iPad no comments
Kobo’s ereading app for the iPad lets you tweak the appearance of your reading experience quite a bit.
With the Kobo iPad appyou can view your library in a thumbnail with details view or with the by now familiar bookshelves. But Kobo adds the option of choosing from seven different styles of bookshelves.
You also have eight different bookmark styles to choose from – including a dead trout, which sounds shocking but is actually kind of cool. There are also four different page turning styles to choose from.
You can, as in the other iPad reading apps I’ve tried so far, adjust the brightness from within the app. Kobo provides a black text on white background or a Night Reading mode that gives you white text on a black background. I find the latter is much easier on my eyes when reading for extended periods.
Kobo gives you four fonts to choose from, three of which feel bolded. The largest font size is a little larger than the Kindle for iPad app which should make it easier to read for those with vision impairments.
Pagination in the Kobo app is a little different. An example would be “CHAPTER 2 – 2 of 51” which would be the second of fifty one pages of chapter 2. This can be a bit of a hassle if you are reading the same ebook on more than one non-synced devices and have to search for your last read page. Reading apps on the iPad have a slider bar you can access at the bottom of the page for rapid movement forward and backward in the book. Kobo’s slider, at least in the ebooks in my Kobo account, just moves you back and forth within each chapter.
There are no search, dictionary, note taking or annotation features in Kobo’s app, at least at this time. To look a word up in a dictionary you can exit the Kobo app and search on the Internet, or you could install Dictionary.com’s free app which does not need an Internet connection.
For some reason, one ebook that was in my Kobo account is shown in my Kobo app’s library on the iPad but I cannot open it. If I try to access it I get an error message – “Content not Available … we’re working as fast as we can to make this available soon.” I can open this book on my ereader, so not sure what the problem is. Judging by this, if you have a lot of books in your Kobo library you may not be able to access all of them on the iPad just yet.
Update: As of 4/7/2010 all of my ebooks are available, so it looks like Kobo has fixed this.
I like the ability to personalize the Kobo ereading app, but they do need to work on adding the missing study tools.
It is too early to tell how popular the Ipad will be for long form, immersive reading. With the iPad we will have access to the largest ebook stores on one device (still waiting for the Barnes & Noble iPad app – so far only their iPhone app is available). Thanks to the agency model imposed by the publishers the various ebook sellers with apps on the iPad will not be able to compete on ebook prices. So they will need to compete with the amount and variety of content they offer (Kindle Store wins here) and with the excellence of their reading apps. Having an app that is able to sync with other devices, including dedicated ereaders, will also be a great advantage.
So far all of the reading apps I’ve tried are fast and all have things to like, but each one also has some missing features and all have room for improvement – but then the iPad has only been out for three days.
Reading apps on the iPad need to have a night reading mode (Kindle and Kobo do) for those of us whose eyes are bothered by extended reading on the backlit screen. Dictionaries, search, go to, note taking and annotation features need to be standard as well.
As for reading on the iPad in general, after using it continuously over the weekend, I have to say that for long form reading e-ink is still better for me. One does have to wonder though if it makes sense any longer to buy one of the larger format ereaders such as the DX, Skiff or Que (providing that the latter two are even released) at their current or proposed prices.
For portable content handling I have at the moment (besides my smartphone) a netbook, iPad and three ereaders.
- The netbook seems best suited for content creation.
- The iPad is best for multimedia content consumption, Web browsing and reading magazines and newspapers.
- The dedicated ereaders are best for more than casual book reading.
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