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iLounge has just published its 4th version its Free iPod + iPhone Book.
It is a VERY substancial offering weighing in at over 250 pages. As the site explains–
…every year, we publish a Book designed to answer all of our readers’ most commonly asked iPod, iPhone, iTunes, and Apple TV questions.
Best of all it is FREE.
Inside you’ll find-
–Over 20 accessory Sneak Peeks. (We really hope to get our hands on a bunch for review!)
–16 sections that cover the full range and lifespan of Apple’s media devices.
–100 pages of iTunes Answers
–A gallery of Next-Generation iPhone concept.
I’ve just started reading through it and it is chock full of great content.
You can’t beat the price and it is a great distraction from the fact that WWDC is now just 5 days away (but who’s counting).
A year after the iPhone was released it is nice to see a large line of accessories finally emerging.
The biggest deal about the book though is that…
I tried it by sending both parts to Evernote and then using Evernote’s iPhone-optimized site to access it (in my opinion this works much better than trying to send an email attachment) and it is great! It is easy to read and flip pages. While we have become used to (dependant on?) iPhone optimized sites, it strikes me that this may be the first time a book has been published in an iPhone specific format.
while it is available in formats for large (two pages at a time) and smaller (one page at a time) screens,
it is also available in a special iPhone and iPod Touch format.
I tried it by sending both parts to Evernote and then using Evernote’s iPhone-optimized site to access it (in my opinion this works much better than trying to send an email attachment) and it is great! It is easy to read and flip pages.
While we have become used to (dependant on?) iPhone optimized sites, it strikes me that this may be the first time a book has been published in an iPhone specific format.
As someone who is using his iPhone for more and more reading, from the NYTimes’ mobile site to a wide range of rss feeds via NewsGator this was a pleasant surprise
And it is one I hope we will see more of in the near future.
Tags: iPhone, iPhone Book, iLounge, ebooks
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by jwfrancis, on June 4 2008 @ 4:32 pm
I’ve tried this and can’t see the difference between the formatting I’m getting reading via Evernote and Mail - both just open the PDF in the PDF reader on the phone. The PDF reader doesn’t support double tapping on a column to auto resize as Safari does. What’s the big deal with the ‘iPhone’ formatted version anyway - the text is still too small for my (old) eyes when unzoomed anyway?
by danc, on June 4 2008 @ 5:42 pm
jwfrancis-
For me trying to pull it up as an email attachment took forever, while when I took the Evernote route it was rather quick.
I found the version that was reduced in size took a bit of pinching etc but was quite readable for my (getting older quickly) eyes. It wasn’t as easy to read as, say, I find the NYTimes mobile version but it was quite readable for me.
Unfortunately the screen size is the screen size which is why I would LOVE something a bit larger like the iTablet that remains a thing of myth.
Still, I am glad to see things like an iPhone/iPod Touch version like this emerging. It bodes well for what the future of devices like this will bring.
by jwfrancis, on June 5 2008 @ 6:16 am
danc
I think I was just a little disappointed that a specifically formatted iPhone version of the book still requires all manner of pinching and zooming. PDF has always been a problem on mobile devices as it doesn’t, by default, provide any text reflowing functionality. HTML by contrast was specifically designed for reading on different devices, which worked well until the advent of hard CSS layouts etc.