Dear revolution in reading.
Here’s a suggestion.
Don’t make it so bloody difficult for me to sync across files from my computer to my iPhone. I don’t want to go via some file sharing site. I don’t want to convert PDFs to epub, or an endless shitting list of FAQs to deal with. (And mail my own files to myself? Sod off. They’re ON MY COMPUTER AND I HAVE A CABLE.)
I use Apple computers – I just want to plug something in and expect it to work. Here I am, a crotchety young man on the brink of considering this ebook malarkey, and you go and spoil things. Books don’t give me this kind of shit to deal with. Now I am left with only Project Gutenberg files (though that isn’t necessarily a bad thing).
That is all.
It is ridiculously convoluted – but Apple (at the moment) won’t let any app sync via USB. The iPad is set to change this fortunately. Amazon are the closest to a seamless way of getting books onto a reader, but their format and DRM are unique to them. The first company to make it really really simple will have a huge advantage. I am a big fan of ebooks, but can’t recommend them to anyone non-technical at the moment.
Looking forward to reading your ebooks in due course…
I think you may be quite right about the first to make the process simple.
I mean, I can do all the syncing, but I just can’t be bothered – too much hassle! So I shall head back to the books.
Stanza briefly had USB syncing but Apple required them to pull it. They were using an API not yet available to developers. This feature is coming soon.
Yeah, plug and play/drag and drop are definatly the best way to go about things. You may be better off looking into the new windows phone (not sure if it is out yet?)
Why not just buy an ebook reader.. my life changed for the better when I bought my kindle. My wife loves the reader..mostly because our bedrom is not covered with glossy fantasy books.. and then I am not talking about the dirty kind ;=)
Daniel – I’ll never buy anything with Windows on it.
Frank – I don’t want to spend a lot of money on one. Books are the devices in my world. Plus, I probably would never buy a Kindle because of the DRM! I just want to use the iPhone casually, now and then, for short fiction…
I used to use the Calibre server and have Stanza download books that way. But you are right, it can be a bit of a pain. I decided to set up Stanza on my iPhone to use my Google mail account as a web catalog. So now I just email myself a copy of the file, then download it from within stanza that way. Pretty simple process that way, I think.
Looking forward to the iPad arriving in 2 weeks, so I can just synch my ebooks via iTunes.
Hate to say it, but that’s what you get for submitting to the new evil. Apple is far worse than even M$ these days in respect to what they’ll allow they’re customers to do with the devices they own. And the road they’re set on seems to be declining steeply. Try out a free operating system some time (yes, they’re available both for your phone and your computer), you’ll be much happier.