As Apple have created a blue ocean of Smartphone/tablet and still including feathers in crown, one of it is iBookStore for iPad.
This is revolutionary step indeed. Prior to iBookStore, there was only one serious attempt to provide digitize book reading using gadget and that is Kindle from Amazon. iBookStore has strong capabilities of changing reading habits of users and stands good chance to override the era of printed books.
Over & above the normal experience provided by printed books, below are a few features that stand out.
- Over the internet it is possible to download any book available on iBookStore.
- iPad size is fitting with size of most of books.
- Various brightness levels and changing in font size give better user experience.
- Larger storage can store as many book as user wants.
Besides that there are few more improvements I would like to see in iBookStore mentioned below,
- User needs all books; probably this is one of the reasons behind success of Amazon Kindle. Amazon has almost all books which user may need to read.
- It needs to consider the approach of http://books.google.com, which is considered as largest online book collection. Major reason behind its success is, it provide partial book reading. If iBookStore provides it as one of its feature then that would be boost its usability.
- As iPad is hand held device and it is completely feasible to have better (repeating again better) text to speech converter. One of the major success factors behind success of Android is its investment for text to speech and vice versa investment.
- Improvement in battery life, as we visualize iPad a hand held book reader. It is good chance that user may carry it in outdoor travelling for few days. That would be awesome if iPad have battery life to use it for long item.
- Language Translator: – I do understand complexity and technical feasibility to implement cross language conversation, I would love to see user friendly language translator.
- Allow to read books from different sources, at this stage user can read books only form iBookStore, it is not possible that iBookStore have all books which user may need to read. That would be good if user can read ePub books under DRM license from third party provider.
Well, digitizing print book media have few more benefits like minimizing use of paper (will keep our planet greener), removal of piracy, cost cutting in printing, improved distribution process etc…