iPad Apps Buzz

Clash of the eBook Titans: Kindle for iPad vs iBooks

Posted by James Eunson | May 15, 2010

The Kindle app was one of the first off the blocks for the iPad, bringing with it access to the vast (500,000+ item) library of Kindle content. Unlike the iPhone, however, Kindle on the iPad has competition and probably the fiercest it is possible to have on the iPad – direct competition from the mothership itself, Apple.

Apple’s new iBooks application is debuting on the iPad and is one of the key selling points of the device. The sleek interface is front and center in the iPad marketing campaigns and rightly so – it’s downright gorgeous and just another in a long line of interfaces that set the bar.

eBook reading is also one of the most intuitive uses of the iPad, and Apple keenly knowing this has polished iBooks to a mirror finish. Quality oozes from every finely detailed user interface element and makes it a joy to use.

So how does the Kindle hold up in Apple’s newly annexed promised land? Does it still cut the mustard in 10″ of colour?

Content is king (and don’t forget it)

In the video game console market, systems live and die by the quality of games available on the platforms and the analogy is equally apt for the eBook space. On casually browsing both the Kindle and iBooks store, the Kindle’s 4-year headstart is obvious.

Like a lot of people I know, technical books are a bit of a guilty pastime – I read too much non-fiction but I guess there’s worse vices to have. For technical books though, the iBooks store is really quite a disappointment.

Apple’s taking the same tack as with the wildly successful iTunes Music Store – appeal to everyone to start with, stock the most generally interesting (and as a result most generic) content and get niche-ey later. Too bad all of us non mainstream readers have nothing to read on iBooks at the moment.

Also included is a vast array of Project Gutenburg books, and if you haven’t read them (come on, many are English canon classics) they provide a good point of entry to the hyped-to-all-hell new frontier of iBooks.

Books, Beautiful Books

The iBooks application may lack in content, but it makes up a lot of ground in the appearance stakes. Kindle for the iPhone has never been fantastic looking by anyone’s standards and the iPad version continues this unfortunate trend. iPad Kindle is basically an enlarged version of the iPhone version, with iPad-specific bells and whistles.

By contrast, iBooks is probably the best looking application on the iPad, a platform with already high visual standards. Although secondary to actual books, the presentation is a factor. It’s so good, it makes itself a factor in a game that could have been played on content stakes alone.

This becomes particularly apparent after heading back to Kindle after extended reading in iBooks. The little details – the realistic page turn, the bookshelf interface to books, the beautiful text rendering – it all makes a difference.

iBooks feels less like reading off a screen. Kindle suffers more from the atomic white on black reading on an LCD that the actual device sought to avoid. In Kindle’s defense however, the do offer a welcome black-on-white contrast mode for reading in the dark that minimises this problem. I’m not sure how this could translate to the naturalistic world of iBooks pages, but whatever happens, Apple design-gurus should “make it so”.

The eBook experience

Table of contents pages are also far better executed in iBooks than in Kindle (see the screenshots gallery below for proof). Kindle table of contents pages literally look like a collection of hyperlinks on a webpage, while iBooks attempts to create a more authentic book feel.

That is, in the end, what it is – a page of hyperlinks to other parts in a digital document, but it’s nice of Apple to spare us this inconvenient truth. Just like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, I prefer to be let down gently and Kindle in breaking this is about as subtle as a brick through a plate-glass window.

Both applications feature in-app brightness controls, while only iBooks includes a book search. This is a pretty obvious feature and should be making its way to Kindle in quick time, should Amazon want to stay in the features cold war.

Go where the reading is

Ultimately, anyone using these apps is looking for reading material of interest to them. I would be misrepresenting these applications if I didn’t tell you that Kindle, simply by virtue of having such a huge range, wins out in this regard.

That’s not to discount iBooks completely. If it’s on the iBooks store I would get the iBooks version, simply because of the little things I’ve talked about. The attention to detail, and it sounds corny, makes a better experience. That’s really what Apple products are about generally and if you didn’t understand this, you wouldn’t have an iPad in the first place.

Not only is the experience intangibly but definitely nicer, but the iBook store uses the more recent and open ePub format. Score one for open standards!

Kindle, on the other hand uses the DRM-protected proprietary AZW format. Granted, the format is completely transparent in purchasing – you really aren’t aware of the filetype on either platform, you’re just buying a book – but it’s nice not to be locked into the Amazon machine.

As an aside, It’s pretty sad we’re still doing this DRM thing with books. The music world has all but grown out of it – DRM on iTunes songs is thankfully, a relic of the past – yet DRM on books remains.

To be frank, iBooks is just not there yet. But what else could you expect from a platform barely out of diapers. There’s a strong future ahead and Kindle should watch their back. The acid test is this: is iBooks with Kindle’s content better than Kindle with Kindle’s content? And, perhaps surprisingly, the answer is a resounding yes.

iBooks: 3/5
Kindle for iPad: 4/5

Which if your preference for reading on the iPad? Does the beauty of iBooks win out over the brains of Kindle for you? Post in the comments!