iPad & iBooks (Part I)

The iPad is here ... almost!

January 27, 2010: It's unclear which speech people paid more attention to, President Obama's State of the Union address or Steve Jobs' State of Apple Gadgetry exposition. The occasion, for Jobs, was the unveiling of the long-anticipated Apple "tablet" computer, now officially dubbed the iPad.

Starting in April or May 2010, the entry-level iPad will go on sale for a price of $499 (breathtakingly low; predictions of $999 had been heard).

Among the iPad features that aren't carried over from the iPhone and iPod Touch is the exquisite iBooks app pictured above. Jobs intends to do for the eBook business what Apple did for the online music business: become the source of choice and make competitors (primarily the Amazon Kindle and Kindle DX, the Barnes & Noble Nook, and the various devices in the Sony Reader series) eat Apple's dust.

In fact, if Jobs' latest venture takes hold, we'll have to start calling them iBooks instead of eBooks!

The iPad outsizes most of its book-reading competition. At roughly 7 1/2 inches wide, there's enough space for a 768-by-1024-pixel color touchscreen with a diagonal measurement of 9.7 inches.

The $259 Kindle is 5.3 inches wide, with a 6-inch-diagonal screen.

Lacking a touchscreen, it devotes much of its overall size to a keyboard.

The $259 Barnes & Noble Nook (which I myself own) replaces the Kindle keyboard with a color touchscreen, but its non-touch E Ink reading screen is exactly identical in size and function to the Kindle's.

Sony's largest book reader, the $399.99 Reader Daily Edition, is 5 inches wide and has a close-to-full-height reading screen — again, non-touch.

Sony's $299.99 Reader Touch Edition sports a true (albeit non-color) touchscreen, but at a width of just 4.8 inches, the device is diminutive by comparison to the iPad.

The Kindle's big brother, the $489 Kindle DX, is 7.2 inches wide, offering a reading screen whose diagonal spans 9.7 inches, exactly as does the iPad's.

The Kindle DX is taller than the iPad to allow room for the physical keyboard. Its screen is non-color and non-touch.

The iPad puts its keyboard on the color touchscreen when one is needed.

To my mind, the Kindle DX, due to its generous size, is the book reader to which the iPad is most comparable. So, at $499 versus $489 for the Kindle DX, the iPad looks like it could become the book reader of choice for Apple enthusiasts and maybe the world at large.

 Here again is the iPad with its elegant iBooks app:

One iPad advantage over its book-reading competition: you can rotate the iPad into landscape position to show two pages side by side. I can't find an image to prove that, but you'll see it very briefly here in Steve Jobs' introduction to the iPad as an iBook reader and to the new Apple iBooks store that will supply it with content:




You can watch the entire 1-hour-33-minute video of Steve Jobs introducing the iPad by visiting this web page.

I'll have more to say in Part II of this post.

First Impressions of the Nook: A Review

I've been using my new Nook eBook reader from Barnes & Noble for about three weeks now. It's quite a change from the iPhone I've been using to read electronic books. I like it. But it has issues.

The Nook (B&N insists on a lowercase capital letter, but to me "nook" looks wrong as a proper noun) is the company's answer to Amazon's Kindle. It costs the same as the Kindle ($259) and incorporates the same black & white reading screen, a 6-diagonal-inch E Ink Vizplex display with 600x800-pixel resolution using 16 shades of gray. At 7.7 x 4.9 x 0.5 inches, the Nook is a tad smaller than the Kindle, except that it's a bit thicker (Kindle's thickness: 0.36 inches) and a smidgen heavier (11.2 ounces, to Kindle's 10.2 ounces)).

My Nook, in its attractive and functional $30 (faux?) leather cover from B&N — it comes with no protective gear included in the package, so I picked up the cover at my local B&N store — weighs almost exactly the same as my copy of the iPhone: The Missing Manual, a trade paperback which is quite a bit larger than the Nook. In heft, balance, and ease of manipulation the Nook is actually as agreeable, in my estimation, as all but the lightest, smallest print editions. Your mileage may vary.

The main fly in the Nook's ease-of-use ointment is that flipping through multiple pages is clumsy, owing to the slow-as-molasses E Ink reading screen — see below for more. The iPhone, with its LCD touchscreen doubling as a reading screen, flips through pages almost as easily as a printed book.

In the picture above, you can see the Nook's distinguishing characteristic, the colored swatch beneath its black & white reading screen. It's a color touchscreen not unlike the iPhone's, in the spot where the latest Kindle (seen at right) puts a tiny physical QWERTY keyboard. Most of the things you do to operate the Nook are done on the color touchscreen — including, when necessary, a tiny virtual QWERTY keyboard for typing in text.

In the Nook pictured above, the touchscreen is showing thumbnail covers of books in its library. This is the so-called "Gallery View":

In Gallery View, you can browse through the book covers by swiping your finger left or right on the touch strip, or you can tap a cover to center it and tap it once again to open the book.

When opened for the first time, a book's title page appears in the reading window. Subsequent opens of the book show you the page on which you left off reading, as in the image at left.

To turn pages, you press > to go forward, < to go back — these are physical, clickable buttons that are duplicated on either side of the reading screen.

The Nook takes around 1.5 seconds to bring each individual new page up on its reading screen. You watch the page form with a certain fascination, almost like seeing a photo dissolve into another photo, then turn from a negative to a positive.

If you want to advance, say, twenty pages in one fell swoop, you can push the > button twenty times in rapid succession ... and then wait as the intervening pages form briefly on the screen and then disappear. In responding to multiple > clicks, the Nook speeds things up somewhat: you can turn twenty pages in fifteen seconds. This seemingly reflects the 740 ms "typical image update time" cited here for a 4-bit, 16-gray-level E Ink display. It also suggests that the usual page-turn lag of roughly twice 740 ms includes something like an extra 740 ms for the Nook software to initiate a page-turn operation. Apparently, rapid re-clicks of the > button avoid the need to re-initiate the software operation for each successive page. One might conclude that the software designers did that on purpose, to speed things up ... because they realized that the way the software ordinarily works imposes a lot of overhead on the responsiveness of the Nook.

In and of itself, E Ink technology has two advantages over the LCD screen on the iPhone. One, E Ink draws very little power after a page has been formed and is still being displayed on the screen. So an E Ink device like a Kindle or a Nook has a far longer battery life: days, not hours. It doesn't have to be charged nearly as often.

Two, E Ink is very easy on the eyes. The background "paper" is a non-backlit light gray, against which the dark "print" stands out distinctly, but not too starkly. The iPhone uses a backlit LCD screen that can provide similar contrast only at the expense of inviting eyestrain.

Also, of course, the Nook's screen is a lot larger than the iPhone's. It's not big enough to hold an entire printed page when using a medium-sized font, but it does hold roughly a third to half as much text as a typical hardcover edition's page. The iPhone screen holds much less when it's displaying text of the same size.

The Nook lets you switch among either two or three fonts, depending on the book, and five type sizes. I use Amasis Medium — except for certain books where I have to choose Amasis Large in order to get print as big as Amasis Medium is in other books. If you choose Small or Very Small type, you get type that is, to my eyes, too hard to read.


I chose the Nook over the Kindle for the wow factor of its color touchscreen, I admit, but mainly because the Nook reads a lot of eBook formats the Kindle can't. First of all, everything in copy-protected EPUB, PDB, and PDF formats from Barnes & Noble, Fictionwise, eReader, and other sources will work. Only books from the first source qualify as natively belonging in the Nook's own "library," though, while books from all other sources need to be "side-loaded" onto the Nook: copied to it from a computer.

Side-loadable eBooks also include "open" EPUBs and PDFs that entirely lack DRM-encryption, as techies call copy protection; one source of open eBooks is Project Gutenberg. Moreover, you can side-load onto the Nook any and all EPUB and PDF eBooks that use the Adobe copy-protection scheme. These include eBooks from Adobe itself, the Sony Reader eBook Store, and many public libraries.

Edit: Adobe-DRM'ed PDF eBooks do seem to be readable on the Nook ... but when I tried borrowing an Adobe PDF version of Tess Gerritsen's The Keepsake from Maryland's Digital eLibrary Consortium, I found that I could not read it on my Nook. But when I bought the same eBook as an Adobe PDF from BooksOnBoard, it worked! I plan to investigate the problem further, but for now it looks as if Adobe-DRM'ed PDF eBooks that are borrowed from an online library may not be compatible with the Nook!

The Kindle, for its part, turns up its nose at B&N's proprietary eBooks and those from its Fictionwise and eReader subsidiaries. Nor can it read Adobe-DRM'ed eBooks, or even open EPUBs. However, the Nook does strike out when it comes to eBooks in Amazon's proprietary AMZ and Mobipocket formats, so the favor is returned.

Side-loading Nook content, by the way, is done by hooking the Nook to a computer, using the micro-USB to USB cable that comes with it.

That same cable is used to charge the Nook's battery. Battery charging can be done while the Nook is computer-connected, but charging goes faster if you plug the USB cable into a regular outlet via the included power adapter. Irritatingly, the Quick Start Guide and User Guide that come with the Nook insist that you fully charge your new Nook right away, prior to beginning to use it. It takes several hours and while, technically, you can begin Nooking as that is going on, the fact that your Nook is tethered to a power source sort of defeats the purpose.


Unfortunately, using the Nook's user interface can be like trying to do the cha-cha on stilts ... while wading in molasses!

Nowhere is this more evident than when you use the Nook to shop for books at the B&N online store. You bring up the Nook's "home" screen, seen in color in the above photo, by tapping the inverted "u" atop the touchscreen ... actually, a lowercase "n" for "nook." "Shop" is the middle button, which you tap to go to the Nook store. So far so good. But now you see a list of choices on the main screen — not the touchscreen — and your temptation is to want to tap whichever one you intend to select. No! You navigate among various options on the main screen by tapping up and down arrows on the touchscreen — each choice in turn becomes highlighted on the main screen — and you select any item you want by tapping a circle symbol next to the virtual arrows on the touchscreen.

However, if you want to page forward or back to the next or previous set of main-screen options, you use the physical < and > arrows on the Nook proper. Got that? Up and down are virtual buttons, left and right are physical buttons.

It gets worse. Each time you tap/press a virtual/physical button, you wait a second or two (actually, about 1.5 seconds) until a revised image forms on the main screen. Your cha-cha'ing stilts feel mired in molasses.

Add to that complaint the beef that the Nook's touchscreen does not respond smoothly to a swipe gesture. You need to swipe side to side to bring more book covers into view in Gallery View. You need to swipe vertically when there is a menu on the touchscreen that has more items than can fit on the screen. The latter sort of swipe is especially prone not to work smoothly.

You get used to these various beefs after a day or so, but the Nook's user interface is nowhere near as fast, smooth, or intuitive as the iPhone's. This is going to be one area in which the forthcoming Apple Tablet, which will be an iPhone on steroids, will eat Nooks (and presumably Kindles) for breakfast.

Full details of how to navigate the Nook user interface, by the way, are in the 159-page (!) Nook User Guide. You can glean the basic points from the 12-pp. Nook Tour.


Once you manage to zero in on a book you want to buy in the Shop, the rest of the buying process is easy enough to carry out, owing to the fact that you duly registered your out-of-the-box Nook the first time you fired it up, right?

Registering amounts to telling the Nook what e-mail address/password combo you've established your B&N online account under, so that when you buy a book via the Nook, your credit card can be charged automatically. (If you've never set up an account, the Nook will not lead you through doing so, step by step. To do that, you have to visit the B&N website online, using a computer.)

But you can obtain B&N content for the Nook — books, magazines, newspapers, etc. — without running to your computer. It all happens thanks to the Nook's built-in "radios": its wireless circuits.

One of the wireless "radios" accesses B&N Fast & Free Wireless, a cellphone data network. An iPhone does the same kind of thing using AT&T's 3G and EDGE networks, but you have to purchase a cellular data plan from AT&T separately. With the Nook the data plan is, in effect, free — but it works inside the United States only, not abroad.

The Nook's other wireless "radio" makes for 802.11b/g Wi-Fi connectivity. In bricks-and-mortar Barnes & Noble stores, your Nook will automatically latch onto a B&N hotspot as you walk in, without further ado. You can set the Nook up to connect to the B&N site via your home wireless setup as well.

The latest Kindle from Amazon has wireless cellular connectivity that works abroad, unlike the Nook's. But it lacks the Nook's ability to connect to Wi-Fi wireless networks. (However, it looks as if the Nook's Wi-Fi connectivity does not allow books to be bought and downloaded by those in foreign lands. Go figure!)


Sadly, the Nook's internal software is not quite ready for prime time, as of release 1.1.1. It's a heavily customized version of Google's Android operating system, which means it has a lot of as yet untapped potential, such as harnessing the Nook to browse the Web. As of right now, though, the software flunks a lot of usability tests.

It nominally lets you annotate book pages, but identifying specific passages you want to "highlight" is a balky process at best.

Dictionary lookups are available, but only for words actually on the page being viewed, which you (again) have to highlight using a slow, clunky procedure. I find that the word lookup can't locate inflected forms of words, such as "conferring" for "confer," and there's no way to type in the latter when only the former is present on the page you're reading.

The Gallery View shown in the photo above, though sexy, exists only for books in the B&N library, not for books you side-load onto the Nook. B&N really needs to support Gallery View for side-loaded books.

If you want to exit a particular book and go back to the full list of books in My B&N Library (or in the My Documents folder, if that's where you came from) you have to first go back to the home screen and then return to the library or folder in question. A waste of time ...

Sometimes the Nook loses track of the last page read and/or the furthest page read in a book.

If you navigate, via a text-embedded superscript, to an end note, in a book that has end notes — the ability to do that is itself a cool, but not unique, Nook feature — the Nook mistakenly counts the end note as on the "furthest page read."

There is no "Go To Page Number ___ " function. It's badly needed.

And, as I mentioned earlier, some books insist on a different type size than, say, Amasis Medium normally would be expected to produce.


Other ballyhooed Nook advantages are, as of the moment, overblown.

Early reports of the Nook being able to "lend" eBooks turn out to be much ado about nothing, for now. Only some eBooks in your B&N Library can be loaned out, by no means all. You can load eBooks only to another B&N customer, not to the eBook world at large. You can lend a book that can be lent just one time, for just 14 days. Big whoop!

According to the Nook User Guide, though, the borrower need not have a Nook:

You can lend to and from any device with the Barnes & Noble eReader application, including iPhone and iPod touch, BlackBerry smartphones, and most Windows and Mac laptops and desktop computers. All you need to know is your friend’s email address.

But the borrower does have to be B&N-registered. Also, lending is a complex operation in which you have to generate an e-mail "offer" to the borrower, who must then accept the offer, before being allowed to download the book. During the 14-day lend-out period, you cannot use the book yourself, unless the borrower goes to the extra trouble of "returning" it to you early.

The initial buzz for the Nook set great store (pun intended!) by its "in-store experience," described this way by the User Guide:

When you bring your nook into a Barnes & Noble Bookstore, you can access in-store content and merchandising. This includes the ability to sample any eBook while in the store! (This feature is coming soon.) Merchandising content includes in-store, exclusive editorial content, promotion coupons, and information about in-store events.

There's supposed to be, added to the Shop's so-called "merchandising area," a More in Store option that you can bring up on the Nook's main screen when you're in a bricks-and-mortar B&N store. Yet when I visited my local B&N establishment and fired up my Nook, I saw no such thing. Nor did I see any ability to thoroughly browse "any eBook" while in the store! Plus, I've heard that this in-store browsing feature, where implemented at all, is time-limited to one hour per book, per 24-hour period.

My Nook did automatically connect to the store's Wi-Fi hotspot, but that was the extent of the vaunted "in-store experience." And, true, I was able to download truncated "sample" eBooks and read them while sipping my latte in the store, but those prepackaged free samples are available from my home as well. (Also, whatever happened to all those comfy chairs B&N throughout the store? As of a couple of months ago, they had dwindled to two. Two weeks ago, those two were gone!)


The Nook's battery life is a major sticking point. Touted by B&N as letting you "read for up to ten days without recharging with wireless off," I'm finding a more realistic figure to be two to three days without recharging. The Kindle gets much greater battery life, supposedly: up to two weeks between charges.

Note the "with wireless off" caveat. The two "radios" in the Nook are thought to drain the battery fast. You can disable the Wi-Fi radio via its own settings, but to turn off cellular connectivity you need to turn on Airplane Mode, which is nominally there to let air travelers disable wireless communications during takeoff and landing. (Airplane Mode also disables Wi-Fi.)

I keep Airplane Mode on just about all the time, yet I get nowhere near ten charge-free days. The culprit may be my (very occasional) use of the color touchscreen, which (as with an iPhone) supposedly draws a lot of juice ... but I find it next to impossible to avoid some touchscreen activation as I'm using my Nook. The touchscreen goes dark after a user-configurable number of seconds — I've lowered it from 30 to 10. I've also reduced the touchscreen brightness to a near-minimum value and turned off the "Auto-Adjust Brightness" feature. Still, what little use my touchscreen does get may be responsible for draining my battery.

Or, it may be just plain old page turning that drains the battery so swiftly. (If that's true, is it possible that a software update might cure this?) My reasoning: The Nook may be incurring a lot of processing overhead, due to the fact that its dedicated book-reading application is hosted by a full-fledged operating system (Android). The Kindle, on the other hand, doesn't have its software set up as a applications running under a general-purpose OS. Presumably, the processing overhead of something as simple as a page turn is less on the Kindle. So the Kindle's battery needs recharging much less often.

One thing I've proven to my own satisfaction: when my Nook is put into "sleep" mode, the battery charge doesn't drop much at all, over several hours of non-use. "Sleep" is, as the name suggests, different from powering the Nook down entirely. In sleep mode, a screen saver image remains on the reading screen; hence, E Ink remains in use. Powered off, the Nook has a blank reading screen.

The Nook will automatically enter sleep mode after 2, 5, 10, 15, or 20 minutes of inactivity, depending on a user setting. You can manually enter sleep mode by pressing the Power button on the top of the device: once if the color touchscreen is lit up, otherwise twice.

B&N says recharging the Nook from a power outlet takes 3.5 hours, a time estimate I find accurate, and that charging via the USB cable takes 6 hours.

Unlike with the iPhone or the Kindle, you can pop the back off the Nook and replace its lithium polymer battery, which is expected to last two to three years. Some pundits have suggested the disappointing time between Nook battery charges is a necessary trade-off for having a replaceable battery.

While the back is off you can pop in a microSD or microSDHC memory card of up to 16-GB capacity, to go with the Nook's 2 GB of on-board storage. The former, I find, is reduced to about 1.28 usable GB by (I assume) the storage taken up by the Nook system software. The Nook, at a nominal 2 GB of storage, is said to hold up to 1,500 eBooks, so adding a memory card is not an urgent priority. Amazon's Kindle likewise sports a 2-GB internal memory, said to hold a like figure of 1,500 eBooks. (Also, if you're wondering whether the Nook has a SIM card to enable cellular connectivity, it does; it's hidden by the battery.)


One of the biggest questions in the Kindle-vs.-Nook debate concerns the availability and pricing of eBooks from the two eBook-selling behemoths, Amazon and B&N respectively, standing behind the two readers.

The reviews of the Kindle and of the Nook from CNET cite a "large library of tens of thousands of e-books" as selling points for each of these devices.

Virtually all of the eBooks that work on the Kindle have to be obtained through the Kindle Store at Amazon. The eBooks eligible to become part of "My Library" on the Nook — as opposed to capable of being side-loaded into "My Documents" — all come from the B&N eBook Store.

I happen to have a list of books that I want to read soon. Most are fairly well-known titles. None of them did I select because of their availability (or lack of it) as eBooks. Some are in fact available as eBooks, some not. Here's an availability comparison:

• Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout. $5.50 at the Kindle Store. $5.50 at the B&N eBook Store.
  
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson and Reg Keeland. $5.50 at the Kindle Store. $5.50 at the B&N eBook Store.
  
• The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood. $3.95 at the Kindle Store. $3.95 at the B&N eBook Store.
• The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood. $9.99 at the Kindle Store. Not available at the B&N eBook Store.
• Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood. $9.99 at the Kindle Store. $9.99 at the B&N eBook Store.
• The Year of the Flood, by Margaret Atwood. $9.99 at the Kindle Store. $9.99 at the B&N eBook Store.
• The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver. $9.99 at the Kindle Store. $9.99 at the B&N eBook Store.
• The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver. $9.59 at the Kindle Store. $9.59 at the B&N eBook Store. (Note: I downloaded the free sample of this eBook to my Nook and found that its cover does not show up in Gallery View. Nor does the cover show up in the B&N eBook Store listing for the eBook. However, when the Nook is actually reading the sample eBook, the cover thumbnail does appear! The listing at the Kindle Store likewise shows a cover.)
  
• The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland, by Jim Defede. Not available at the Kindle Store. Not available at the B&N eBook Store.
• Disgrace: A Novel, by J.M. Coetzee. Not available at the Kindle Store. Not available at the B&N eBook Store.
• The Hours, by Michael Cunningham. $9.99 at the Kindle Store. Not available at the B&N eBook Store.
• After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, by Alasdair MacIntyre. Not available at the Kindle Store. Not available at the B&N eBook Store.
• Skyfall, by Catherine Asaro. $6.39 at the Kindle Store. Not available at the B&N eBook Store.
• Dawn Star, by Catherine Asaro. $9.99 at the Kindle Store. $9.99 at the B&N eBook Store.
• The Apprentice: A Novel, by Tess Gerritsen. $6.39 at the Kindle Store. $6.39 at the B&N eBook Store.
• Whistleblower and Never Say Die, by Tess Gerritsen. $7.88 at the Kindle Store. $7.88 at the B&N eBook Store.
• A Lion Called Christian: The True Story of the Remarkable Bond Between Two Friends and a Lion, by Anthony Bourke and John Rendall. $13.17 at the Kindle Store. Not available at the B&N eBook Store.

What of the books that are shown above as not available at the B&N eBook Store, or unavailable at either store?

• The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood, is available here as an Adobe PDF eBook, side-loadable and readable by the Nook, for a price in British pounds equivalent to $7.43. It's also available for the same price in the Mobipocket format. If not DRM-encrypted, Mobipocket would be usable by the Kindle. But this seems to be in the encrypted Mobipocket format, which the Kindle can't use. But never mind: a Kindle edition is available at Amazon's Kindle Store for a reasonable $9.99.
  
• The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland, by Jim Defede, is apparently not available anywhere as an eBook. (You can check any book's availability as an eBook, or lack thereof, at AddAll eBooks.)
• Disgrace: A Novel, by J.M. Coetzee, is apparently not available anywhere as an eBook.
• The Hours, by Michael Cunningham, is available here as an Adobe PDF eBook, side-loadable and readable by the Nook, for $8.10.
• After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, by Alasdair MacIntyre, is apparently not available anywhere as an eBook.
• Skyfall, by Catherine Asaro, is available in EPUB format here, for $12.60. This kind of DRM-encrypted EPUB is meant for a Sony Reader (a rival to the Kindle and the Nook). However, it reportedly will work when side-loaded to a Nook.
  
• A Lion Called Christian: The True Story of the Remarkable Bond Between Two Friends and a Lion, by Anthony Bourke and John Rendall, is available as a DRM-encrypted EPUB for a Sony Reader here, for $9.99.

More on the subject of eBook pricing for the Nook: here, in an early discussion of the Nook that appeared just after the product was announced in mid-October 2009, its author complains (referring to Barnes & Noble), "The bookseller's digital titles are way overpriced — at least compared to Amazon ... ."

Is that still true? Interestingly enough, I find that all of the book-by-book price gaps the author so rues seem to have disappeared! Check for yourself: it's easy to click on each cited eBook link to the Amazon and B&N sites, respectively. Try it.

The list of books I myself compiled above likewise shows that, in every case where both vendors have the eBook, the price is the same. It looks to me as if, in the wake of the Nook announcement, B&N dropped its prices to match Amazon's!

In cases where a Nook-usable version must be side-loaded from another source, however, where the Kindle Store has its own eBook edition the prices sometimes vary. In some cases, the Nook-usable eBook costs more that the Kindle edition; in other cases, less.

On the whole, the results I am seeing indicate that you would typically find the same books available for the Nook as for the Kindle, usually at identical prices, occasionally at different prices. Where there is price variation, sometimes one device is favored, sometimes the other. On average, you would probably spend the same amounts of money feeding the Nook as the Kindle.

True, the Nook would sometimes force you to computer-download and then side-load "non-B&N Library" eBooks to the Nook, where those same eBooks would be effortlessly available from Amazon's Kindle Store and would download direct to the Kindle. With respect to the availability of eBooks in the devices' "native" formats, the Kindle presently has an edge over the Nook.


You can read other comprehensive reviews of the Nook here and here.

iPhone: Reading Adobe/EPUB eBooks

Note: This post has been heavily edited several times, the last time being Feb. 22, 2010. Readers who find errors, inconsistencies, or points of confusion are encouraged to post a comment below so that I can revise the instructions to make them as correct and usable as possible. Thanks!

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Introduction

eBooks come in many forms; see this article in Wikipedia for a list. Most of the common formats can be read on an iPhone, by one app or another — see iPhone as eReader for more.

An eBook format that the iPhone can't deal with, however, is the supposedly "open" EPUB format if, paradoxically, it is copy-protected using the Digital Rights Management methodology created by Adobe Systems. This Adobe/EPUB format, a DRM-protected variety of the open EPUB format, is used by the Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) eBook reader. ADE is intended for personal computers, but not for most mobile devices like an iPhone. The full name of Adobe's DRM methodology is Adobe Digital Editions Protection Technology, or ADEPT. The Adobe/EPUB format can accordingly be called ADEPT/EPUB.

To repeat: Adobe Digital Editions, a.k.a. ADE, is software that runs on Windows and Mac platforms, but there is no ADE for the iPhone. Why not? Maybe because ADE incorporates Adobe Flash as a way of presenting complex graphics, and Flash is not supported on the iPhone. The iPhone, lacking Flash support, cannot read ADEPT/EPUB eBooks. This is so even though there is no Flash content in ADEPT/EPUB eBooks!

If it were possible to bypass or strip off the ADEPT DRM encryption, however, these ADEPT/EPUB eBooks would become plain old EPUB eBooks — downloadable to, and working just fine in, Stanza for the iPhone.

Bypassing ADEPT encryption so that you can read ADEPT/EPUB books on an iPhone is in fact possible. Here is a step-by-step explanation of how.


Step 1:

Before you get started, you'll probably need to download and install the free Adobe Digital Editions software itself.

I know of only one exception to that rule. If you have a Sony Reader, you probably have installed its companion Reader Library (formerly eBook Library) software for the Sony Reader on your Windows PC or Mac. As of version 3.0, this software (current version is 3.1) can stand in lieu of Adobe Digital Editions software, in that it lets you authorize your Sony Reader device (and your computer as well) for Adobe DRM-protected content. If you have already done that, you don't need to install and authorize ADE, and you can skip ahead to Step 2 in these instructions.

What if you are not sure whether your computer is Adobe-authorized?

If you are using Windows XP — I  don't know enough about Windows Vista or Windows 7 to say how to do this on those operating systems — you can check to see whether your computer is already Adobe-authorized by clicking on the start button, selecting Run..., typing regedit.exe in the Open... box and clicking OK, and in the Registry Editor window that appears, selecting Edit:Find.... Then type privateLicenseKey in the Find what: box and click the Find Next button. If your computer is Adobe-authorized, then (after a few seconds of searching) the Registry Editor will show a two-item list in the right side of its window that contains privateLicenseKey as the first data item. (The second item is the actual — albeit encrypted — value of the key.) Voila! You can now close the Registry Editor window and skip ahead to Step 2 of these instructions.

If you are using a Mac, one way you can check to see whether your computer is Adobe-authorized is to look for an activation.dat file in your Home folder hierarchy on your Mac — specifically, in the ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Digital Editions/ folder. (~ is shorthand for your Home folder.) If activation.dat is there, you have already authorized your Mac for Adobe-DRM'ed eBooks. You can skip ahead to Step 2 of these instructions. (Note: the ~/Library/Application Support/ folder hierarchy will not show up in a Finder search unless you specifically tell the search to include system files.)

If you didn't skip ahead to Step 2, you need to authorize your computer to read Adobe-DRM'ed eBooks. Click here to install (or simply launch) ADE on either a Mac or a Windows computer. About halfway down the page which comes up you will see a large button saying one of two things:

1. If you see the word "Launch," then you already have the latest version of Adobe Digital Editions installed on your computer. You should click on the "Launch" button to open ADE. When you do — since you have just checked to see whether ADE is activated and found that it isn't — you should see an ADE Setup Assistant window superimposed over the main Adobe Digital Editions window.
2. If you instead see the word "Install," click on it to obtain the latest ADE version. A warning appears: "This application can read and write files to your system. Would you like to continue installing?" Click "Install" again. Another warning appears: "Press yes to download and continue the installation of Adobe Digital Editions." Click "yes." After the download has finished, the Adobe Digital Editions app immediately opens on your Windows or Mac computer, displaying an "Adobe Digital Editions Install" window. That window contains a license agreement to which you must click "I Agree." You'll now see the ADE Setup Assistant window superimposed over the main Adobe Digital Editions window.

Whether you just installed or simply launched ADE, you should now see the ADE Setup Assistant, since presumably your computer is not yet ADE-activated. You need to click the Setup Assistant's "Continue" button to see a panel asking you to "Authorize Computer" by filling in your Adobe ID (which is typically your e-mail address) and associated password.

If you do not already have an account with an Adobe ID, you should now click on "get an Adobe ID online," in order to be taken via your Web browser to an online page that will allow you to set up an Adobe account. Once you set up your Adobe account, return to the patiently waiting Adobe Digital Editions Setup Assistant and enter your new Adobe ID and password. Click the "Activate" button.

You have the option instead to choose "Don't Authorize Computer" at this point, instead of "get an Adobe ID online." This is what is referred to as an "anonymous" activation, in that your computer will be "activated" but not "authorized" to use any particular Adobe ID.

As long as the computer you are using is not available to the public, my strong suggestion is that you not choose this option. If you choose it, you will not have the ability to download Adobe-DRM'ed eBooks to, and read them on, any computer but the one you are presently activating. If you authorize your computer using an Adobe ID, you can use the same Adobe ID to authorize up to six computers, total — plus, you will be able to transfer Adobe eBooks to a device such as a Sony Reader or a Barnes & Noble Nook that has been activated with the same Adobe ID.

I have been assured that the following steps in these instructions will work with an anonymous activation that does not specify an Adobe ID. However, if you activate Adobe Digital Editions anonymously and then later do it again with an Adobe ID, at that time all of your earlier ADE e-book purchases will become unusable. So I strongly recommend that you activate Adobe Digital Editions with an Adobe ID right from the outset.

Once you click "Activate," you will see (briefly) a panel saying "Connecting to authorization server," and then, once the authorization is complete, you will see the Setup Assistant's final panel, from which you can, if you like, point your browser at the Adobe Digital Editions Online Library. This, as the title says, is the repository on the Internet where many, but not necessarily all, of the Adobe Digital Editions eBooks you buy will be kept. From the web page which appears in your browser, you can now obtain your first ADE eBooks.

I'll leave it to you to visit this library later on in this set of instructions and explore how this is done.  At this point, you need to click "Finished" to dismiss the Setup Assistant.

Now, if you are on Windows you will have on your C:\ drive a folder, C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Digital Editions, that contains digitaleditions.exe, the ADE application. On a Mac, the Mac version of the Adobe Digital Editions software resides in your Applications folder.


Step 2:

Next, if you are using Windows, you need to obtain Python, a programming/scripting language originally developed for Unix-based computers, and also available for Windows.

If you use Windows you can currently get Python version 2.6, which you can download and install in Windows by going to the Python download page and then clicking on (as of this writing) the hotlink to Python 2.6.4 Windows installer. (There is also a version 3.1, but I can't guarantee it will work with this procedure.) You'll download a file called python-2.6.4.msi which you'll proceed to double-click, and then you'll follow the installer's on-screen prompts that allow you to install the Python 2.6 package in a directory the installer creates, C:\Python26. The actual app within that folder is called python.

For the Mac platform, you do not need to download and install Python at all, as Python 2.5 (which works fine for purposes of these instructions) is automatically installed as part of Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard." (I believe this is also true of OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard.") Even though Python 2.5 is part of the Mac OS X software package, you do need to make sure the optionally installed Apple Developer package is installed on your Mac.

If you already, at the outermost root level of your Mac's folder hierarchy, have a folder called Developer, you're fine. If not, you must create it by inserting your OS X 10.5 Install DVD and navigating to and then double-clicking Mac OS X Install DVD:Optional Installs:Xcode Tools:Xcode Tools.mpkg. You will be led by the installer program which opens through the necessary steps to install the Developer Tools package. These tools are necessary in the next stage of this procedure, that of installing and setting up the PyCrypto extensions to Python.


Step 3:

PyCrypto, the Python Cryptography Toolkit, is a package containing various cryptographic tools for the Python programming language. Its modules are going to be required later on in this set of instructions.

Windows users can obtain PyCrypto here (on that page, click on the link to pycrypto-2.0.1.win32-py2.6.exe). After downloading the .exe file, double-click on it to run the Setup Wizard. As long as you have already downloaded and installed Python as detailed above, the Wizard (after you click "Next >" on the introductory panel) will indicate Python 2.6 has been duly found in the Windows Registry, in C:\Python26\. The Wizard will accordingly use the subfolder C:\Python26\Lib\site-packages\ as its installation directory. After you click on "Next >" once more, you will see a "Ready to install" panel. Click "Next >" yet again to actually perform the installation. Then click "Finish" to exit the Wizard. You should now be able to locate a Crypto folder and also a pycrypto-2.0.1-py2.6.egg-info file in C:\Python26\Lib\site-packages\.

Mac users should go here and click on the "Download" button for PyCrypto 2.0.1. The pycrypto-2.0.1.tar.gz file you'll receive will most likely land right on your Desktop (depending on how you have your browser configured for downloads; if it doesn't download right to the Desktop, you can just move it there). Upon being double-clicked, the pycrypto-2.0.1.tar.gz file expands into a pycrypto-2.0.1 folder, also on the Desktop. You may move this folder wherever you like, or leave it right on the Desktop.

Next, Mac users need to click here to download PyCrypto_2.0.1_Installer.app.zip, which, when unzipped, expands into an AppleScript app called PyCrypto_2.0.1_Installer. Double click PyCrypto_2.0.1_Installer to run the installer itself. It will ask you to navigate to and choose your pycrypto-2.0.1 folder, the one you created in the preceding paragraph of these instructions. Once you have clicked "Choose," PyCrypto_2.0.1_Installer will open a window in the Mac's Terminal application and execute some Unix commands in it. The first time you use the PyCrypto_2.0.1_Installer, the Unix commands will produce a large amount of output in the Terminal window, due to the fact that the PyCrypto software is, for the first time on your computer, undergoing a "build." Any subsequent times you use PyCrypto_2.0.1_Installer, an "install" without a preliminary "build" will be done, and you will see less output in the Terminal window. In either case, the final line of the Terminal-window output should say "Writing /Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/pycrypto-2.0.1-py2.5.egg-info".

At this point you can quit Terminal. If you look in Finder — starting at the root-level directory, not at the Home folder for your user account — and navigate to /Library/Python/2.5, you should find a site-packages folder. In it there should now be a Crypto folder and a pycrypto-2.0.1-py2.5.egg-info file.


Step 4:

At this point, you have obtained the Adobe Digital Editions application (or else the Sony Reader Library app) and authorized your computer by activating your Adobe ID and password (or you have activated ADE anonymously); installed Python (on a Windows platform only); made sure you have the Developer Tools installed (on a Mac only); and installed the PyCrypto cryptography tools within Python (on either a Windows PC or a Mac).

You are going to run two Python scripts in order to decrypt Adobe Digital Editions eBooks. I'll discuss the second of these two scripts in Step 6 below. The first Python script is designed to extract cryptographic key information from the Adobe Digital Editions desktop software that you now have installed and authorized on your computer.

For Windows, the script comes in a file called ineptkey_v43.pyw.zip, downloadable here.

For the Mac, the file ineptkeymac_v1.py.zip is downloadable here.

Whichever ZIP file you download, you need to expand it (unless your browser does that automatically for you). The Windows script expands as ineptkey_v43.pyw when you double-click it; the Mac's as ineptkeymac_v1.py. (On a Mac, if you can't get the ZIP file to expand by double-clicking it, then you can expand it manually using either Archive Utility or Stuffit Expander.)

To run the ineptkey_v43.pyw script on a Windows platform, you will open and run the script in the python app created in Step 2. To do that, right-click on ineptkey_v43.pyw and select Open With: python to designate the python.exe app. Or, if you instead select Open With: Choose Program ... , you can check "Always use the selected program to open this kind of file," and then select python and click "OK." From then on, you will be able to double-click any Python script file whose filename extension is .pyw, and it will automatically open in python.exe.

On a Mac, you will initially open ineptkeymac_v1.py in Build Applet. To do that, right-click on ineptkeymac_v1.py and select Open With: Build Applet. An application called ineptkeymac_v1 will appear in the same folder as ineptkeymac_v1.py. Double-click the ineptkeymac_v1 app to actually run the script.

I'll refer to these scripts generically as ineptkey. Having to be run only once, ineptkey derives a decryption key (sometimes called a "security certificate") which can then be used by the second script (see Step 6 below) to decrypt any Adobe Digital Reader eBook that you obtain and download. The decryption key/security certificate is saved by ineptkey in a new file called adeptkey.der. On Windows, adeptkey.der is placed in the folder that contains the ineptkey script itself; after the file has been generated, you can manually rename it if you like and/or move it wherever you like.

On a Mac, a File Save dialog allows you to specify in what folder (and by what name) to save adeptkey.der. You can move the adeptkey.der file (by whatever name) which contains the decryption key/security certificate into any folder you like.

Once you have used ineptkey once to obtain adeptkey.der, you never have to use it again (unless you someday re-authorize ADE on your computer with a different Adobe ID and password).

Notes: The AppleScript-based app ADEPTKey_Generator was formerly used on Macs to do what ineptkeymac_v1.py does, but it no longer works with the latest version of Adobe Digital Editions.

If you have any adeptkey.der files from either ADEPTKey_Generator on a Mac or versions of ineptkey prior to version 4.3 on Windows, you should trash them. They will no longer work in Step 6 below.


Step 5:

At this point, you are done with all the admittedly complex preliminary steps. You are ready to actually obtain and download some eBooks that are protected with Adobe ADEPT DRM-encryption. You can start to do so by visiting the Adobe Digital Editions Online Library. Obtain and download at least one Adobe-DRM'ed eBook that is in the "EPUB eBook" format specifically. (There is a Python script called ineptpdf that can decrypt Adobe-DRM'ed "PDF eBook" editions, but it is beyond the scope of this discussion.)

Note that when you buy an EPUB eBook from the Adobe Digital Editions Online Library, the Adobe Digital Editions software on your computer will open, if it's not already active, and the eBook will be downloaded automatically. The eBook will appear in "Reading View" in the ADE window, ready to read. (This is true if you are using the ADE software. If you are using Sony Reader software, I don't know exactly how all this works.)

With the newly downloaded eBook visible in Reading View, you can click on the READING menu and then on Item Info... . A window will open that shows, among other things, the File path: to where the downloaded eBook is stored on your computer.

On Windows XP, the eBook will normally be in the user's My Documents\My Digital Editions folder, the full path to which is C:\Documents and Settings\\My Documents\My Digital Editions.

On a Mac, the eBook file will normally be in the /Users//Documents/Digital Editions, a.k.a. ~/Documents/Digital Editions, folder.

On both operating systems, the name of the file will typically be (roughly) the same as the book title, usually with each space replaced by an underscore ('_') character. Some eBooks download with more cryptic file names. The filename extension will be .epub.

You should leave the downloaded file exactly where Adobe Digital Editions puts it, under its original name and filename extension. However, there's no law against making a copy of that file, putting it where you wish, and naming it what you wish. (However, it's definitely a good idea to retain the .epub extension.)

Once you have downloaded, located, and optionally duplicated one or more EPUB eBooks that use Adobe DRM encryption, you can move on to the next step.


Step 6:

The adeptkey.der file containing the ADEPT decryption key/security certificate — you generated it earlier in Step 4 in this set of instructions, remember? — can now be used, on either a Windows machine or a Mac, by the ineptepub Python script to decrypt downloaded ADE books.

For either a Windows platform or a Mac — the same script works on both — you can download the ineptepub_v2.pyw.zip file here. After you download it, just unzip the ZIP file to get the file ineptepub_v2.pyw.

Your browser may unzip the ZIP file automatically, so you won't have to. If it doesn't unzip the file automatically, then:

• On Windows XP (I'm not sure about other Windows versions), you can unzip the .zip file manually by double-clicking it and then clicking "Extract all files" under "Folder Tasks" in the window that opens. Otherwise, you can use the WinZip utility.
• On a Mac, you can unzip the .zip file manually using either Archive Utility or Stuffit Expander.

On Windows, you will next open and run the ineptepub_v2.pyw script in the python app created in Step 2. To do that, right-click on the ineptepub_v2.pyw script file and select Open With: python to use the python.exe app. If you instead select Open With: Choose Program ... , you can check "Always use the selected program to open this kind of file," and then select python and click "OK." From then on, you will be able to double-click any Python script file whose filename extension is .pyw, and it will automatically open in python.exe.

On a Mac, you should next change the .pyw filename extension to .py in a Get Info window in Finder. Finder will ask you to confirm your intention to change the extension; just click "Use .py." You should then double-click the ineptepub_v2.py script file to (try to) make the ineptepub_v2 app in the same folder. If the double-click method doesn't produce the ineptepub_v2 app file, then probably what has happened is that the script has (briefly) opened in Python Launcher instead. Python Launcher cannot deal with this particular script, so it quits right away. This time, just right-click the ineptepub_v2.py script file and choose Open With: Build Applet.

On Windows, when you open the ineptepub_v2.py script in python, in front of an empty python.exe window you'll see:


As you can see, you'll need to specify three files. The easiest way: click on the "..." button to the right of each file-entry field, then navigate to and select the requisite file for each:

1. For Key file, you'll select the decryption key/security certificate file created earlier, the one that by default has the name adeptkey.der.
2. For Input file, you'll select a file containing any previously downloaded Adobe Digital Editions eBook you want to decrypt. In Windows, the downloaded eBook will typically be stored in My Documents\My Digital Editions. It will have the filename extension .epub. (On a Mac, it will be in ~/Documents/Digital Editions, where '~' signifies the Home Directory for your user account. Again, the file will have the filename extension .epub.)
3. For Output file, you'll select a folder for and give a name to the file that is to contain the decrypted version of the eBook; you can put the decrypted output file anywhere you like in your folder hierarchy. You should make sure to specify the .epub extension for the output filename.
   

Then click on Decrypt. Within a second or so, the INEPT EPUB Decrypter window should say "File successfully decrypted." The decrypted output file should be right where you said to put it, using the file name and .epub extension you specified. If you double-click its icon, it will open in Adobe Digital Editions (even though it is no longer encrypted!). You can alternatively open it in any other eBook reading application, such as Stanza, that handles EPUBs.

You can now either perform one or more additional INEPT EPUB Decrypter decryptions or click Quit.

On a Mac, using ineptepub is about the same, though visually the user interface looks different. When you double-click on the ineptepub_v2, app, you will see:


It's like the Windows version, but without color. This time, behind the INEPT EPUB Decrypter window there's an empty Console window that you can just ignore, whereas in the Windows version, the window behind the INEPT EPUB Decrypter window is an empty python.exe window. You will (as for the Windows version above) use the "..." buttons to select Key file, Input file, and (the folder location and name of) Output file (don't forget to specify the .epub extension for the output file) then click Decrypt.

Remember, on a Mac, the Input file will normally be in ~/Documents/Digital Editions, where '~' signifies the Home Directory for your user account. This is the folder into which Adobe Digital Editions downloads eBooks. Again, the downloaded file will have the filename extension .epub.

Within seconds after you click Decrypt in the INEPT EPUB Decrypter window, you should see the message File successfully decrypted at the top of the window. You can now do further eBook decryptions, if you like.

After you finish doing eBook decryptions, just click Quit.


Step 7:

Once you have decrypted an eBook, you can open the decrypted eBook file in the free Stanza desktop application. The Mac version of Stanza can be obtained here, the Windows version here, and the iPhone/iPod Touch version here.

Once you have installed one of the desktop versions of Stanza, just open a decrypted eBook file in it. You will be able to read it right on your desktop.

Or, if you want to read it in Stanza for the iPhone/iPod Touch, follow the instructions here to transfer the book to your mobile device. (I find the "Sharing using Stanza Desktop" method works just fine.)


... And You're Done!

If you aren't done, then perhaps you ran into a problem? If so, check out Breaking Adobe DRM — Tips, Tricks, Workarounds for possible help. If you can't find the solution you need there, please post any questions you have as comments, either to this post or to that one.

You can get more details about the ineptkey and ineptepub Python scripts at Circumventing Adobe ADEPT DRM for EPUB.

eReaders To Come: Nook by Barnes & Noble

Nook is the name of the new eBook reader from Barnes & Noble:


Due to arrive on Nov. 30, 2009, its touch screen is the same size as that of Amazon's current Kindle 2: 6 inches, measured diagonally. One the Nook, that dimension pertains to the actual reading screen, exclusive of the color touchscreen control bar below the reading area.

Its price is also the same: $259.

The Kindle 2 looks like this:


It has a keyboard made of physical buttons, where Nook has a color touchscreen control bar. That control bar is positioned under a black & white reading screen that uses the same E Ink technology as the Kindle does. Aside from a pair of physical buttons at either side of the Nook reading screen that obviously are used to flip through electronic pages, the Nook lacks controls besides those on the color touch screen itself.

Nook and Kindle both download eBooks wirelessly, Nook using WiFi and Kindle using a cellphone network. They both have enough storage to hold roughly 1,500 books.

You can take PC World's "tour" of the Nook here.

eReaders To Come: Fujitsu's FLEPia

Fujitsu's FLEPia is said here to be the first eBook reader with color. It looks like this:



It can come with a black frame instead of white. Its 8-inch (measured diagonally) screen uses a new technology called "color e-paper" to produce images. It displays 260,000 colors, not just black, white, and shades of gray ... and it's said to do so "in high-definition." Like its rival technology, colorless E Ink, color e-paper does not require power for continuous display of a static image, consuming power only when it draws a new screen image.

Though FLEPia is of course rigid, the e-paper inside its frame can actually be flexed. Here's a YouTube video about it:



This page about FLEPia indicates, disappointingly, that redrawing the FLEPia screen takes fully 1.8 seconds, and that's when only 64 colors are in use. With all 260,000 colors, you'll ... have ... to ... wait ... an ... interminable ... 8 ... seconds. Apparently there's no way to force it into monochrome mode for faster page turns.

FLEPia's screen responds to pressure from its accompanying stylus. But it's not clear whether it also responds to fingers — assorted physical function buttons suggest that it doesn't. (The capacitive touchscreen on an iPhone is designed for finger manipulation; the FLEPia's touchscreen seems to be resistive instead.)

FLEPia incorporates wireless connectivity via WiFi (802.11b or g, but not the faster 802.11n) or Bluetooth (but what about cellphone networks). It wires to a computer via its mini-USB port. Its 4 GB of storage resides on a swappable SD card. That's enough space for 5,000 eBooks on a card you could (theoretically — don't try this at home) swallow!

Not just for reading eBooks, FLEPia comes with a Japanese version of the Windows CE 5.0 operating system on board. Here, a U.S. version will probably need to be supplied.

The battery life is nominally 40 hours, giving about 2,400 page turns between charges.

The weight of the FLEPia is only 385 grams, or under 14 ounces.

Embedded stereo speakers and a headphone jack allow audio playback of eBooks, suggesting a text-to-speech capability in FLEPia.

This press release about FLEPia's introduction for sale outside Japan says it supports two eBook formats that frankly won't fly in America: “BunkoViewer” (XMDF format; “bunko” refers to “library” in Japanese) and “T-Time” (.book format). So, clearly, FLEPia in the U.S.market will have to add at least one of the established eBook formats here.

FLEPia is already being sold in Japan for (gasp!) about $1,000.

Learn more about FLEPia in this preview, which includes a video showing the FLEPia (slowly) turning pages.

eReaders To Come: Plastic Logic

Two photos of the upcoming eBook reader from Plastic Logic:



It has a "broadsheet" 8.5-inch x 11-inch screen, making it bigger than the current size champion, the Kindle DX, while being even slimmer than the more petite regular Kindle.

Coverage of the new Plastic Logic entrant in the eBook reader wars can be found at:

• Plastic Logic E-Reader is Slimmer than Kindle DX
• New Barnes & Noble E-book Store to Power Plastic Logic Reader
• Hands-On With Plastic Logic Reader
  

The Plastic Logic has a touchscreen interface to help you access and read more than 700,000 titles at the Barnes & Noble eBook Store and elsewhere. The keyboard is a virtual, onscreen one. The screen is made of E Ink, as is the Kindle's, meaning that any one monochrome image can stay put for any amount of time without drawing down the battery. (But there's no backlight, so reading in the dark is out, and E Ink causes a distinct lag at each page turn.)

The Plastic Logic's touchscreen apparently supports both fingertip gestures and the use of an included stylus tool for scribbling annotations and notes.

Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity will keep users from having to cable their Plastic Logics to their computers to complete their book downloads.

Unlike rival readers, the Plastic Logic's huge screen lets you view things besides eBooks with no eyestrain: PDF files, Word documents, spreadsheets and even PowerPoint presentations can typically be displayed full-size.

It looks as if the B&N/Plastic Logic reader is going to support, as its main eBook format, the one called EPUB. EPUB is widely known as an "open" format that lacks DRM (Digital Rights Management) to prevent the copying and redistributing of eBook content. Plastic Logic users will thus be able to read (and redistribute) the hundreds of thousands of public-domain eBooks available from Google Books. But they'll also have access to hundreds of thousands of non-public-domain EPUB titles at the B&N Store, and they will in fact have so-called "Adobe ADEPT DRM" added to their EPUB content. Current bestsellers in that encrypted format will sell for $9.99.

Up in the air is whether this reader will, right away or in the future, handle the alternative DRM format that B&N subsidiaries FictionWise and eReader.com support, and that works on the Sony Reader. That format is referred to as "eReader format" and also as the .pdb format.

Adobe's ADEPT — which stands for "Adobe Digital Editions Protection Technology" — is used for DRM-protecting both EPUB and .pdb books. It's different from the DRM that Amazon uses on Kindle editions. My impression is that the B&N/Plastic Logic reader will eventually use both EPUB and .pdb eBooks and will turn into (or so its backers hope) a Kindle Killer par excellence.

eReaders To Come: IREX

Meet the IREX:


It's a soon-to-arrive device for reading eBooks — a rival to Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Reader — and according to the article Best Buy and Verizon Jump Into E-Reader Fray, you'll be able to buy the $399 touchscreen, Verizon 3G wireless (but not WiFi) IREX DR800SG at a kiosk inside your friendly local Best Buy store. (As one who has an AT&T 3G account for my iPhone, I'm wondering whether I'd need a separate plan for the IREX.)

"Starting this week," says the 9/22/09 article, "Best Buy is training thousands of its employees in how to talk about and demonstrate devices like the Sony Reader and IREX, and adding a new area to its 1,048 stores to showcase the devices. Best Buy previously sold e-book devices only on its Web site and in limited tests in stores."

The-eBook-Reader.com website has more about the IREX and also its predecessor iLiad eReaders (which didn't do very well) from the same company. Among the selling points of the IREX: it's "the first [dedicated] eBook reader other than the Amazon Kindle to offer free wireless service for quick and easy eBook downloads." Its 8.1-inch touchscreen makes it one of the bigger eReaders available. However, "you can't use your fingers for navigation; you have to use the [included] stylus."

Using the stylus — after a promised firmware upgrade — you'll be able to write stuff on the screen by hand, such as book annotations, that can then be converted to text and stored. But, sadly, "It seems the touchscreen doesn't serve much of a purpose at this point."

Here is a whole website dedicated specifically to the IREX.

At the main IREX website there is further information about this reader. PDF documents available there say it is "a sleek, 8.1‐inch, touch‐screen eReader," it "offers multi-mode 3G wireless capabilities," and it "supports multiple formats including industry standard ePub format and multiple DRM solutions, rather than a single, 'closed' proprietary format that locks content to a specific device."

Admittedly, that last item is a bit obscure. What does it mean?

First of all, "industry standard ePub format" refers to a format for eBooks which is being widely used for free-of-charge downloads of classic books that are in the public domain and no longer copyright protected. These digital editions can be distributed and redistributed for free — by anyone, to anyone, for any reason whatever.

So they do not need to be copy-protected, which is what DRM (Digital Rights Management) is all about.

The IREX publicity seems to imply that it will give access to multiple kinds of DRM-encoded, copy-protected eBooks: "supports multiple formats including ... multiple DRM solutions." But this PDF-format fact sheet shows that's a bit overstated. For, among "DRM solutions" in today's eBook world, there are two main biggies, the Amazon Kindle format and the so-called eReader format ... and IREX does not support the former, only the latter.

The IREX fact sheet gives "Adobe PDF, EPUB, Newspaper Direct, Fictionwise, eReader, TXT" as the formats supported natively by IREX. EPUB and TXT are typically not DRM-protected. Newspaper Direct is limited to delivering newspapers electronically, not books. Fictionwise and eReader both use the eReader format — since they are basically the same company! Only the ability to read DRM-protected Adobe PDF eBooks adds any real value, and this is a format that is also supported by the Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle DX (though not the less pricey Kindle proper — go figure).

Conspicuously absent on the IREX is the ability to download, unlock, and read Amazon Kindle eBooks. Also missing is support for Mobipocket, another DRM-protected format that is owned by ... you guessed it, Amazon.

This is not to say that the IREX is a bad deal. After all, it connects directly to the Barnes & Noble eBookstore — a big source for DRM-protected eBooks in the eReader format — just as the Kindle plugs you right into the Kindle Store at Amazon.com.

But the IREX is not going to be an eBook reader for all people. In fact, I'd say there is a proverbial eBook format war in progress: Amazon (cum Mobipocket) vs. everyone else (with Barnes & Noble as ringleader).

Until someone tells me different, I am under the impression that just about any eBook you can get for the Kindle, you can also get in eReader format for a Sony Reader or an IREX, albeit at not necessarily as low a price. But if you want to be able to tap into either eBook universe at will, your best bet still remains a multi-function mobile such as an iPhone. (See iPhone as eReader for more on that possibility.)