On 03/01/2011 01:32 AM, a@aboq.org wrote:
the iPhone's inferior LCD screen.
A hahahahah! Marcello, you never actually laid eyes on an iPhone 4, right? It's the best screen ever employed on a mobile device, that much is clear and the common consensus among experts and lay folks alike.
Hail pope Steve I. Its funny how when I state my preferences you are quick to point them out as purely personal preferences that don't matter, but when you state your personal preferences you make them sound like gospel. You even cite vaporous experts (which experts?) and vaporous lay folk (what lay folk?). Now go back to reading Apple's press releases. I don't own an iPhone4 yet (Apple are you listening?) but I have compared the Nexus and iPhone 4 screens dozens of times and I preferred the Nexus in most lighting situations, especially at night.
But it's useless for long-term reading due to the tiny screen.
It is just right for novels and for any text where you don't have to go back too often. Granted, I wouldn't read Kant on a phone, but I don't find myself reading Kant all too often.
Not at all: 9.7 inches is exactly right; not too big, not too small. For example, I would definitely find the 7-inch screen of the Samsung Galaxy Tab too small. Not to mention the iPhone or Nexus One -- good enough for short-term reading "on the run", but not for serious reading.
Serious reading? The kind with a plushy red background?
Totally useless! Give Stanza a try, Marcello, and you'll see you can flip pages in Stanza by lightly tapping and/or (!) mini-swiping *any* part of the iPad's/iPhone's screen. That way of turning pages is *way* superior over fumbling for volume keys.
I had to use Stanza quite a lot when I wrote the PG OPDS catalog. Nifty, but, no, thank you! The volume keys alone make Aldiko superior to Stanza. The volume keys happen to be in the exact right position so you can hit them while holding the phone to your ear. You don't have to move your fingers at all, they work with just a light press. Now compare that to having to move your thumb all the way from holding the phone on the side to in front of the screen, then doing some swipe motion, then putting the thumb back where it can hold the phone. Also, to tap the screen you have to move a digit in front of the screen thus hiding a portion of what you are reading. If the digit is the thumb and you hold the phone in your right hand and you are reading a LTR script then you obscure the very last words you need to read before the page turn. Compare that to the volume buttons, which you reach from behind the screen. (Just for fun I measured how many pages I can turn in 10 seconds using swipe vs. volume buttons. On Stanza I can turn 23 pages in 10 secs. On Aldiko I can turn 61 pages in 10 secs.) "Swipe" for page turn is the archetypical user interface faux-pas. Swiping is an analog command, suited for scrolling, where you control the amount of scrolling by the height of the swipe. But page turning? You don't want to turn a little less or a little more. You just want to turn. The appropriate user interface element for that is a button.
It wont fall out of your hand like the iPhone if you try to hold and swipe with one hand.
Marcello, you *don't* need to swipe at all while using Stanza on the iPhone or iPad. All you need is a light tap
Even for a light tap you have to move your thumb. That might not seem a big deal as long as you hold your phone palms up, because then gravity alone holds it in your hand. But if you hold the phone palms down, like when laying on your back, it tends to escape.
"We only have Aldiko on Android, but it can't compete with Stanza. Please give us Stanza for Android!" I'm sure you can easily google that debate for ya. :-P
That is not an argument because if you can google 100 people that prefer Stanza I can google 100 that prefer Aldiko. So what?
You can read DRMed epubs on Aldiko, you cannot on Stanza.
Of course you can, after you spend 2 seconds with the fine drag-and-drop utility called DeDrm.
Of course you have to buy a Mac for that. Of course you have to transfer your books to the Mac and then back to the iPhone. Of course this is illegal.
In a few months it will be way ahead of the unmaintained Stanza.
Stanza was last updated a few days ago, like I reported. The above is only your prediction, Marcello, but based on the collection of absurdly biased statements you've just made in your post, it's hard to put much credence in your predictions. :-)
Stanza is an epub reader owned by a company that has staked its future on the mobi format. Unless Amazon doesn't embrace epub, Stanza is dead. It isn't hard to predict that an unmaintained product will soon be surpassed. Therefore I give you that prediction for free. -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster@gutenberg.org