Comments on: App vs App: Classics vs Stanza eBook Readers for the iPhone

By: Christopher Estano

Christopher Estano — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:58:45 +0000

I was recently introduced to the Beamitdown app and was thoroughly impressed. Sure it may be fun to flick a wrist and turn a page, however, as Dennis Morin stated above is such. Should the app not just vanish? Think about this. Have you really never experienced the intamacy of reading a book and just found yourself lost in the moment. Truthfully the only drawback to those moments is having to turn the page. That is the beauty of this integration. I personally, getting “more into the story” tend to read faster. With a mere tilt you effortlessly speed up the text and keep the fluidity of the moment. As for text size: It is wonderful not having to put my glasses on to read. I AM HOOKED!

By: Robert MacEwan

Robert MacEwan — Fri, 22 May 2009 23:25:31 +0000

I’d love to see a hack for converting a PDF to a “book” to be read through the Classics App.

By: peter

peter — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 12:41:59 +0000

problem i ahve with stanza 1.7 is when i am connected to wi-fi and want to download books from on-line cat–stanza goes to my last book so fast i cannot select on-line cat

By: iPhone book

iPhone book — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:48:29 +0000

Auto scrolling does sound like a great feature. Reminds me of the TelePrompTer a news reporter might use. But there is something nice about just flicking upwards on the screen of the iPhone that makes it fun to use while you are reading.

By: kilsey

kilsey — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 06:37:49 +0000

I'm sorry, but I'm not a fan of the public-domain book repackaging scheme that Beamitdown seems to be.

The Accelerometer-based scroll control is a neat idea but autoscroll has been available in the Palm eReader for years - this is not a new concept. It's just one of the first time it's been included on the iPhone. It won't be the last, I'm sure. Unfortunately, your only real competitive advantage is very repeatable by other developers. If Stanza integrates the scrolling functionality, what separates you from them?

I'd be more impressed to see you make a standalone reader and build in hooks for content acquisition like Stanza or eReader - selling free content for a dollar and cluttering the App Store with several dozen books is lame. Let me load my own content on there. Or strike a deal with a non-public domain provider.

By: rabidreader

rabidreader — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:55:23 +0000

There are a lot more (and better) options for reading books on the iphone. If anyone wants more detail, and a broader range of apps, see: http://www.teleread.org/blog/2008/12/11/iphone-e-book-review-v20/

By: Dennis Morin

Dennis Morin — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:14:22 +0000

The iPhone has a very small screen compared to a Kindle or books. The effective use of the iPhone as a book reader, therefore, requires requires a very different approach to reader design. The Classics app has lots of very pretty graphics and animations, but in the end, it does not wear very well. The small text size promotes eye strain and the cute page turning animation distracts the reader from total immersion in the material. A reader should not call attention to itself, it should disappear. The best reader is the one you are not aware of. At BeamItDown Software, we took an entirely different approach to reader design. We did not try to be pretty, we tried to be invisible and we succeeded. Our reader smoothly scrolls large font text at a user controlled rate. There are no pages to turn and nothing to distract you from the book you are reading. We think it is the best approach to reading on a small screen and the testimonials of our users seem to corroborate this conclusion. People who try it just love it. People who normally need glasses to read have no trouble reading without them because we let you read in font sizes up to 34 points. It you did this with a paging approach, you would be turning the page everyu two seconds. with scrolling text, it is not a problem.

If it gives you great pleasure to move book icons around in a virtual bookcase, then by all means buy the Classics. If you actually want to read some of the books then we suggest that you try one of the BeamItDown books or collections to experience the best reader technology for the iPhone. Some of our books are free so you can try it out at no risk whatsoever. We think you will not be disappointed.

By: Dyvim

Dyvim — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 22:10:55 +0000

Turning pages is so last century. I prefer a reader that just lets you scroll vertically through the entire book as you read. ReaddleDocs does this (as does Safari if you’re reading html or text books hosted on a web site)- I wonder if Stanza has that as an option. Of course with such a big “page” remembering your position and navigation controls are essential (which ReaddleDocs has but Safari doesn’t). But ReaddleDocs doesn’t let you customize the font size and renders text quite small.

By: kilsey

kilsey — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 21:03:44 +0000

Stanza does have a page curl effect - it's in the settings when you've got a book open. They should probably make it a global setting, though. Ultimately, the turning of the page, while a neat parlour trick for Classics, is pretty useless in the context of actually reading (IMHO, anyway).

The Fictionwise deal gives Stanza a huge library to choose from, and most titles there are Kindle-compatible, for those who might want to read on both devices.

By: Staton Honore

Staton Honore — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 20:56:47 +0000

Ereader needs to be included in this matchup. It has access to he whole fictionwise ebooks online library and is customizable as well and free!

By: Dalekkiller

Dalekkiller — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 20:47:38 +0000

I love Stanza and the customization makes it really comfortable for me to read as I prefer a coloured background and, depending on how good my sight is, larger print. It seems to have a fairly large library and there’s been a couple of articles about publishers offering books in Stanza. I guess each e-reader has its merits but which ever one you choose, you’ll have a potentially huge book collection which fits in your pocket – handy to dip into on a bus/train journey or whenever you fancy a quick read.

By: Benoit Cerrina

Benoit Cerrina — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 20:41:04 +0000

I actually use BookShelf to read books on the iphone. I find that it support more formats than the other two (classic’s selection is too limited in particular and at least when I last tried stanza I couldn’t get books from Baen’s webscription on it). I am surprised that you do not include it in this comparison specially considering that I think it is much more of a competitor to stanza than classic is

By: John

John — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 20:38:38 +0000

Stanza also shows you where you are in a chapter, and a slider allows you move within a chapter. Classics does neither. It will save your place where you leave off, but otherwise offers no navigation within chapters or books. This is a pretty severe limitation – I like to know how many pages I’ve read of a chapter. Stanza is really amazing in the choice and flexibility. Classics looks good, but that’s about it.

By: Tarick

Tarick — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 20:22:33 +0000

I’ve got stanza and it’s excellent.a lot of books and magazines to choose from.Good review by the way.

By: The Reptile

The Reptile — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 19:09:33 +0000

I agree with your conclusions. Classics has the usability and readability nailed. Stanza is all about content and availability and has tons of books available and a whole lot more on the way.

In the battle between the iPhone vs Kindle, the iPhone may have already won. Stanza has more downloads than Kindle has readers sold. And with a large and growing content base of free and for fee books my only advice is save the Kindle money for fee-based content on Stanza.

By: Justin Noel

Justin Noel — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 19:05:31 +0000

I've got both Stanza and Classics. I read many short stories on Stanza and really enjoyed using it. Check out Cory Doctorow's books! Stanza is a great way to read some very high quality books.

I tried Classics for a few days. The problem was that none of the books in the app were all that interesting to me. The page turn feature is a bit gimmicky after the 10th time. Without compelling reading material, Classics becomes kind of useless.