Comments on: Does the iPhone flunk as a textbook-reader? http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/how-much-should-students-rely-on-the-iphone-for-textbook-reading/ News & views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:35:03 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Richard Maseles http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/how-much-should-students-rely-on-the-iphone-for-textbook-reading/comment-page-1/#comment-1144669 Richard Maseles Tue, 08 Sep 2009 15:58:59 +0000 http://www.teleread.org/2009/09/06/how-much-should-students-rely-on-the-iphone-for-textbook-reading/#comment-1144669 My take on the NYT article was that "CouseSmart" really took the lazy way to e-publish by simply putting PDFs out for iPhones-- the user has to scroll both up and down and side to side just to read a single page. The lovely picture of text on the iPhone was seductive, but misleading. Worse, "CourseSmart" (I put their name in ironic quotes because I don't think they're very smart about this at all) requires the user to download each page, creating a lag time of 9-13 seconds per download-- and if they want to go back to see a page they've previously read, they have to download it again. What I see is a company rushing a lousy product to market because, well, they want a product on the market. I hope the market rejects this deeply flawed product. My take on the NYT article was that “CouseSmart” really took the lazy way to e-publish by simply putting PDFs out for iPhones– the user has to scroll both up and down and side to side just to read a single page. The lovely picture of text on the iPhone was seductive, but misleading. Worse, “CourseSmart” (I put their name in ironic quotes because I don’t think they’re very smart about this at all) requires the user to download each page, creating a lag time of 9-13 seconds per download– and if they want to go back to see a page they’ve previously read, they have to download it again.

What I see is a company rushing a lousy product to market because, well, they want a product on the market. I hope the market rejects this deeply flawed product.

]]> By: Levi Montgomery http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/how-much-should-students-rely-on-the-iphone-for-textbook-reading/comment-page-1/#comment-1144212 Levi Montgomery Sun, 06 Sep 2009 14:35:23 +0000 http://www.teleread.org/2009/09/06/how-much-should-students-rely-on-the-iphone-for-textbook-reading/#comment-1144212 You say novels may be a different story. I disagree. As a novelist who leans far toward OCD in terms of my control over page formatting, I must say that I'm not at all happy with any of the current e-readers. I don't see any need for the user to be able to override any formatting choices made by the author/editor/compositor/whoever, or indeed, any advantage at all in doing so. I'm very concerned that the road we're on will take us to a place where there is simply no such thing as a bad word division or a bad page break, because all divisions and breaks are fine; a place where all the text in a given book will be identical, not just to all of the other text in the book, but to all text in any book; a place where white space ceases to exist, typeface choice ceases to carry meaning, and page layout is a meaningless anachronism. A place, in short, where I'm sorely afraid reading will cease to be a pleasure and become, instead, simply another chore. You say novels may be a different story. I disagree.

As a novelist who leans far toward OCD in terms of my control over page formatting, I must say that I’m not at all happy with any of the current e-readers. I don’t see any need for the user to be able to override any formatting choices made by the author/editor/compositor/whoever, or indeed, any advantage at all in doing so.

I’m very concerned that the road we’re on will take us to a place where there is simply no such thing as a bad word division or a bad page break, because all divisions and breaks are fine; a place where all the text in a given book will be identical, not just to all of the other text in the book, but to all text in any book; a place where white space ceases to exist, typeface choice ceases to carry meaning, and page layout is a meaningless anachronism.

A place, in short, where I’m sorely afraid reading will cease to be a pleasure and become, instead, simply another chore.

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