eReader is coming to the Blackberry, as TeleRead community members know from Chris Meadows’ posts.
And now here’s some fresh, helpful reassurance from eReader/Fictionwise’s Scott Pendergrast. “We are hard at work on a Blackberry version of the reader,” he tells an FW e-mail list. “I think we’ll have a beta out early next year. It’s a priority.”
Great. Maybe next time a political campaign sells Blackberrys at $20 each, the press will find sexy romance novels on them, not just the e-mail addresses of political types and reporters.
Detail: Mobipocket runs on the Blackberry already. But its appeal is waning because of the lack, so far, of an iPhone version. Not to mention its harsh, clumsy DRM. eReader’s DRM, while not as good as none, is far gentler on users.
Update, 10:28 a.m.: Verbatim, I’ll reproduce anther message to the Fictionwise list—this one from Steve Pendergrast, who, along with Scott, his brother, owns FW/eReader.
Hello,
We have blackberry running in our lab but it’s not baked enough yet for real customers. We’re pressing forward with significant resources, it is a very high priority for us.
The reason blackberry is taking longer than iphone is not due to our lack of commitment to the platform, it’s due to blackberry being a far more difficult project technically that just plain takes longer.
You see, all of the other platforms we support are written in C++. Blackberry requires us to recode every bit of our app in mobile java. Hence, it is not a small effort, it’s not just a “port”, it’s a 100% rewrite of the code. By comparison supporting iphone was relatively easy because we already had a Mac version of ereader as a base to start with and much of the underlying OS on iphone is the same as Mac. On blackberry, we had to start literally with a blank screen and begin coding from line 1, using our C++ implementations as a reference. Brand new code always has more bugs, and those bugs simply take time to work out. It’s as simple as that.
I know many of our customers are frustrated because we’re not naming an availability date for blackberry. It’s not that we’re trying to be secretive, it’s that after 25 years of software engineering experience, I know how these things proceed. I don’t want to name a date then slip the date later because the product is not yet stable enough. This is brand new code, as I said before, and I will have to be very certain that it’s stable before I announce any dates. All I can say is, we’re making progress, and I don’t think it will be too much longer before we have at least a beta available.
-Steve P.
It’s great to see that Fictionwise is taking eReader to the next level. For at least a couple of years, eReader looked to become the next Microsoft Reader–a useful multiplatform reading application that was dead in the water.
As several TeleRead regulars have noted, it’s important that formats have legs–so we can move our books to whatever new devices we purchase.
Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com
I own a bunch of Ereader format books that I’ve purchased over the years on both my Palm OS and WinMo OS platforms (Centro and Treos). I’ve moved over to BlackBerry and I am really looking forward to the BlackBerry version. I check my Ereader email faithfully every time it is sent to me, so I hope that the coders have a lot of success and we can see the beta soon. Mobipocket just doesn’t work on all PDB books, so Ereader is a must for me. Once the new version is out, I’ll return to buying my books from Ereader.com.
Any updates on the release of eReader yet? I’m still anxiously waiting, and checking the ereader.com website each and every week.
I agree with Jack, I have a lot of ebooks from years on my Palm and basically only read ebooks now. The delay on the Blackberry (Bold), although understandable from the above explanation, is very frustrating for us. I bought the IPod Touch, which is excellent, to keep reading but don’t always have it with me. Please HURRY with teh BB version.
Eric
Fictionwise announced ereader for blackberry in beta format. I downloaded it and so far it’s working very well.
I’ve got it now too and I agree it seems to work really well. Thanks to Fictionwise for getting this out to us BlackBerry users!