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Classics: The iPhone e-reader to rule them all?
There's no shortage of eBooks available for the iPhone and iPod touch [App Store link] however one of the latest releases Classics looks set to take the crown as the best around.The application comes with a dozen public-domain books ready for you to read: with more promised in future (free) updates. As you might expect, there's plenty of attention paid to the application's handling of your reading too: pressing home places a neat ribbon bookmark on the page you were reading, for example.
To see how Classics fared in day-to-day use, I read The Jungle Book on a 2-hour train journey home. I'm a stickler for actually reading a physical copy of a book - and no big fan of eReaders to date - however I was pleasantly surprised at how readable the books were: for someone who loathes reading books on a screen, I was absolutely happy to keep on reading.
My only gripe about the application is that swiping to the next page [which cues a stylish animation] takes too long: however as I'm something of a fast reader, and devour each page rather quickly, I'd imagine this isn't something most users will experience.
Classics is currently just $2.99 on the App Store: there's no word currently on when this introductory price ends.
Comments
8
Subscribe to commentsJuliana PeñaNov 10th 2008 9:13AM
Is there anything like this for the BlackBerry?
tejumangDec 12th 2008 12:05PM
For my Love towards this App, wanted to inform the wanna-buy-this-app people that classics is NOW ON SALE!
Classics is now available for a limited-time sale price of just $0.99.
log on to http://www.classicsapp.com/ or Use the search button in he Apps store!!
JeffNov 10th 2008 9:33AM
Compared to Stanza??? Better? Worse? Same?
There's no setting to change the speed of that animation?
Phillip RyuNov 10th 2008 11:15AM
Hey, just a recommendation regarding the page flip speed – try a quick drag towards towards the left side of the screen near the left edge of the interface, the page should flip much faster then.
topbar1Nov 10th 2008 12:37PM
I'm impressed that you can read at 425 words per minute on an iPhone with slow page turning every ~94 words for two hours--if true.
JackDangersNov 10th 2008 2:58PM
I really have enjoyed Classics. I don't mind the page-flipping animation, and really enjoy how responsive it is. And, I can't wait to see what books are added with the future updates. I love that there are such amazing works to read that are under no particular company's control. I'd love the ability to add titles, though, if the Classics team published a standard format for their reader.
bcellreceptorNov 11th 2008 2:42AM
I recently read my first few ebooks (on my iPhone). I'd never read an ebook before and was surprised at how easy it was. I use Stanza. I recently tried out Classics and must say that I wasn't all that impressed (compared to Stanza) and therefore uninstalled Classics. Reading quality was similar on both programs, but Stanza seemed much more configurable. The largest, and most important, advantage of Stanza is the number of books available. Classics has something like 10 books available. Stanza, on the other hand, can access any available book. Therefore, there are a lot of books available including any of the greater than 25,000 books on Project Gutenberg.
Seems like a no-brainer to me.
tejumangDec 12th 2008 11:58AM
These days, it is difficult to carry books every where one goes..
I had stopped reading e-books when I started reading the real ones for the experience of the physical book.. this App has me do it again..
Classics was meant to be for people who for the love of reading the physical book will take that chance of carrying the book everywhere, THAT experience has been successfully ported to the iPod touch & the iPhone platform...
Kudos to Andrew Kaz & Phill Ryu for bringing this solution to this Platform.