Apple's answer to Kindle's bookstore arrives on iPad
iBooks – Apple’s answer to the Kindle – is sleek and simple. The default UI is a wooden bookshelf with the cover art of your ebooks, although you can also view by title, author or category. Unlike the Kindle’s austere monochrome display, iBooks enjoy full colour illustrations and attractive page turn animations, with a speedy scroll bar along the bottom. You can swap font size and typeface at the prod of a finger, add bookmarks, refer to a pop-dictionary or search the text. Pressing the store button rotates the bookshelf to an iTunes-alike store with special offers, features and bestsellers for both paid books (a limited selection of bestsellers) and free titles (an equally limited run of out-of-copyright classics).
There’s nothing like the breadth or depth of the Kindle store on offer, and you can’t order physical books or digital newspapers or magazines here. The reading page lets you adjust brightness but the iPad’s LCD is never going to be a match for real e-ink – which might make Amazon’s Kindle iPad app (free) worth a look. It’s not as glossy or smooth as the bookstore – purchases involve flipping back and forth with the Safari browser – but you can at least share your purchases with an iPhone, PC or Kindle itself.
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