I’m liking the iPad so far, it’s better than expected as an eBook reader. It has pluses and minuses over the Sony PRS-5051. One of the minuses is a bug on the font rendering on some, but not all, of my eBooks. The bottom of the g hangs below the page and appears on the next.
And it’s in the correct position as you can see when I take out the bottom/top of the pages.
It’s much more annoying for me than the justified text (at the moment anyway, the iPad’s big enough but it would be crap on the iPhone).
A second issue that all eBook readers have but I was hoping Apple would fix is the crappy way eBooks are sold. See this for and example what I’m on about, I can pay 59p for Doodle Jump or a bunch of other apps on the app store and get it updated free of charge. But if I find a typo, or 100 pages missing, in a book there’s a refund or nothing.
If publishers want to adapt better than the music and film industries surely the best way is to take advantage of the technology. If I see a typo in a printed book I get that it can’t be fixed, but if I’m paying nearly the same2 for an eBook that has DRM, can’t be shared and can’t be sold the least I should get is the words spelt right. Right?
1 if someone releases a 5 inch e-ink without the huge bezel (the 5″ Sony is barely smaller than the 6″) it will be a definite purchase as it will improve the size/weight/readability over the iPad
2 part of this is due to the stupid VAT on software, which includes eBooks, paper books exclude VAT