A Letter To Steve Jobs
July 22, 2007
Dear Steve,
I am sorry to bother you but I have sent several requests through the various channels at Apple and I figured ‘hey, why not do what I do best?’ and Blog a letter to the “GO TO” guy at the company I love. The one guy at Apple I know from watching all your various presentations on YouTube, knows how to use the internet effectively.
So Steve, to begin, I love my iPhone. I splurged and went and bought the top of the line 8 gig model with all the excitement I had when I bought my first Apple IIe. Yes Steve, I have supported you and your company for a long long time.
But… I have noticed as a person now writing eBooks with my partner that someone forgot to do two really very important things on the iPhone that would be so simple to fix quickly and easily. Can I request those two functions from you? They will only take a limited amount of effort I promise.
1) Put Adobe Reader on the iPhone. With only one change in order to use it better… let it work in the landscape mode like the internet browser. This way I can read the eBooks I have purchased in comfort. I look forward to the day iTunes will sell PDF files (eBooks) especially the ones I write but I know that is a much larger task for you.
2) Allow iTunes to copy over my PDF files (eBooks) I keep in a playlist in iTunes on my eMac and put them in iTunes on my iPhone to be opened by that Adobe Reader we were just talking about. You showed real brilliance for allowing me to use iTunes as a library for PDF files (eBooks) on my eMac. I would like to see this ability copied to my iPhone.
Those are the only two things I really can think of that would make my iPhone priceless to me.
Thank you for your time Mr. Jobs and Good Work on the iPhone.
A happy Apple customer,
TeddyPig
iPhone For eBooks ~ A Review
July 2, 2007
Dang I spent all this time writing a review for iPhone using eBooks and it is gone…
Strange, OK I am at work but lucky I have my camera so here we go again.
I just bought this thing Friday but the first thing I want to do with my iPhone was try and read a PDF file. I was successful but there are certain things you should know before purchasing an iPhone for this use.
Apple has locked the iPhone down. It currently accepts only files from programs like iTunes and iPhoto and iCal and your contacts from Yahoo etc etc. The great thing is the eMail which can be setup to use Gmail.
So that my good readers is how I got the PDFs to the iPhone. I eMailed them to my self. I am sure very quickly here they will open the SDK up to third party developers but I expect it will take a little time before this is fixed. Maybe the hackers out there will fix this quicker than that.
As you can see here once you receive the PDF files in email the iPhone identifies them and shows you it can display them. So here you have it the iPhone supports PDF files.
There is the front cover of a pretty eBook on your iPhone. Crystal clear and very sharp. The screen brightness adjusts itself to the type of light you are viewing it in. This is a killer app.
Now here is the fly in the ointment. The default view of the PDF has a very small font size and unlike videos and the internet application you can not flip the phone to show you the PDF in wide screen which would make the font much more readable. I hope they add an Adobe Reader and the ability to flip the screen soon here. When that is done the iPhone will be a full blown eBook Reader for the smart shopper.
All is not lost though folks. The iPhone does allow you to zoom into the PDF on the screen thus allowing the font to become readable the only issue is that you will then have to use your finger to move the page so that you can read the eBook. Not a good solution for normal use but it can be workable.
So in summary the iPhone makes calls, shows videos and plays music not to mention it gives you internet access and in a pinch it even lets you read PDFs but it is not fully functioning as an eBook Reader YET.
The facts are Adobe has a reader already built for OSX which is what is running under the pretty buttons on an iPhone in all it’s glory and I am sure they can easily adapt their existing Reader to the iPhone. So that means this issue can easily be resolved in the coming months.
I think this does mean the end of the single function expensive eBook Readers. The iPhone is powerful, sleek, sexy, and from what I have shown you here is fully capable of doing the very simple task of acting as an eBook Reader without much effort. It’s only a matter of time.
Tags: eBook Tools, iTunesTeddypig Hacks An eBook: iTunes For eBooks
June 25, 2007
One thing I realized recently since I started buying eBooks is I had no way of really tracking them besides dumping them into a folder on my hard drive. I have tons of them now and I found myself starting to purchase eBooks that I already had. That’s when I knew something must be done.
I buy PDF files instead of the myriad of other formats available. Why? Because the lowly PDF file has honestly transcended “just being” a format created by Adobe. PDF is now supported across the board by just about every operating system you can name. Most, if not, all of the products I use in my job as a system administrator have PDF manuals that are available online. There are tons of products that let you read them and the format may not be the most cutting edge but it is highly adaptable and always readable. I tend to suspect the usefulness of any gadget or software that cannot support the common and proven to be useful PDF file.
So back to my pile-o-eBooks… What to do? Well I recently took a shot at converting an eBook to a text file to read on my iPod. It sorta worked but I do not recommend it because quite frankly the actual experience of reading an eBook on an iPod sucks major ass. But… iPods use iTunes and I read somewhere that iTunes recognizes PDFs. OH! Hmmmmm…
First download iTunes from Apple, it’s free you know. Now, after it installs open it up and let’s get started.
Say you are on Samhain and you see the new J. L. Langley book My Fair Captain for sale and you just have to have it because it is J. L. Langley and she is so cool. You purchase it and download it and you get a PDF file from Samhain that says myfaircaptain.pdf well that’s great but the file does not tell you who wrote it or any other useful information does it? Usually I tend to rename the file like JLL_myfaircaptain.pdf so I at least have an idea how to identify it and then stick it in my eBooks folder.
But now I have iTunes opened I can drag that file into iTunes. Notice iTunes does not erase the original when you drag it in? It just makes a nice copy for you and stashes it in it’s own application library system. Is that nice or what?
Once the file is listed and is sitting there in your iTunes you will notice the only information is the name of the file and there are all these columns that mean nothing to an eBook. So select View at the top of the application window and select View Options which brings up a little box and then I make sure only Artist, Date Added, Year and Comment are checked because that is all I think I really need. So click the OK button after making your selections and all those extra columns go away.
Now “right click” on the listing of the PDF file you just dragged into iTunes and select Get Info.
Then select the Info tab in the box that pops up.
Now just fill out Name with the series title *If applicable* and eBook title. Artist with the author’s name. Year it was published and I use the Comment to remind me what publisher the eBook came from.
Once that is all filled out click the OK button and you now have all the information you need about the eBook file you just put into iTunes.
Now try this. double click that My Fair Captain listing…
Up pops the Adobe reader and you are reading the eBook. Excellent!
But that’s not all sports fans!
Check this out, another free iTunes trick… Put a blank CD-ROM in your computer drive. Select File at the top of the application window and then select Back Up To Disc…
Your whole PDF library that you just spent the time to list in iTunes is now being backed up to a CD-ROM for ever and ever and ever. AMEN!
