Some more thoughts on Kindle v iBook

I've been using my iPad to read books pretty much since I bought it, and I've bought maybe a dozen iBooks and Kindle titles (as well as a ton of free, classic texts). I have, therefore, read enough to comment on the experience.

There were two real criticisms of reading on the iPad. First, the backlit LCD screen of the iPad was felt to have a disadvantage over the passive e-ink display of the Kindle. Second, Amazon's huge library gave them a head start in terms of content.

The first of these is likely to be a personal preference thing. I haven't spent any time with the Kindle hardware, but using the iPad for an extended period of reading isn't something I have found to be tiring. You might be different, but if you play with the settings in either the Kindle or iBooks apps you'll probably be able to find some combination of colour scheme and brightness setting that suits you.

The second problem is a bit more real. Amazon's library is larger and, for all the books I've checked, cheaper. This means that my default store for books is Amazon's website rather than Apple's iBooks store, even though, to be honest, I'd rather buy through iBooks. Apple's selection is also much smaller than Amazon's and it doesn't seem to be growing very fast.

So if you've got an iPad you probably don't need to buy a Kindle. If you've got a Kindle and you only ever want to read books you probably don't need to buy an iPad. However, if you've got neither, you can afford the iPad and you want to do something more than read a book, the iPad is the obvious choice.