iPad brings new eBook application from Apple: iBooks

Along with the iPad comes a new application known as iBooks. This application was created by Apple, not a third party developer, and is backed by partners such as Penguin, Macmillion, Simon & Shuster, etc. Interestingly enough, Steve Jobs did give Amazon and their Kindle credit in this category in saying, “Now Amazon has done a great job of pioneering this…we’re going to stand on their shoulders for this.”

iBooks uses the industry standard ePub format and also comes with a store right in the application that allows for the purchase of books. When it comes to viewing books for sale, there is an extremely clean bookshelf-like user interface. When it comes to reading books, it appears sort of like it would in physical media, except on a screen (imagine using a camera to view a book page through).

On top of just serving as a reader, it also allows you to edit some of the settings such as which style of text you use and how large that text is. When turning a page, the animation is much like that of a real book and looks really slick on the iPad, which we’ve already seen can render graphics for games pretty well.