So long, Kindle! Well... sort of.
In my last post on the subject, I think I made it pretty clear that I'd had just about enough with how Kindle handles third-party ebooks. From converting .ePubs to .mobi files, sending those files to the cloud, and hoping to high heavens that the metadata attached persisted longer than a few days, I got tired pretty quickly. All of that, of course, follows after the grief I spent trying to track down digital copies of books I physically own anyway. After a month of running into obstacles like those listed above, I'm moving on.
There are features I truly loved the Kindle app. The percentage of a book read on my bookshelf for example, or the UI of the thing, or the ebooks I received for free from Kindle First come to mind. Alas, far simpler needs outweigh those pleasantries. Needs that are met by a first-party solution, not an outsourced one.
Hello iBooks!
Apart from a sticky beginning with iBooks yesterday evening, I've successfully synced 14 Star Wars novels to my iPhone. In all, it took about 20 minutes to work out the kinks and get everything the way I wanted. No need for Calibre conversions or updated metadata. Everything synced perfectly into my collection from the iBooks app on my Mac to the reader on my mobile.
It is strange that—although Apple moved ebooks from iTunes to its dedicated iBooks app a few years ago—I'm still required to sync my books through iTunes to get them where I want them to go. I have the iCloud space, sync them away! Grabbing a spare lightning cord isn't a dealbreaker, but it is a nuisance in an otherwise pleasurable eReading experience.
Until Amazon finds a better way to support third-party reading content within their Kindle ecosystem, I'm going with the home team. iBooks isn't the most pretty app, but the flexibility makes it easy to disregard any tradeoffs.