Books that are Apps

I downloaded my first Book as an App, and this is major selling point for the new iPad, so I thought I would try this out.

I was disappointed and feel that this is not worth it.

I'm planning to travel to europe, so I decided to download the City Guide by Lonely Planet, I decided to get this via an app because I am going to go to several countries and couldn't afford the weight of paperback books. My expectations of a book as an app is that it would utilise features of being an application etc.. After purchasing the city guide, I felt that it hardly used the features of being an App. It offered some basic GPS location etc... where you see what is around you. Granted that this is a nice feature, but what I was disappointed about was that the book/app contained very little images and it was hard to read.

In fact I have found other apps, that are offered for free that are 10 times better than the lonely planet.

Now the problem is that I have downloaded the application, used it, found that it is rubbish and I am stuck with it. Most of the application in the App store work off micro payments, which means that you can sell items at small prices and if someone doesn't like it then they are only out by a small amount and the author still gets paid for the usage. However, the problem with the Lonely Planet book/app was that it is retailing at the same price as the hard copy. If this was only offered as a hard copy this is how it would have turned out:

• Make a trip to the mall to a book store
• Go to the travel section, look for the books about places I going to go to
• Flick through the books, read the sections that interests me (not sections that someone else decides)
• Compare different books to see which one suits me (keeping in mind that some people may actually prefer the way that lonely planet sets out its book).
• Pick the one that I want, most likely not the lonely planet book.

Now when people wonder why anyone would jail break their phone, some will say it is to be liberated and to be able to customise the phone the way that they want. Others will say that they want to try out an application before committing to it.

Thanks for reading...