Let’s be frank here. Even though it may not “seem” like it, Apple has a lot of smaller tablet competition. With the new Amazon Kindle Fire HD standing up as one of the company’s potential threats. But it’s not just the tablet’s low price and functionality that makes it such a rival; it also has a lot to do with Amazon’s impressive lineup of eBooks. With Apple now porting its smaller iPad Mini to help combat the Kindle Fire And Nexus 7’s respective grips on the market, it makes that much more sense for the tech giant to bring the fight to its rivals in all facets of the tablet market.
Apple already had a pretty great eReading platform with the introduction of iBooks on iOS, but it’s started to show its “age” over the last few years. In fact, Apple seemingly created this network of virtual books as a passing glance, and hadn’t really put much effort into fleshing it out. That is, until now. The iBooks application took center stage for a short while at Apple’s event today. And just like the massive iTunes revamp that happened a while back, iBooks will be getting a mass overhaul on both its functionality and design.
Tim Cook presented some key features of the new iBooks at the Apple event, including an interesting “scroll feature” that allows you to literally scroll down through a book, much like you are flipping a page. It’s also going to feature iCloud integration, which will allow you to read the same book across multiple devices without losing your place. Think of this like a virtual bookmark that travels with you no matter what iDevice you are reading on.
There are also new sharing features associated with the application, allowing you to share books and “readables” with your friends in a much more streamlined and innovative manner.
Photo Credit: Apple
