Poor Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Almost from the day Apple’s iPad made its splashy debut, you just knew the e-book readers from the other guys were about to head down the path of extinction. To no one’s surprise, yesterday 
Amazon cut its Kindle reader’s price to $189 down from $259. At the same time, Barnes & Noble cut its Nook reader to $199, also once priced at $259.
What about the apps?
Early on Amazon decided that it was better to join the iPad craze than to fight it: Amazon’s Kindle iPad app, which joined the app already available on the iPhone and iPod touch, was one of the first entrants in the App Store.
From the start, Apple’s iBooks and Amazon’s Kindle apps for the iPad have been jockeying for the top slot in the App Store’s Top Free iPad Books category. Are the apps really that close?
Certainly not if you look at it from the point of view of their respective bookstores: Amazon claims to have more than 500,000 titles (free and paid) on its electronic bookshelves. Apple, meanwhile, admits to only having “tens of thousands” titles (mostly paid) in its bookstore.
In many ways the apps are alike
Unlike the two bookstores, the iBooks and Kindle apps have a lot in common.
Both take advantage of the iPad’s unique features starting with a high-resolution, LED-backlit screen that displays bright colors and sharp text.
You can read books in either portrait or landscape modes. You can adjust the brightness of the backlighting by moving your finger along a slider. You can zoom the size of text.
You can turn pages by either tapping on the right or left side of the screen, or by dragging your finger across the screen in the direction you want to go. Pages in both apps curl over as they would with a real book when you flip them (Kindle gives you the option of turning page animation on or off).
You can also jump to a different part of the book by going to the table of contents and tapping a chapter heading.
Tap a title for the first time from the home screen and you’ll open the book to the first page. Close the app and reopen it, and you’ll automatically pick up where you left off.
Both apps give you the ability to bookmark and highlight individual words and passages.
The bottom line is that both apps are easy on the eyes, have intuitive controls and do a reasonable job of emulating the paper book reading experience.
Apple’s iBook
Books in iBooks are displayed by cover on realistic-looking bookshelves, just as they might appear in a brick and mortar bookstore.
Although you can read in portrait or landscape modes with either app, the difference is that with iBooks in landscape mode, you’ll see two book pages side-by-size instead of a single page as you do with Kindle. The iBooks presentation feels more “book-like” as a consequence.
iBooks features 10 font sizes and five type faces (Baskerville, Cochin, Palatino, Times New Roman and Verdana).
One difference you’ll spot right away if you compare the apps side-by-side: iBooks displays pages in color for books that have them. The Kindle does not.
Another significant difference between iBooks and Kindle: Search. iBooks has it; Kindle does not.
iBooks gives you two ways to search. The first way is to tap the magnifying glass in the upper right corner and then enter your search term. The second way is to hold your finger down on the word, which will pop up a menu with three buttons: Dictionary, Bookmark and Search.
In either case, the Search function pulls up every instance the word is mentioned in the book as well as gives you the option to search further on Google and Wikipedia.
Tapping the Dictionary button brings up a definition for the highlighted word (Kindle lacks a dictionary look-up feature). Tapping Bookmark bookmarks and highlights the word or passage in Yellow, Green, Blue, Pink or Purple.
Amazon’s Kindle
Kindle’s home page is less fancy than iBooks’, but still pleasing. The book covers are displayed on a muted background with a reader sitting under a tree in silhouette. You can use pinch to change the size of your downloaded book covers iBooks lacks this feature.
You can archive books you’ve already read but still want to keep on your device. That’s another option you won’t find with Books.
Kindle gives you five font sizes, plus the option of changing the page color to black-on-white, white-on-black and sepia-on-sepia. There’s only one typeface.
Kindle’s controls are aligned across the bottom of the screen. Here, you can navigate backwards, add/remove bookmarks, among other functions.
Tapping the icon that looks like an open book pops up a menu: Cover, Table of Contents, Beginning and Location. The only one of the four that might need explanation is Location. Tap the menu item and you’ll have the option of entering a page number and then going there.
Tapping and holding a word brings up a menu to highlight a word or entire passage. Unlike iBooks, you can also add notes at the same time.
Here’s a big plus: In addition to the iPad, you can read your Kindle books on your PC, Mac, Kindle, iPhone, iPod touch and BlackBerry. Amazon’s Whispersync technology automatically syncs your last page read, bookmarks, notes and highlights so you can pick up where you left off. iBooks has none of those capabilities.
Conclusion
On one hand, with its more book-like feel, choice of typefaces, Dictionary and Search features, Apple’s iBooks is a step ahead of Amazon’s Kindle app. On the other hand, with Kindle, you can easily transfer your books to other devices.
What should you do? No need to choose one or the other. Get them both—they’re free for the taking.
