iPad and comic books

[not that clay]

OK, I know  there's enough iPad hype already, but it just occurred to me that thing will be great for reading comic books. And just about all the comic books ever made are on torrent sites already. That's good news for readers, not so much for authors.

[bonnaventure]

Possibly fun and profitable for the authors if they can jump on the bandwagon soon enough.

[Dan in Chicago]

Marvel could definitely have a pretty big opportunity with making their comic reader available for this.

[Gilly]

I can't think of a better reason to buy one. It sure isn't a laptop replacement, but up until now something like this would cost well over 1000 dollars. 500 bucks seems like a steep price to pay to read CBR files but it's easily the most affordable option yet.

[Trembling Eagle]

 

[yesno]

Comic books, and maybe magazine reading are the only uses I can think of.  They seem to be pushing this "It's better at web browsing than anything else" angle.  I loved how the iPhone replaced my iPod, phone, and camera.  3 gadgets into 1.  I don't want to start adding new gadgets.

There's already a decent .cbr reader for iPhone (ComicZeal), so it is already capable of displaying them.  It's also good news that the iPad, and upcoming versions of the iPhone, will have a much easier way to share data with a real computer.  No more weirdo specialized customized syncing with is different per application, just a folder which mounts as a network share and which all applications have access to.

I'm underwhelmed with the iPad, but at the same time, people who have actually used the thing seem pretty bowled over, mostly by the speed and responsiveness.  I'm hoping some detail about their custom chip comes out--how it compares to Tegra, etc.

This is pretty astute:

In that really incredibly short space of time we’ve gone from punchcards-and-printers to interactive terminals with command lines to window-and-mouse interfaces, each a paradigm shift unto themselves. A lot of thoughtful people, many of whom are bloggers, look at this history and say, “Look at this march of progress! Surely the desktop + windows + mouse interface can’t be the end of the road? What’s next?”

Then “next” arrived and it was so unrecognizable to most of them (myself included) that we looked at it said, “What in the shit is this?”

http://stevenf.tumblr.com/post/359224392/i-need-to-talk-to-you-about-computers-ive-been

I think that some of the people who bitch about various limitations in new Apple products, miss the point that *even young people* have trouble with computers.  Try explaining a "disk image" to most people, the difference between closing all the windows of a program and quitting the program itself, etc.  Most aspects of a computer, like the file system, are too pointlessly complex for most people, who just want to use computers as tools and not as interesting toys in and of themselves. I just don't want things to be dumbed down to the extent that you can't graduate from Android/iPhone style interfaces if you want to.

[buffcoat]

I have several Apple products and love them.

This thing, though - it can't do Flash, it can't do Active-X (which is also true of the MacBook and everything Apple).  Not being able to do Flash seriously cuts down on the amount of fun stuff you can do on the web.  If that's what it's primarily for, it has some strikes against it.

The iPhone not being able to do Flash is an annoyance (it'd be hard to play online games anyway).  It cripples this thing's usefulness for me.

[Martin]

No multitasking either.

[Gilly]

There's already a decent .cbr reader for iPhone (ComicZeal), so it is already capable of displaying them.  It's also good news that the iPad, and upcoming versions of the iPhone, will have a much easier way to share data with a real computer.  No more weirdo specialized customized syncing with is different per application, just a folder which mounts as a network share and which all applications have access to.

Obviously it's going to make a huge difference though reading full page comics without having to scroll through them. Reading comics on a touch or iphone takes away from the art.

I didn't know that it's going to be easier to put stuff on it. I wasn't planning on buying one, but one of the main drawbacks to me was that until it was unlocked it would be impossible to transfer cbr and txt files without uploading them to the web first. I still have doubts that Apple will make that possible until I someone actual does it. Would you be able to put music on the player w/o using Itunes? I have a feeling it's going to be limited to what you can actually do with importing files.

[yesno]

I'd love to have the option of having Flash set up on it the way I have it on my regular computers--blocked by default, but I can enable specific widgets.  That way you avoid pointlessly used Flash (for photo galleries, ads, and such) and save your battery/etc.

That said, I'm not a free software freak, but if anything needs to be based on real standards that anyone can implement, it's the internet.

This is a pretty long piece on Apple's hate/hate relationship with Flash:

http://daringfireball.net/2010/01/apple_adobe_flash

Basically, Flash already sucks, but Adobe's all pissed that Apple won't give them access to Mac video hardware acceleration, which they just recently implemented for Windows. (Same is true for all third parties.)  Their theory is that Flash (the #1 cause of crashes on Macs) would suck less if Apple would work with them.  But Apple doesn't want to have to depend on Adobe for something so elemental.  Also Apple not including Flash is something of a power play.

Multitasking will happen eventually, I bet.  Just like copy/paste.

Also, @Gilly, you can already put comics on the iPhone without putting them on the web or anything with the Comiczeal desktop client.  Stanza works the same way.

[Gilly]

Also, @Gilly, you can already put comics on the iPhone without putting them on the web or anything with the Comiczeal desktop client.  Stanza works the same way.

How do you do that? Do you have to set up a server?

[cutout]

Semi-offtopic - Remember those two person face-to-face Pac Man machines? Is the iPad big enough to recreate that with an app?

[yesno]

Also, @Gilly, you can already put comics on the iPhone without putting them on the web or anything with the Comiczeal desktop client.  Stanza works the same way.

How do you do that? Do you have to set up a server?

You just run the Comiczeal desktop client, and then when you're on the same network as it, you can see the various comics it has.  So it works sort of like a server, I guess.  That program was the first usable cbr reader for the iPhone because it actually converts everything to its own, more efficient format; presumably this won't be necessary on the iPad.  Syncing between the iPhone and a computer works the same way for many programs; for example, if I run Mac and iPhone 1Password at the same time on the same network, they automatically sync.  This is very cumbersome, and the direct result of the abstracting

edit: ...away of the file system.  der.

[Gilly]

Cool. I'll have to try that out.

[Steve of Bloomington]

If they come up with some color equivalent of the electronic paper display it might be nice for comics.

For extensive reading, I don't enjoy laptop screens or monitors. I am an Apple fanboy, but I really don't see springing for this thing.

There was an interesting thing I read by Mark Pilgrim, who observed that he and other programmer types like him cut their teeth on computers that allowed you to have some control and tinker and make all kinds of mistakes and learn a lot that way, whereas Apple increasingly locks things down and discourages any such creativity or exploration by the youngsters.

http://diveintomark.org/archives/2010/01/29/tinkerers-sunset