Apple broke Stanza and Amazon won't fix it

[carbonel]

I haven't actually upgraded my iPad or iPhone to iOS 5 yet, but it seems pretty comprensively acknowledged that a) the new version of the OS breaks Stanza, and b) Amazon, which owns Stanza, has no intention of fixing it.

Stanza has been my ebook reader of choice since I discovered that I couldn't import .mobi files into the Kindle reader. Amazon fixed that with a subsequent upgrade, but I discovered that I preferred the customizability of Stanza. It's superior to both the Kindle Reader and iBooks in ability to change fonts, spacing between paragraphs, justification, and a number of other features.

Does anyone have a recommendation for a replacement ebook reader? I can cope with iBooks if I have to, but I'd really prefer something better if it's out there, even if it costs money.

Comments

[jenett]

I had the same problem - I've been trying Bluefire.

It's reasonably adaptable for settings (in some ways a little more than Stanza, and it will let you lock orientation), but won't let you change fonts (just sizes, but it's a decent serif font) or justification. (I do find it more generally readable than iBooks, though, and orientation lock is a must-have for me, since I often read in bed.)

It has lousy library sorting (you can sort by title and author, that's it, or search) but I'm okay working around that.

[carbonel]

Bluefire mostly looks like a tool for selling DRM'd content, but I guess I should give it a try. Thanks.

Just out of curiosity, why do you need orientation lock in a program when you can do it with one button press for the iPad itself?

[jenett]

Because I mostly read on the iPhone, and it doesn't lock as reliably? (and more to the point, there are other apps in there I want to have landscape.)

Bluefire does let you buy stuff, but it also lets you upload (for me: I have a MacBook as my main computer, it's the same exact process as Stanza was in iTunes: load files in the app area.)

[carbonel]

Looks like Dropbox supports transfers to Bluefire, which is my usual upload method. (Format or convert as necessary in Calibre, copy file to Dropbox, open file in iPad (or iPhone), and transfer from Dropbox to the app of choice.

I like that because I don't have to have the desktop computer and the iPad/iPhone in the same place.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Ouch. You're right, Stanza now crashes with an "unhandled exception" on my upgraded iPhone. :( For the record, it's the first app that I've had trouble with since upgrading. But clearly I didn't try all my apps. Damn.

Stanza was my reader of choice too. I'll be watching this thread with interest and let you know if I find something I like better than iBooks.

[aedifica]

Stanza seems to be working on my iPad as well as it did before the upgrade--which is to say, it works fine for a while but occasionally freezes unexpectedly. I mostly only use it for PDFs of knitting patterns, though.

Edit: No, I take it back, it is freezing more and worse than it did.

[aedifica]

I think I'll be using Noterize for my knitting patterns. It handles PDFs *and* I can write notes on them!

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

After a quick search of the i-forums I'm downloading the free version of Shubooks (http://www.ambibma.com/en/shubook.html) to try it out.

[xinef.livejournal.com]

Check out the Kobo app. Available for Windows, iPhone, iPad at least.