Posts in stories

Using an iPad to Report from Pit Row→

Using an iPad to Report from Pit Row

I upgraded to the iPad 2 over the winter for the weight break and camera, and all has gone smoothly in 2012. I no longer bring my MacBook Air on the road, and am thrilled that the TSA doesn’t require that the iPad be removed from my carry on! Using the iPad for what I do has proven to be efficient and entertaining. And, as usual for an Apple product, IT JUST WORKS. I’ve had to put a baggie over it a time or two in a rain situation, but other than that it absolutely does the job.

Jordan Golson of MacRumors has written a fantastic report on Dave Burns, a Pit Reporter for ESPN who covers NASCAR Nationwide and Sprint Cup series races with his iPad. Burns’ use of the iPad is the focus of the story here, and he does an excellent job explaining how he ended up choosing the gear and accessories that best suited his needs on the track. Not wanting to deal with the bulk of paper, but then having to compensate for sun glare, heat, and occasional rain showers, Burns had to devise a system that helped him stay mobile yet offered the greatest potential benefit. Equally as important as the process that Burns’ shares, the report gives insight into just how adaptable the iPad is. Proven to be much more than a generic business tool, the iPad is being used in unexpected places for unique applications: in this case it’s being used to bring you coverage from pit road in America’s most exciting motorsport.

Permalink

Diet Coda From An iPad Blogger’s Perspective

I am no web developer – I write prose, not code – but I just bought Panic’s highly-anticipated, fantastically-named Diet Coda for iPad from the Italian App Store. I want to show my support to the great independent developers of the iOS and OS X community. Furthermore, I want to help disrupting the long-standing meme that the iPad can only be used for “content consumption”, whatever that has come to mean in 2012. I didn’t know I could still find Diet Coda useful for my iPad-based writing and blogging workflow.

I can’t review Diet Coda – as I said, I wouldn’t be able to fully understand its functionalities and judge its (possible) shortcomings when compared to the (also coming today) Coda 2. But I can recognize software crafted with care and attention to detail. Diet Coda immediately stands out as one of those apps where pixels aren’t just there to fill the screen – they’re the epitome of design enhanced for function.

Take the custom text selection method Panic built. It’s not entirely custom – it’s still fundamentally based on “drag handles” and a “zoomed-in view” of the cursor – but Panic reworked it to allow for faster selection by swiping on the left (where numbered lines are) and to visualize a larger, rounded “zoom selector” (they call it the Super Loupe) when you’re moving the cursor between characters. It feels much better than standard iOS text selection – faster, and somewhat more accurate – albeit it really needs to be experienced “in motion”, rather than through the screenshot I have embedded below.

I wouldn’t mind seeing Apple drawing some inspiration from Panic’s Super Loupe and Hooper Selection for the next major version of iOS.

Or, again, search. Within a document – Diet Coda can edit files on your server with syntax highlighting for languages like HTML, PHP, or JavaScript – you can hit the search icon to initiate a query with options for Find & Replace, Case Sensitive settings, Regex, and Search in Selection. I can’t tell you how many times I wished a text editor would implement search through selected text within a document the way Panic did.

It’s about getting the details right, yet making sure the main foundation is also solid to begin with. Diet Coda features a perhaps not so innovative, yet reliable column-based navigation for browsing folders and opening files; at any time, the column view can be “enhanced” with thumbnail tabs (also called “document shelf”) displaying open files, the main Sites page, and Terminal along the top of the screen.

And if you go back to the Sites page – where you add the servers you want to connect to using Diet Coda – and enter “wiggle mode” to edit the sites you’ve configured, Panic added a nice button at the bottom to confirm you want to exit the wiggle animation. You could stop it anyway by touching anywhere on the screen, but this is a nice extra visual cue.

Same for buttons: the purple ones “glow” when tapped, and the Delete action is, again, custom by Panic, yet incredibly nice to use on iOS.

I may not write a full review of Diet Coda, but I was sure happy to find out Panic’s latest effort will find its well-deserved spot in my iPad writing workflow. Diet Coda, finally, allows me to copy the public URL for images uploaded to my FTP server. That’s a small feature, but you’d be surprised to know how many FTP iPad apps end up lacking it amidst dozens of other “power user options”. I wish Diet Coda would let me upload from the Camera Roll – hopefully that’s coming in a future update. However, together with buttons to copy the public URL and file path, Panic added options to copy an image’s HTML <a> and <img> tags to the system clipboard, making it extremely easy to paste the code into Blogsy, my blogging app of choice. The simple, yet often ignored “copy URL” action will play nicely with Writing Kit’s shortcut for inserting images into Markdown, too.

Even without fully utilizing Diet Coda’s set of features, I’m happy to see the app filling a particular void in my workflow – and even better, with style and prowess.

We will have more detailed looks at Coda 2 and Diet Coda later this week on MacStories; personally, I believe Panic’s latest iOS effort will redefine the category of web code editors on the iPad, proving once again that the platform has moved beyond “consumption” – and that’s just up to users to accept it now.

Diet Coda is now available on the Italian App Store and other international stores (same for Coda 2). Diet Coda and Coda 2 will be available here and here, respectively, on the US App Store in a few hours.

iOS 6 and Files.app

Rene Ritchie thinks Apple should provide direct document access with iOS 6 through a dedicated Files.app:

A unified document repository, modeled after the existing unified image repository, rounded out with more consistent attachment options, could be the best of all worlds. Users wouldn’t have to remember which folder a document was in, nor which app. They wouldn’t have to jump around to edit or share. Users could simply open any app capable of editing or sharing a certain type of app and go to work.

I agree with the notion that the current Open In, app-based document transfer model of iOS is broken. The simplicity brought by iOS freed average users from the complexities of the filesystem; people who like to get their daily work done with iOS devices, however, miss a unified document filing system. Paradoxically, the “simple” iOS, with its “Open In” menu and multiple copies of the same document, requires people to manually manage more.

In February, I envisioned something similar to Rene’s proposed Files.app solution:

So, I had an idea. I think the same iTunes File Sharing feature would work a lot better as a dedicated, native iCloud app for iOS devices (and maybe the Mac too). After all, if Apple is providing an iTunes-based file management utility for Mac users, why couldn’t they build an app that enabled any third-party iOS app to save and import files from iCloud? This app would be built into the system and allow users to simply collect documents, like iTunes File Sharing. Developers could easily add options to their apps to import files from “iCloud File Sharing” and export files to it. Users would have the same feature set of the existing iTunes File Sharing, only with an interface they are already familiar with, because iCloud File Sharing would resemble the existing file management workflow of iWork for iOS or iCloud.com. The only difference is that it would be integrated on a system level, work with any iOS app, and basically be an extension of the “Open In” menu that already allows apps to communicate with each other through supported file types.

After having tried the latest developer releases of Mountain Lion and putting some more thought on the matter, though, I am not so sure about the centralized repository system anymore. Namely, I am not convinced it should be a separate app.

Rene rightfully compares the possible Files.app to the existing Photos.app for iOS. Files could present document folders the same way Photos displays image albums, and it could have the same systemwide hooks to let other apps access documents from the unified repository. However, there is a difference worth noting: Photos.app gets its contents from a primary, hardware-based component of iOS – the camera. A user takes a picture, it goes into Photos. Same for videos and screenshots – the interaction is simple.

What is a file, though? Is it a text document? RTF or .txt? If so, does Files.app come with preview capabilities for those file types? Or is it about PDFs, .zip archives, folders, and .cbr files? And how do you get documents into Files.app?

Even by only slightly mimicking the Finder, Files.app could reset the past five years of “simple” iOS interactions in one big fell swoop. Photos itself, which is extremely straightforward, is criticized for its file management features. Now imagine that applied to the general concept of “files” with folders, views, sorting options, settings, and previews.

Today, I think what I wrote back in September could make for a better solution: inter-app communication.

Why can’t Apple build an invisible layer that lets Elements edit a text document from Evernote and Pages access the same file?

It turns out, a possible implementation of such layer already exists, but iOS won’t let apps communicate with it. Enter iCloud Documents & Data:

The same interface is available on OS X:

And in Mountain Lion, the standard file-saving dialog has been enhanced with the addition of an iCloud option (image via Macworld):

The design is slightly different since the first Mountain Lion Developer Preview that Macworld reviewed, but the concept has stayed the same throughout betas: Apple apps like TextEdit and Preview can “hold” documents into a special iCloud folder (located under Library/Mobile Documents/appname/Documents on OS X); these documents also show up on iOS under Documents & Data; currently, they are not available on iCloud.com, nor is Mountain Lion’s file-saving UI allowing, say, Preview to easily grab a file from TextEdit’s own iCloud “folder”. However, on Mountain Lion, Apple says that you can get your “existing documents” into iCloud by dragging them from the Finder or “other apps”.

If the system Apple has been putting in place is of any indication, I think enhancing the app-based model with better communication would actually outmatch the possible benefits of a separate Files.app. Documents & Data could become a document picker developers can enable in their apps with an API; because apps register file types they support, Apple wouldn’t have to worry about creating a Files.app capable of previewing every single format out there. GoodReader could open a PDF from Pages’ iCloud, and Pages could later access that same PDF with the changes made by GoodReader.

I am arguing that apps should become their own centralized locations that other apps can access and interact with – without creating duplicate files. Apple can’t provide the basic preview/edit functionalities of Photos for every possible format supported by Files.app, but 600,000 App Store apps might have the solution for that. Rather than creating an additional layer of management – disconnected from apps – iOS 6 could turn the interface already in place into a document picker that gives files their proper meaning: the app they belong to. Only with the addition of inter-app access and “universal save” to avoid duplicates.

Making changes to a single file with a variety of apps is something we do every day on our Macs. On OS X, there’s the Finder that acts as a glue between apps and files. By design, the technical constraints of iOS have turned non-destructive editing into a clunky and confusing experience, as we’ve seen with iPhoto. I am arguing that instead of building a “Files.app” or “Finder for iOS”, Apple could leverage the existing iCloud Documents & Data UI, and rework the iOS architecture to allow for changes to the same document from multiple apps.

The centralized Files.app idea is certainly appealing, but Apple has heavily invested in the app metaphor for the past years, and rather than replacing it with a new layer, I wouldn’t mind seeing it get smarter.

Four Years of App Store: Developers Weigh In On Search, Discovery, and Curation

“The App Store is a grand slam, with a staggering 10 million applications downloaded in just three days”. That’s how Apple co-founder and late CEO Steve Jobs saluted the launch of the company’s new storefront for iOS (née iPhone OS) applications on July 14, 2008. Almost four years and over 25 billion downloads later, the App Store has evolved into a brand that spans two platforms (iOS and OS X), three different iOS devices (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad), a variety of Macs, and that hosts over 600,000 apps from more than 200,000 registered developers. Albeit minimal in terms of revenue for a company that makes billions off iPhones and iPads, the App Store created a new economy that nurtures an ecosystem ultimately aimed at selling more devices, as well as showing consumers that, nowadays, software is revolutionizing the way they approach work, entertainment, and other personal tasks. In spite of its tremendous growth, however, little has been done to improve a basic premise of the App Store: finding new apps.

“Discovery and search has been a huge concern of mine for a long time”, said Craig Hockenberry, Principal at design and development studio The Iconfactory. Hockenberry and his team were among the first developers to support the App Store in 2008 with Twitterrific, a Twitter client for iPhone that has expanded to the iPad and Mac, with different versions available on the App Store and Mac App Store. In 2009, a year after the App Store launched, Hockenberry offered a series of suggestions to Apple in order to improve certain aspects of the App Store – namely, following early discussions with developers that decided to sell software on the “iTunes App Store”, he noted how there was “still much room for improvement” to turn the App Store into a viable and reliable business platform for developers who weren’t simply interested in experimenting with it.

Hockenberry’s “Year two” post still rings true today, in spite of the functionalities that Apple fixed, improved, or brought to the App Store in the past four years. For instance, Apple created a “New and Noteworthy” section on the homepage of the App Store that is refreshed on a weekly basis to showcase apps Apple deems worthy of attention; promotional codes, which Hockenberry listed as one of the tools that had helped them sell more products, were made available internationally in late 2010; either on print, its website, or YouTube, Apple has kept pushing ad campaigns to educate iOS and Mac users on the importance and convenience of the App Store.

The very motto that started the app revolution, however, didn’t meet an equal amount of attention by Apple in terms of improvements for the infrastructure behind it. As Hockenberry wrote in 2009, “it’s incredibly hard to find the “that” in “there’s an app for that.” Between keyword spamming and the sheer volume of choices in each category, customers can’t find what they want”.

Read more

Flipboard’s Move From “Social Magazine” To “Internet Magazine”

Last night, Flipboard released a 1.9 update for its iPhone and iPad app that, among various fixes and new features, introduces one important addition to the social magazine: audio. As the company writes on their blog:

Our Content Guide is now chock-full of some of the best sounds we could find. We’ve launched new partnerships with NPR and PRI and scoured SoundCloud’s massive community of sound creators to bring you some of our favorites—artists like Snoop Dogg and Diplo; music labels like Atlantic Records and Ninja Tune; podcasts from The New Yorker and Slate; and segments from shows like Radiolab and Science Friday.

Right now, support for audio content is mainly implemented through SoundCloud, which received a new login option in the app’s settings, and NPR and PRI, which have agreed on a partnership with Flipboard to make content available in the app’s content guide, properly reformatted to fit Flipboard’s unique style and interactions. In Flipboard 1.9, support for audio means you can start playing a podcast featured in the content guide (such as TWiT or TNW Daily Dose) or any content available in your SoundCloud account, and go back to browsing links and photos as Flipboard can keep playing audio while you’re reading something else. The app will show up as an audio source in the iOS multitasking tray, and you can control audio playback from within the app itself too with a “note” icon in the upper toolbar (on iPhone) that will display a folder-like animation for viewing and pausing audio.

Looking back at Flipboard’s evolution over the past months, I think support for audio in version 1.9 is yet another example of how the company has been gradually and relentlessly drifting away from a system that simply aggregates “your social links” to embrace a broader vision that’s turning Flipboard into “an Internet magazine”, whether it’s social or not.

Flipboard started off as a neat app to give a magazine-like layout to links shared on Twitter and Facebook. Then came Google Reader, Flickr, and Instagram with more content types and visual previews. The company started announcing partnerships with publishers to display their content beautifully inside Flipboard, and with more content came an explosive growth that led to a re-imagined version 1.5, focused on showcasing “popular stories” and making more great content available to users through a content guide that wasn’t necessarily social – rather, it was aimed at letting users know that more content was available on Flipboard beyond their existing social accounts. After that, Flipboard released the long-awaited iPhone app, unifying accounts with over-the-air sync and bringing Cover Stories – a dedicated view for interesting and popular stories – over to the iPad app.

While still prominently “social” in the way it puts the focus on accounts and supported services, Flipboard has become perfectly usable and enjoyable even without necessarily configuring a Twitter or Facebook account. The company has put great effort on building a content guide that spans different countries, themes, content types, and publishers. Flipboard aggregates top content shared by Pocket, it collects the best things found on the Internet under the “Cool Curators” section, and, alongside the usual Tech and Business news, displays popular videos from YouTube, Vimeo, and even Colbert Report in a Video category. With version 1.9, audio has been brought into the mix.

The social component of Flipboard is still strong (version 1.9 also brings “related sections” for social networks, such as “tweets mentioning you”), but it hasn’t been the only way to enjoy Flipboard for quite some time, and this is more visible than ever in the latest update. Flipboard doesn’t simply create a personalized magazine out of content “being shared with me” anymore – it still does that, but at the same time, it allows me to find other great content that I wouldn’t have discovered otherwise.

More than a “social magazine”, the “Internet magazine” aggregates and reformats content that is also social, but not strictly so. Curation and APIs are keys here. Flipboard was already rumored to be considering support for movies and TV shows last year. Would it be too absurd to think the app will someday gain compatibility with Rdio and Spotify to let you find the best music from your favorite streaming service? How about YouTube and Vimeo, to let users also find videos that are bring shared in those social accounts? According to TechCrunch, “Flipboard will look into other ways it can do more with video”.

With social accounts, APIs, search, and curation, Flipboard has become more than a social magazine: it is restructuring Internet content for the screens of mobile devices with the help of a strong social counterpart.

The iPad Is The Future Of Education

For the past years, Apple has been showcasing the educational advantages of devices like Macs, iPhones and iPods on its Apple in Education website. Since the introduction of the iPad in 2010, however, the company has been making an effort to position the device as the best tool now available to teachers and students to improve the quality of education and level of engagement. The dedicated iPad in Education webpage showcases recent moves by Apple such as iBooks Textbooks and the iTunes U iOS app.

While we have covered schools and educational institutions adopting iPads in the past, the latest profile posted by Apple today on their UK website is quite possibly the best example of iPad in education to date. Those of you who have been following the progress of iPad deployment in schools may remember Fraser Speirs’ iPad Project, which made headlines throughout 2011 as it was the first one-to-one iPad deployment to every people in a school. Speirs documented the process of giving an iPad to every teacher and student at Cedars School of Excellence (Scotland) on his personal website, and today Apple has posted a video profile showing how “Cedars students boost learning with iPad”.

The full video is available here, and it shows teachers and kids using the iPad as a modern, regular tool in their daily lives that has improved the way they create and share content of any kind. One particular segment towards the end of the video struck a chord with me:

I don’t think we could ever go back from where we are right now with the iPad. The only way’s really forward – to more access to knowledge, more empowerment, more creativity…all these things in the classroom”.

As I wrote before, Apple’s education strategy will be interesting to follow. Actually seeing kids and teachers who have been using the iPad as a real substitute for and enhancement over old learning tools for over a year now, however, reminds me that, no matter Apple’s strategy as a company, software is the future of education, and the iPad is giving our kids a bit of that future today.

Detractors of the iPad as a learning tool point at the management required by connected devices to ensure that, in the classroom, the possibilities offered by the Internet don’t get in the way of teachers’ requirements and students’ attention. Fortunately, this is something Apple has been addressing since day one, and that has recently improved with more tools.

Every major change in our society and culture will be awarded an equal amount of optimism and skepticism. As someone who’s been lucky enough to find his dream job in the possibilities offered by the Internet and software, I tend to see skepticism as a challenge, rather than a roadblock. People like Fraser Speirs are proving that, beyond analysts and blog posts, a better education for our kids is possible, today, every day, with a device that’s making kids eager to learn.

Free of the constraints of paper and old, disconnected learning material, the iPad brings new challenges and practical issues to overcome. With time, patience, and willingness to look past rules established in societies different than ours, we must make sure these devices we have built and ecosystems we have nurtured won’t be remembered for Angry Birds, because among other things, our kids deserve a better, modern education. And we have to start building it today.

10 Ideas for iCloud.com Notifications

As noted by MacRumors earlier today, Apple appears to be testing a new browser-based notification system for iCloud.com. Judging from the screenshot that clearly shows a testing environment being accidentally brought to a user’s attention, the system appears to be similar in terms of design to what Apple introduced with iOS 5 last year.

While it’s not clear whether Apple may be planning to revamp iCloud.com completely to include notifications or if today’s spotted banner is the sign of something else, with WWDC ‘12 approaching I thought it might be interesting to run down some possible implementations.

iCloud.com is an option, and not a central part of the experience Apple is envisioning with iCloud and devices going forward. Mobile devices and computers are integrated with iCloud in a way that iCloud itself becomes the operating system. The browser-based, neatly-designed iCloud.com is a way to access some of iCloud’s content through the open web (as long as you have a modern browser). While not fundamental to the experience, I believe there are some additions Apple could make to improve iCloud.com and turn it into a viable substitute to native iCloud interfaces. Specifically, web notifications could play very well in various scenarios.

iMessage on the web: The first beta of Messages for OS X left many disappointed, and an iMessage web app could obviate the need of a unified iChat/iMessage desktop app, while providing a great solution for browser notifications.

Email and calendar alerts: An obvious one, yet a possibly great system to receive notifications while browsing other sections of iCloud.com.

App-free notifications: Assuming Apple is really testing notifications for iCloud.com, I’d be interested in knowing whether their idea is to display notifications exclusively on iCloud.com while open. In fact, while I always forget to visit iCloud.com on my Mac, a notification system for (not from) iCloud.com would be perfect to remind me to visit and use the web app. I don’t think this is going to happen, as I see such system being more a way to simply display alerts inside iCloud.com.

Jump-to-section: And if such system is being built to notify users of changes while on iCloud.com, I would expect to be able to click on a notification, and have iCloud automatically open the associated section of the site.

Document changes: Right now, we don’t know why Apple is building a notification system for iCloud.com. We don’t even know whether the “leaked” banner could be linked to a future public feature, or an internal use-only functionality. However, it would be nice if a notification system for iCloud.com could inform users of changes to documents stored on iCloud.com. This plays well with the next point…

Sharing and collaborative features: Apple is discontinuing iWork.com, and the company hasn’t announced any plans for a possible revamped sharing system for documents. iCloud.com notifications could inform users of changes to a document edited by someone else, and they wouldn’t necessarily require a web-based editing interface to go with (though a Google Docs-like solution for iCloud users would be an amazing addition to my workflow).

Find My iPhone and Find My Friends: Notifications could tell users about a found device, or a family member nearby, though I assume those would only be a nice extra compared to the functionality already enabled in the respective native apps.

Game Center: Apple’s social gaming service is getting a dedicated app with Mountain Lion, but for the sake of options, iCloud.com could gain a web counterpart – with notifications to stay on top of friend requests and more.

Twitter: on iOS 5, users can configure their Twitter accounts at a system level to tweet and log into other apps. On Mountain Lion, desktop users will enjoy support for Twitter notifications directly into Notification Center. It would be nice if everyone else got nice little banners for Twitter replies and DMs on iCloud.com – clicking on them could take you directly to Twitter’s website, and it would offer a way to stay on top of Twitter even when using iCloud.com.

Presence: I have written about this idea in my iOS 6 wish list. If Apple is extending notifications to iCloud.com, the issue of notification overload could potentially increase again. Regardless of what kind of notifications for iCloud.com Apple is working on, there should be a way for iCloud to understand whether you are actively using an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or web browser.

Wildcard: App updates: This is my wildcard, and I do hope Apple will consider such functionality someday. Right now, I use AppShopper to get notifications for updates to the apps I already own. With complete access to my purchase history and iTunes on the desktop, Apple could easily notify my iCloud account of updates available on the App Store, and provide an easy way to click through and start a download.

Once again when it comes to iCloud, I’m just speculating on the direction Apple may be taking with its cloud service, admittedly the most promising platform the company is building for the next decade. Having thrown my two cents at this other side of the discussion, I look forward to seeing whether today’s alleged notification system will materialize in a finished product on June 11.

Playing Devil’s Advocate, Arguing Apple Should Change Their IAP Policy

There’s been a lot of discussion in the past few days over Apple, its In-App Purchase (IAP) policy, and Dropbox after it rejected a few apps that employed Dropbox functionality because they offered links to the Dropbox website for signing up and logging in. At issue was that the option to buy a higher level of storage was also visible, and this contravened one of the App Store Review Guidelines. Some viewed this as Apple trying to kill (or at the very least, target) Dropbox – but as Federico explained, this was just Apple enforcing one of their existing policies.

After thinking about it for a while, I’ve come to the position that perhaps that policy isn’t the right one. So I decided to play the devil’s advocate, and try to argue the case for Apple adjusting their policy. Specifically my argument focuses on Apple’s policy going something like:

Apps may use external mechanisms for purchases or subscriptions to be used in an app, but only when those purchase mechanisms are undertaken in a web view within the app.

That could probably be further clarified in more simplistic language, but you get the general idea of what I’m proposing. The current policy prohibits any link to purchases or subscriptions that are undertaken through external mechanisms (ie. not IAP); I suggest that this should be allowed. So let’s quickly go through the benefits of the current policy and arguments for relaxing the policy. Read more

Reading Manga On The Retina iPad

Last month, I asked on Twitter if there was an easy and legal way to purchase manga digitally on the iPad. Unfortunately, while American comics are seeing a nice digital resurgence thanks to apps like Comixology, the situation is profoundly different and inherently worse with Japanese manga. There is no Comixology for manga – where by manga I basically mean Shonen Jump content – and the few services that do have some manga available (like VIZ) have terrible apps that don’t take advantage of the latest iOS technologies and come with risible offers on multi-volume purchases.

I have no idea why Shonen or its international publishers – like Panini Comics and Star Comics in Italy – aren’t realizing the huge potential for legal, convenient, digital editions of their manga on mobile devices. It is kind of ironic that, as of today, pirating manga you already own physically gets you better, higher quality results from some shady Internet forum than going the proper, legitimate way. Because that way doesn’t exist. It’s the same problem of old media all over again.

As I was listening to T.Rex on Spotify yesterday for my review of the app, I connected Marc Bolan’s song to Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys, and I felt the need of finding a solution to begin reading the series again. It turns out, provided you have scans for your manga ready to go (I prefer PDF and CBR, but there are several options out there), there are two interesting options right now on iOS.

Assuming you want to read manga on your iPad, Bookman is a $2.99 iPad app that’s been updated for the Retina display and that comes with fast caching of pages, great performance, and a good selection of browsing and optimization settings. Its rendering has been very good for my copies of 20th Century Boys, and I like how you can easily import content through a built-in FTP server (I transfer files with Transmit) or Dropbox. You can organize manga in bookshelves, and the app comes with various settings for tap areas, thumbnail previews, appearance, and zoom. It’s even got page resume and multiple page turning effects. $1.99 on the App Store gets you the separate iPhone app (I wish they were universal). Right now, I’m reading manga with Bookman.

The other option is Comic Zeal, which is universal, but that I haven’t tried yet as it doesn’t have support for the Retina iPad. Technically, the app displays manga in Retina resolution if higher-res images are available, but interface elements haven’t been updated for the new display. According to the developers, an update with new graphics and “other goodies” has been submitted to Apple. Comic Zeal is $4.99 on the App Store.

Here’s to hoping publishers will consider the market for digital manga someday.