Apolitically Incorrect » iPhone/iPod – Electronic Reading Bliss with Stanza

I bought my first handheld in 2000. It was a Palm V with a backlit green and black screen, the ability to take notes and keep track of my appointments. It synced to my desktop computer and helped me organize my life. After a few months of use, I found a fantastic little program called iSilo which was used for reading packaged HTML files called eBooks.

About six months ago, when my Palm TX decided to give up the ghost, I moved to a new platform. I was in the Apple store picking up some things for the hospital and spent a few minutes playing with the iPods on the gadget table. That was either very fortunate, or a huge mistake. In that moment, I got bit by the Apple bug: badly. While I held the gadget lust at bay for two months, it was all but inevitable that I would eventually purchase an iPhone or an iPod touch. After seeing the cell phone bill for the iPhone, I decided on the iPod Touch.

While the iPod touch is a brilliant music player, that wasn't the reason I bought it. I needed a replacement for my Palm. It was only a (huge) benefit that the iPod is the best MP3 player, video player, and audio book player available. Given it's media superpower status, it is somewhat ironic that the five most used-programs on my iPod happened to be the Calendar, Address Book, Notes application, Mail and Calculator. Even after eight years, my main needs have changed very little.

This also leads to the first major headache I encountered when using the iPod (other than the complete lack of Notes and Tasks sync; Apple what were you thinking?). Initially, I could not find a good e-book reader program. After the iPhone App Store became available, I tried most of the programs, including eReader, Libris and BookShelf; but they fell short for various reasons. After some time of looking, I found a candidate that might make a good replacement for my reader of choice on the Palm: MobiPocket. In this article, I will take a in-depth look at where this program, called Stanza, stacks up and a few places that it doesn't.

Stanza

Stanza can be found in the iTunes App Store, where it is a free download. Like loading any program from the App Store, it is a simple affair. Find. Click Install. Wait. However, there is also a desktop version that is necessary to transfer files from your computer to the iPhone (both Mac and PC are supported).

Stanza supports a wide variety of file formats including Amazon Kindle, Mobipocket, HTML, PDF, and SonyReader (among many others). However, it lacks any kind of DRM support and as a result is not able to open recently published eBooks from the Amazon Kindle Store or the MobiPocket Store.

iPhone and the iPod Touch

Reading Experience

Stanza on the iPhone/iPod Touch is, without doubt, the most beautiful mobile reader I have ever used. It is well designed and the iPod's high resolution display makes on-screen reading almost as pleasurable as reading on paper. It is easy to increase the font size and change font colors. There is even a convenient switch which can instantly reverse the screen and background colors. I particularly like a black background with white text for night reading or reading in low light.

Figure 1. Main screen and reading screen of Stanza on the iPod Touch.

Books can be browsed by title, genre, author name or by cover using the CoverFlow Mode, which is accessed by turning the iPod on its side. It is also possible to create custom "Collections" of books.

Figure 2. The Stanza library module in CoverFlow mode.

While Stanza may be the most beautiful book reader I have used on a mobile device, I also found it to be one of the most superficial. While an excellent way to read fiction on the iPhone, it is not nearly so well suited for reference books. Other programs, like MobiPocket or iSilo allow for hyperlinks to be inserted into the eBook. This enables the author to reference other topics or related information and for the reader to jump from one topic to the next in a nearly instantaneous manner. While using my Palm, MobiPocket became my most used program due to various reference books I had installed on the device. These included electronic versions of Taber's Medical Dictionary, the Merck Diagnostic Manual, and other dictionaries and encyclopedias.

Over the past several years, I have also prepared numerous eBooks of my own that have information I need to look up often. Though Stanza supports the MobiPocket format, it was not able to open or process these heavily cross-linked custom books.

Stanza also lacks any meaningful way to annotate or highlight the eBooks. Though there is a bookmark system, the links are added to the "Table of Contents" pane that can be loaded while reading the book. I found this to be limited and of little use when compared to the fantastic markup system available in both the Palm and PocketPC versions of MobiPocket.

Adding Books to the iPhone

Books can be added to Stanza via one of two ways. The first is using the desktop client to transfer the books over wireless network. To work, both the iPhone and the computer must be connected to the same wireless network. The Stanza client must be open on the desktop and sharing must be enabled via the tools menu.

Figure 3. Books can be added to the iPod via the desktop reading program after sharing has been enabled on the Tools menu.

The iPhone is only able to transfer books that are open in the Stanza desktop version. Despite these limitations, I found adding new books from the Stanza reader to be fairly straightforward. My iPod touch was able to easily find my Mac and PC. With the connection established, I was able to transfer much of my existing MobiPocket library to the iPod without any problems. Stanza, however, does not support the MobiPocket DRM scheme and my copy of Taber's and the Merck manual had to stay on the desktop.

Figure 4. Books can also be added from a number of online catalogs. These titles primarily include works where the copyright has expired Other content includes newspaper and magazine summaries. The different online catalogs can be browsed by author name, title, genre, or overall popularity (shown at right).

Stanza also includes support for a number of "Online Catalogs." Notables include the website Feedbooks and Project Gutenberg, making tens of thousands of eBooks available for download. The websites have been seamlessly and elegantly integrated with Stanza on the iPhone, which makes it easy and convenient to download additional material. In fact, I found it much easier to use the Online Catalog than load files via the desktop client. Stanza is particularly well integrated with the Feedbooks website and can even make use its RSS and newspaper aggregator.

While incredibly useful, the online catalog is one of the most recent additions to the program, and unfortunately, it shows. While reading and browsing the library was seamless and stable, I experienced multiple crashes when browsing the online catalogs (using iPhone Firmware 2.2). While Stanza supports multiple downloads, adding more than one file to the download queue at a time resulted in almost a certain program crash (and subsequent return to the home screen). Occasionally it would even crash the entire iPhone, requiring a soft reset in order to be back up and running.

Mac/PC Client Software

In comparison to the iPhone program, I found Stanza on the desktop to be limited and frustrating; particularly when compared to other Desktop reading programs such as the Mobipocket Reader and Adobe Digital Editions. Readers on both platforms are listed as being in beta; and it shows. I often had problems with images being incorrectly displayed and with text reflow. I also had issues with stabilty and the program (particularly the PC version) would crash often.

One of the most glaring omissions from the reader is a lack of any kind of library or organizational module. In many ways, organization and storage is the primary purpose of a desktop reader. I have long used MobiPocket on the desktop to organize and sync content to the mobile version. While I certainly do not sit at my computer and read fiction, I often use MobiPocket's built in search features to look up important information. The ability to quickly and conveniently sync my existing library with the handheld has proven invaluable. While iTunes is a good Jukebox, it really shines as hub of my digital media collection. Given the importance of a library, this feature was the first thing I missed when moving to Stanza.

Figure 5. Mobipocket Desktop Reader running on Windows Vista. Mobipocket includes an organizer with thumbnails and book details.

Figure 6. MobiPocket includes easy access to ratings and other custom information.

A second missing feature is the lack of a desktop sync both to the iPhone as well as a reverse sync which would allow books to be transferred back to the desktop. Given the ease which new titles may be downloaded from the catalog, this lack of a reverse sync can be very problematic. As mentioned previously, I experienced stability issues when downloading from the internet. A few times, this completely wiped out the library on the device and I found myself forced to reload all of my titles from the computer. Unfortunately, that did not include the eBooks that I had downloaded from Feedbooks and Project Gutenberg. A reverse sync incorporated into the desktop client would have resolved this issue completely.

Conclusion

Stanza on the iPhone is an excellent eBook reader. Its tight integration with several prominent eBook websites is particularly impressive. However, Stanza still has several rough edges that can result in cuts and abrasions. The lack of a library module on the desktop client renders the program little more than a way to transfer files from the desktop to the handheld. This is extremely unfortunate and causes the entire platform to suffer when compared to Mobipocket or Adobe Digital Editions.

Despite its limitations, however, Stanza is still the best reading program available for the iPhone and iPod Touch. I hope that the developers plan to address the weaknesses in the desktop version.

3 Responses to “iPhone/iPod – Electronic Reading Bliss with Stanza”

Neelan wrote a comment on November 26, 2008

Thanks for the great review. We appreciate the constructive feedback. Listening to our users helps us build more robust applications so we always appreciate receiving constructive criticism.

Can you try out the latest version of Stanza iPhone / iPod Touch (1.6 available as of today) and let us know if you are still seeing some of the crashing problems you described. We believe we have addressed it but you can't always reproduce every crash and we'd want the feedback on if our changes helped.

Apolitically Incorrect » The iPhone App Store and Software Quality: A User’s Perspective sent a pingback on December 23, 2008

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