So if you read a lot and you own an iPad, chances are you read books in digital form.
But the question: is which platform do you use? Apple Books or Kindle? Well, I decided to try both
to see which is the ultimate iPad reading experience. Hey guys, my name is Nick and
here we talk about using tech to improve your life. I upload fresh videos every single week,
so be sure to subscribe for more content. So I've been using the kindle ecosystem for quite a while
now. If you've seen some of my other videos on Kindle you'll know that I'm a fan. I own a
Kindle device and I use the Kindle app on my iPad and I absolutely love the Kindle app for my iPad.
It's primarily where I read all my Kindle books and I don't really use my Kindle device anymore
because the iPad app for Kindle is just so good. But a few people asked me recently: what about the
Apple Books app compared to Kindle? And to be honest I haven't really used the Apple Books
app since it first came out like I don't know how many years ago. Five years ago or something? And I
remember at the time I pretty much only use it for opening some pdfs and I think I downloaded
some of the free classic books. But I found it a bit basic and kind of not that great really to be
honest. But since there's been so many updates with IOS, I've been wondering: am I missing out
on something? Maybe Apple's improved the Books app heaps? Maybe it's better than Kindle? So
I'm going to make a cup of tea, I'm going to sit down on the couch and I'm going to read on the
Apple Books app for a while and see how I find it. See how it's compared to Kindle.
Whether it's better or whether it's still kind of crap. But first I'm gonna make a cup of tea.
So I've got my cup of tea and I've got my iPad with the Apple Books app
and I've downloaded Treasure Island. I've always been kind of curious to read Treasure Island so
it's the book I'm going to use to test out the Books app. We'll see how we find it.
Alright, so right out the gate I'm a bit frustrated because there's no ruler function.
And I tend to like reading fairly fast, or as fast as I can, and having a ruler on the screen
which I can do in the Kindle app I find helps me to read faster but I can't find the function. I
had a quick Google search and it doesn't seem like there is a ruler function within the Books app. So
I think that's one point for Kindle. So as you can see in the Kindle app if we go to the text
options, then to more, we've got the reading ruler option up here. So just hit that, turn on.
As you can see it creates a ruler. So you can change the color like this
it's kind of cool you can change how opaque it is and then you can change the ruler style as well.
So I kind of prefer this one. Adjust the size big is good and there you go. And this helps me to
just read a lot faster because I can concentrate on one line at a time and I don't jump around in
the book. Whereas in apple books there's just no option for a ruler which is kind of sad.
So another thing I'm finding is the lookup tool on the Books app. It's just not really as quick
and easy to use as the lookup tool on the Kindle app. Treasure Island is obviously a pretty old
book and it's got some weird words like maught but when I select the word to look it up I have
to then select look up and just gives me some like links to other websites like a dictionary website,
Wikipedia. But then I have to actually tap it and that opens the browser. So it takes me out of the
books app to forget the definition of the word I'm looking for whereas one tap in the kindle
app gives me dictionary definition immediately Wikipedia page and then even a translate tool.
So I think that's another point to the kindle app. So here you can see in just a single tap and hold
it pops up with a dictionary definition, Wikipedia page and then translate tool. Obviously,
this is an English word so it's not going to translate it but it just pops straight up;
we don't have to go to a separate page or anything like that. It's just all within the Kindle app.
Whereas in the Apple Books app, if we tap and hold on a word we then have to hit look up and it'll
then give us a dictionary definition assuming it knows the word but then we'll just give us a bunch
of Siri knowledge and we have to follow the actual link to be able to really see the full article.
This one kind of annoys me. I'm someone who likes to read through a lot of books quickly
and efficiently. Having the progress meter at the bottom of the page in the kindle app is amazing
because it can tell you how many minutes you've got left in each chapter as well as how much time
you've got left in the entire book based on your current reading speed. Whereas with the Books app,
all you can see in terms of progress is how many pages you've got left in the chapter which doesn't
help you know how much time you need to budget to get through the book in a given week or in a given
month or whatever. So, so far it's not really looking too good for the old books app on iPad.
So here in the kindle app again you can see the reading progress option and you can choose to
see what type of progress you want to see in the bottom left corner. So you can select pages left
in the book, time left in the chapter, time left in the book, or you can hide reading progress
altogether. If you want you can select all of these options and then just toggle them down
the bottom left corner by tapping. So it's off, that's pages in the book, that's minutes left in
the chapter, and minutes left in the book. And I love this because it helps me know how much time
to budget to be able to finish my book within a given amount of time. Whereas here in the Books
app what you've got down the bottom right is how many pages you've got left in the chapter,
as well as the pages in the total book. But, when you tap and turn a page it disappears so
you can't see it anyway. So this last thing really isn't as big of a deal to be fair,
but the Apple app is just isn't as customizable as the Kindle app. Sure in the Apple app you can
customize the font size, the font itself, and the page color. But within Kindle you can customize so
many more things like the spacing, the alignment, the margins, the columns and then you can save how
you like it as a custom preset which is really handy. So overall I think I have to say the
Kindle app beats the Apple app. It's just got better features. So like I said, here's all your
customizable options within the Books app: you can change the font size, you can select your font,
there's plenty of fonts to choose from, you can select the color of your page which is cool
and then you've got vertical scrolling as well if you want that. But that's pretty much it. Whereas
in the Kindle app, here if we go to options we've got all the same options: so we can select the
font size, we can select our font, but then we can also select the page color, we have continuous
scrolling here as well, but we can also select the spacing of the lines, you can select the alignment
of the paragraphs, margin sizing, and column types and then once we've got a set up that we're happy
with we can go to themes and save a custom theme. Finally there's one other thing that I think the
Kindle app does way better than the Apple books app and that is syncing your highlights and notes
to Goodreads. Because Amazon owns both Kindle and Goodreads, they're linked and when you make a note
or a highlight within a Kindle book, that will get synced to your online Goodreads account where you
can easily access all your notes and highlights from your browser. And you can also link them to
a third party system like Read Wise to collate all your notes and highlights. But with Apple Books,
there's just no such thing. All your notes and highlights are just within the app and that's
it. So that's my experience with the Apple Books and the Kindle app. What's yours? Let me know
in the comments below! If you're interested in more videos on how tech can be used to improve
your life, then be sure to hit subscribe. Hit like if you enjoyed the video and other
than that I hope you have an amazing day today and I'll see you very soon in the next video.