I remember Appcelerator. In fact I'm still using it to this day. The core Titanium is now open source and the Apps are "true" native. Give them another look and you may be surprised: https://titaniumsdk.com
Just finished this last week. Great read. Truly fascinating in understanding the complexity and sheer breadth of what's involved in getting these out there at scale. Recomended.
Exact same experience here. Mine died after a botched firmware update. Woke up one morning after it had auto-updated the night before. 100% Apple's fault because they pulled the update shortly after but the damage was done. Took it in thinking they would just reset it and shocked they wanted $300 to repair. Unless this one has a UCB-C port like the mini that allows user resetting I'll skip this one.
Just finished the order of time. It's a bit of a let down. Hoped for a more scientific book but most of it reads like a memoir. If you don't like it skip to chapter 14. This is the summary with reference to the chapter.
Kobo Forma. I'm an avid eBook reader so the little things add up. Going from the Kindle to the Forma was a huge upgrade. Font rendering, warm light, larger form factor, and Pocket integration amongst a host of other little niceties make it pretty much a perfect experience for me.
I love my kobo libra! I didnt buy a forma, which i regret, because that would have been even better. Was sceptical at first, because I thought kindle’s OS was better. Turns out: kobo’s OS is great!
Two other things i bought last year, use daily and really like:
Loading [DRM free] books via USB using Calibre is super easy. No rooting required. Epub format works best. PDF can be so-so depending on the document.
That said, "rooting" does seem pretty easy. I use kobopatch for the sole reason of adding a button directly to the Pocket page on the home screen to save myself a "click".
What you’re looking for is Calibre ebook. And for the kobo there is a plug-in that makes any ebook a kobo ebook so you get niceties on all sideloaded ebooks that only books from the kobo store get.
You can put epubs and pdfs on it using usb, but i never tried that. I just buy a ebook on my ipad (in kobo’s store, or bol.com) and then its available after syncing.
You can definitely sideload books, and I was able to do so without loginning into an account by adding a fake user to a sqlite file on the device. I didn't see any upside to any of the tweak/custom firmware stuff I saw over just not connecting the device to the internet for my use case, but I think root access might be possible?
Yeah, I like Plato either! The UI is (IMO) way better/more pleasant than OKReader. I still tend to use OKReader more due to it having more customization flexibility but I'm tracking Plato development.
I tried the Forma but found the power button was a bit spongy which drove me crazy trying to turn it on and off. Went with the Libra instead and very happy with it.
Kobo's in general are quite good I think. The Pocket integration is also really handy for reading all those Hacker News articles away from the computer. :-)
Has anyone here tried both the Kobo Forma and the Kindle Oasis? The Forma is tempting, but apparently the lighting is more even on the Kindle, the fonts are better, and I think I’d even prefer the smaller size (more portable, fits in a jacket pocket.)
At the end of the day they're both good e-readers but for me the larger size Forma was actually the big reason I switched. Portability isn't a factor for me but if it was I'd go for their smaller Libra model. I find the Forma lighting considerably better and more even and the font rendering better as well. I'm also not a big fan of the Oasis cold metallic feel... much prefer the Formo plastic / rubbery feel. I think for most it's a preference thing.
Just connect your Kindle with your PC via any ISB cable, and with little moving around you can locate the directory where your downloaded books dwell. Just copy it to your PC, and then tranfer to your Kobo reader.
There is a DeDRM plugin for Calibre but it doesn't work very well on Amazon's KFX format. People get around that by getting Amazon to deliver the book in an older format but then you lose the typography improvements that come with KFX.
It feels like this is the beginning of the end for ebook DRM stripping.
You can download the books on your PC and DeDRM them using Calibre. Not sure if its legal, but as far as im concerned i paid for those books and i should be able to read them wherever i like.
I’d love to be proven wrong, but you need an older version of the kindle desktop app that isn’t reliably available. By available I mean from a reputable source…
Very interesting. I maintain several Titanium projects and I have to agree it seems to have chosen the best paths for basic to intermediate cross platform App development and the recent release to full open source has me excited for its future.
This. I almost returned mine since I couldn't stand the pressure for more than about 20 minutes. As a last resort I stretched it out overnight between some books and they're now perfect. They're on my head 8 hours a day 5 days a week. I take them off for lunch for about an hour.
