Watch How Apple Could Revolutionize E-Reading Again With Realistic Virtual Page Flipping [Video]

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If you have ever used iBooks or the Kindle app on your iPhone or iPad, you probably have experienced virtual page turning… and probably turned it off shortly thereafter.

Why? Well, virtual page turning is just a fancy animation that does nothing practical. It slows the reading experience down (however minutely) just to give you a little millisecond voyage through an e-reading uncanny valley.

After all, in the real world, pages do more than just flip: you can rifle through them, bend them back, check multiple spots in a book at once, bookmark places with your fingers, etc. Wouldn’t it be cool if your iPad’s virtual page-turning animations could do the same things?

Well, the iPad could do these things, as this demo from the KAIST Institute of Information Technology Convergence makes clear. In fact, their demo turns virtual page flipping from a superficial annoyance to an indispensible navigation tool of the e-reading experience.

The only problem? It relies upon Apple’s private and undocumented APIs, meaning we’re unlikely to see this come to light unless Apple loosens up its rules, or decides to roll with this concept themselves in iBooks 2.1.

[via Gadget Lab]

Update: Looks like Giles also shared his thoughts about this demo yesterday.

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