There were so many app updates tumbling out into the new iOS7 app store on Wednesday that we didn’t have time to cover them all, but the update to the iOS Kindle app is definitely worth a look. I do most of my reading on an actual Kindle device, but I love the fact that I can pick up on any device thanks to Whispersync. And now the iOS Kindle experience is way less ugly than before.
The big new feature is collections, and you can now create and organize collections that will be reflected on other iOS devices as well as Kindle hardware. This can be done in batches, too, making iOS probably the best place to manage collections (along with the Mac app maybe).
But you’ll love the update most when you’re actually reading. The reading view is clean, with nothing but the book text and the title of the book (the author, too, in landscape mode). Tap the screen and the new top and bottom bars fade in. They’re clean, and just a little darker than the page they cover. This is where you’ll find the search and navigation functions, along with a new (as far as I can tell) My Notebook section, which gathers together all your highlights, notes and bookmarks into one screen. This is actually pretty great, although it’d be better if you could access the notes in all your books from one place. Somebody totally needs to make an app that pulls in the notes form all the major book apps.
In the top bar is a hamburger button that pops over a sliding sidebar with the navigation options. Go home, to the cover, to a specific page, and access book extras and X-Ray features.
When I first saw that the Kindle app has already gotten an iOS7 update, I cynically assumed that it would be a sprinkling of new UI chrome and nothing else. I was totally wrong. This is easily the best version of Kindle for iOS yet. Now if only they’d fix the typography.
Source: iTunes
