Recently, I wanted to buy a book. It was about iPhone programming and it just didn’t seem right to purchase a traditional ink-on-paper edition. I already had a number of different eBook applications on my iPhone, all of which were integrated in one way or another with online stores that should allow me to browse and buy in my underwear, right? The reality was a bit more complicated.
I’m still a bit gun-shy about Kindle (even on the iPhone) with its eBooks being in a format that are unusable outside of the Kindle ecosystem, so I first turned to Stanza. As one of the largest eBook applications around, it has tie-ins to a number of online stores and offers thousands of downloadable eBooks. By “tie-ins” I mean it launches a web browser, and drops me into a standard web store. Not exactly seamless.
After a while, rooting around without any luck, I eventually just went to the publisher’s site to see my purchase options for the book in question. Though many of the other books they publish offer eBook editions for download, it seems the particular book I was interested in only had a password protected PDF edition for digital consumption.
They didn’t list Kindle editions on their site, but those have to be sold through Amazon, so it’s not surprising. Begrudgingly, I launched the Kindle reader app on the iPhone and clicked the “Buy Books” link, did a search and… nada. Seems the book I wanted to buy didn’t have a Kindle edition, either. Natch.
Here’s the pickle: I want to read the digital book on my iPhone. Problem is, the built-in PDF viewer on the iPhone is, well, incapable of reading password-protected files. Furthermore, transferring large files via email (the book was almost 30MB) is less than ideal.
It only took a couple minutes of rooting around on the App store to find the solution. Readdle, the same crew behind ReaddleDocs, also has a program called PDF Expert. As the name suggests it’s a steroid-laden application for opening, viewing, managing and copying PDF files to your iPhone.
Since the book was my primary goal, I went ahead and purchased the PDF edition from the publisher’s web site (this was easy enough on my MacBook Pro), which I had downloaded only minutes later. I then picked up PDF Expert for $4.99 from the App Store for my iPhone.
If you’re familiar with ReaddleDocs at all, you know that you have three options for transferring files to the iPhone: Through Readdle’s own file transfer service, Readdle Storage; via MobileMe; your public iDisc or any other WebDav supported server. Unfortunately, PDF Expert isn’t quite as fancy in this department. It only supports Readdle Storage. Thankfully, this is a free option, but it did require me to register at Readdle.com and set up yet another online account. What I don’t need in my life right now is yet one more online account.
After I registered, the rest of the transfer process was quite easy. I uploaded the PDF file to the Readdle Storage system. Then, in PDF Expert I selected “WiFi Access”, clicked the circle-R (this could have been more obvious) and had the complete PDF book downloaded to my iPhone within minutes.
PDF Protection
Once there, the PDF resided in the apps’ Document folder, where I had the option to Rename, Delete, Mail, Add to Zip File or simply open the 26.1MB document. Upon opening, the PDF prompted me to enter a password, as it was a secured. Easy enough. Though, I would like to have the option to save the password. Typing in a lengthy password every time I want to open the book is less than ideal.
Boom. The book was now my iPhone and looked just like the printed edition. Once opened I had a number of additional options: I could search the entire PDF, copy a segment of the book using copy-paste, navigate the book outline for quick jumps to later chapters, add my own bookmarks, email the whole document, or jump to a specific page number. Everything anyone would really want to do on a mobile device.
Even with large and complicated documents, such as the digital edition of Subiesport, a Subaru enthusiast’s magazine in digital form, rendering was spot-on and the application navigated the file briskly. Turn the iPhone sideways and the document event adjusts itself to fit the landscape view.
If you deal with PDF files either because you want to buy digital editions that work with more than one device, or you just like to kick back with one of the many digital magazines now available in the format, PDF Expert is the best option I’ve used on the iPhone.
But it’s not as good as it could be.
ReaddleDocs is clearly a more refined and thorough application that can also read PDF files (in addition to Word, Excel, Powerpoint and many other formats), though it doesn’t support quite as many PDF-specific options and won’t open password protected PDF files — at all. I would also rather use my existing iDisc account which I have integrated into my desktop, rather than the very simple Readdle Storage system for transferring files to the iPhone. In short, I want all the features of PDF Expert, but added to its big brother, ReaddleDocs.
Looks like I’m not the only one, as Readdle notified me recently that they plan to do just that:
From Twitter – 9/1/2009
Readdle @tekbug We are working on it. ReaddleDocs will become more advanced soon.
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Awesome, I was looking for a write-up on how to do this. Great for the daily bus ride.