Apple Relents, Approves 'Eucalyptus' eBook App

So now the only way around the arcane review process is to get the media to pick up the story? :o

Both ways, good for the devs that worked on the app. it looks great!

I'm glad that nonsense is cleared up. :) That said... I'll stick with Stanza!

"If Jesus Himself came back to earth and turned water to wine, half of MacRumors would say 'meh, this is red. I wanted white.'"

How true is this!

So now the only way around the arcane review process is to get the media to pick up the story? :o

Apparently...it's worked that way several times now.

--Eric

actually, the best way to get around this rejection is simply resubmit the app!

Since different people review the app with each submission, you have more chance of getting it approved different people

I have a feeling, all the app rejected seemed to be based on the same person reviewing the app.

UPDATE: WOAH, $9.99???!!!!! HAVEN'T THIS PERSON THOUGHT OF CURRENT ECONOMY WHEN PRICING THE APP? LOWER IT DOWN TO $6.99 FOR FIRST COUPLE OF DAYS!

When I hear of the rejections I often wonder if they have a room full of people makig $7.50 an hour to give a thumbs up or down.

Wow. I had planned to buy this when it eventually hit the store (and I knew it would, it's pretty so Apple couldn't resist), however $9.99 seems very high. I was expecting $5-6, $10 is up there. The price certainly took it from a "Must Buy" to a "Wait and See" for me. Given the high likelihood of being featured, I can't blame them, though.

Secret :apple: sauce :



#include
#include

extern int enoughBuzz;

foreach ( application, newlySubmittedApps ) {

new Thread(reject( application ));
while ( !enoughBuzz )
sleep(30);
approveApplication( application );
ASSERT(rakeInMoreSales());
}

void reject ( Application app )
{
Hype hype(0);
sendRejectionLetter( app );
while (1) {
collectHypeInfo( &hype );
if ( hype >= HYPE_THRESHOLD ) {
enoughBuzz = 1;
break;
}
}
}

actually, the best way to get around this rejection is simply resubmit the app!

Since different people review the app with each submission, you have more chance of getting it approved different people

I have a feeling, all the app rejected seemed to be based on the same person reviewing the app.

UPDATE: WOAH, $9.99???!!!!! HAVEN'T THIS PERSON THOUGHT OF CURRENT ECONOMY WHEN PRICING THE APP? LOWER IT DOWN TO $6.99 FOR FIRST COUPLE OF DAYS!

$9.99? What makes this reader so great it's worth $10 when it only reader Project Gutenberg titles when you can get Stanza for FREE and it supports Gutenberg plus Fictionwise? There's no demo version so I cannot even try it out. Sorry, I'm not paying $10 for an unknown quantity that can only reader one free site's books. I'd rather offer feedback to help make Stanza better.

It seems to me if someone is going to charge $10 for a reader, it should support as many formats as possible and let you add your own titles and text files stored locally as well across the local network (after all, I might want to use it in the living room sitting it an easy chair sipping coffee). Support for MS documents and PDF files would be nice as well (e.g. imagine being able to access a tractor manual on your iPod Touch sitting on your network from the garage instead of having to print it out or bring your laptop down with you. (edit: I see Stanza for the Mac can already export your own textfiles and PDF files, even to the Kindle format and even audio MP3 format via digital voice to playback a text file as an MP3 on your iPod! I'm downloading it now instead)

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--
Edit #2: I take some of what I said back. Stanza is not a very good ebook reader for the Mac. In fact, there doesn't seem to be any really good ones. What am I talking about? You cannot even scroll pages with a mouse wheel. The feature was requested almost a year ago and they said they were planning to add it. If it takes over a year to add a tiny feature like tying the scroll function to the mouse wheel (should have taken about 5 minutes to add it), they're not on top of their game at all. In fact, I just read Amazon bought the company that makes it out so I would imagine that's primarily to make sure it doesn't offer too many features, etc. that might compete with their Kindle product (big reason I'm against mergers and buy-outs; IT KILLS COMPETITION).

I'm also not totally crazy about the presentation options on the desktop version. It's very buggy as well. If you change to say the "dawn" desktop theme and then try to switch back to default, it does nothing unless you quit and reload the whole program. Talk about an obvious bug that should never have made it out the door. Do they even test these programs before they release them? Vertical view mode uses a horizontal scroll bar. How much sense does that make? It doesn't matter anyway since the mouse scroll doesn't work. In fact, if you scroll with the arrow keys, it makes an annoying sound out of the speakers. There is no keyboard shortcut listed in the title bar menu for turning pages quietly either.

Here's where this Eucalyptus might be worth $10. From what I can see of the pictures on the iTunes store, it allows you to directly access books from the Gutenberg project. Just search, tap, download. Stanza requires you to download it with your computer first and then transfer it over a wireless network to the iPhone. They have excuses about Apple not allowing Safari on the iPhone to redirect its output to Stanza, but that's irrelevant now that they allow internal web-kit browsers to function, which I imagine is how Eucalyptus directly searches and downloads books off the Internet.

Now that Amazon owns Stanza, I wouldn't expect ANY such features to emerge for it since they'll want to pad their Kindle browser and that's designed to try and get you to buy their Kindle hardware reader. Of course, even if Eucalyptus is a nice iPhone reader, what about a desktop one to go with it? I'd still be stuck reading HTML or using Stanza there. Adding a desktop companion Mac version would make the $10 fee a lot more palatable, as would offering support for other formats (If I want to buy a book, I have to use someone else's reader which puts me back to square one again).

All of the Book content is supplied by Project Gutenberg.

I searched 4 authors I read on a regular basis and did not find one book.

I would prefer to have the choice to pay for a book that I want to read.

I currently have Stanza & Kindle and enjoy them. Although this is written beautifully (from the video I watched on their website). It doesn't seem to be the app for me.