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Kindle for iPhone, iPad Updated – Now Supports PDF, Kindle Cloud, and More

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Christmas came a little early for iPad users this year. Amazon has just rolled out an update for their reading app on the iPad and iPhone, and they added a bunchaton of new features.

The iPad app is getting support for the new magazines and other periodicals currently found on the Kindle Fire. That’s over 400 titles with new and rich formatting. You can buy a single issue or subscribe and Amazon will  automatically deliver them to your gadget.

But wait, there’s more.

Amazon has clearly decided to turn their iPad app into a textbook platform. The Kindle iPad app now supports Amazon’s PDF format, Kindle Print Replica. Amazon launched this format about 4 months ago as a way attracting publishers who need complex formatting in their ebooks. At this point it’s entirely concentrated among textbooks and academic titles, which is why I think of it as a textbook platform.

BTW, I checked and the iPad app can use all the usual annotation tools with the KPR files. You can bookmark, highlight, type notes, and share one of these ebooks just like you can with other Kindle ebooks. The app also supports the external TOC used by some PDFs and it has a nice interface for browsing. Click on the lead photo for an example (it’s from the iPhone app).

Now, the iPhone app didn’t get those 2 really cool features, but it did  get a lot more useful today. Both the iPad and iPhone apps now support PDFs and they got a new library layout. You can now choose to see just the ebooks bought from Amazon, personal docs, or periodicals. And both versions of the apps now support for the Kindle Cloud.

The apps can also download the personal ebooks that Amazon stores for you in the Kindle Cloud, the 5GB of online storage that all Kindle owners have. They don’t have their own email addresses, but you can send files to your general Kindle email address and then download them from inside the app.

I was hoping for the direct email support, but this is almost as good.

All in all, this is a major update. Go get it now.

via iTunes

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Comments


My iPad Now Has a Kindle Email Address & Backs up My Notes! – The Digital Reader December 21, 2011 um 9:05 pm

[…] me that I had missed a couple small but important details when I posted about the iPad app update this morning. I’m so very glad that she did because it makes the new app that much […]


cookie December 22, 2011 um 8:06 pm

I have been checking out the "Available only on these devices" menu to see whether certain newspapers or periodicals are supported on the IPAD.

The Kindle version of NewYork times doesn’t appear to be supported on the IPAD but the Financil times is. However the New York Times is supported on the Kindle Fire.

Also, it appears none of the Kindle blogs on Amazon I checked seem to be supported on the Kindle fire or the IPAD. I wonder if that will change.

Nate Hoffelder December 22, 2011 um 8:32 pm

Probably not. The older blog and periodical distribution seems to be run as a separate program from the new rich format magazines and newspapers.


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