Kindle Cloud Reader runs in your web browser but looks and acts just like an app--and you can continue reading even if you lose your internet connection. Shop over a million ebooks in the Kindle.
- Kindle Cloud Reader is familiar to those who often buy e-books at Amazon. Every time you select an e-book and choose a delivery method, you could see the 'Deliver to someone's Kindle Cloud Reader' option.
- From the Kindle App page, I clicked on Download for PC and Mac. It downloaded the Cloud Reader for Mac. I couldn't install it because this computer is a PC, not a Mac.
- Turn your phone or tablet into a book with the free Kindle apps for iOS, Android, Mac, and PC. Read anytime, anywhere on your phone, tablet, or computer. Go beyond paper with immersive, built-in features.
- Difference between Send-to-Kindle and email to Kindle from Calibre? I probably have missed something somewhere that could explain this, and will end up reading your answers and doing, but here my question.
- The Difference Between Today and Tomorrow Is You. - The Difference Between Today and Tomorrow Is You - Kindle edition by Bob Ravener. Religion & Spirituality Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.
Final draft reader for mac. I was recently listening to public radio show Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me! while waiting for my bus when author Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love fame came on as a guest. I became intrigued enough to downloaded her second book to my iPhone 6 Plus then and there, and powered through the first two chapters during my commute.
But I didn’t buy the book from Apple, Amazon, or Google. Instead, I borrowed it from my public library.
Yes, you can do that now. Public libraries, centuries-long suppliers of physical books on loan, have in recent years also started lending out digital books for their patrons to read on their computers and mobile devices. Borrowed e-books have a limited lifespan, like when you rent a movie from iTunes. When the loan expires, the e-book becomes inaccessible, no trudging to your local branch and of course no late fees.
Consider this a manifesto: Buying e-books is for suckers. Buy only books you love and are likely to reread. Calibre reader for mac. Get the rest from the library and save a bundle.
What you need
OverDrive and 3M Cloud Library are rival services that offer vast e-book catalogs for deployment by public libraries. My St. Paul public library uses both, as do other Twin Cities library systems. Access in your region may vary, but chances are good your local library uses at least one of these services.3M Cloud Library and OverDrive take different approaches to library-book distribution, and neither did a good job until recently. Now things are looking up.
This month, 3M released version 2.0 of its iPhone and iPad app with a dramatically improved interface. Gone is a dreadful skeuomorphic-wood bookcase, replaced with the minimalist interface Android users have been enjoying for months. Pdf reader editor for mac.
OverDrive takes a multi-pronged approach by making e-books available as elegant Web apps, downloadable files, or Kindle e-books. The latter is possible because OverDrive has a deal with Amazon to use its Kindle Store as a distribution hub.
I use OverDrive and 3M Cloud Library interchangeably because they never seem to have the same titles available. I treat these as a single, gigantic library with untold e-treasures available for download with a click or a tap—but each lending system has shortcomings.
Get started with 3M Cloud Library
3M takes an app-centric approach to library-book lending. In addition to iOS and Android apps, it offers PC and Mac apps. Almost everything happens within these apps, from signing up for e-book borrowing with your library card, to searching for, reserving, and checking out library books.
The iOS app works well. It lets you look through a catalog via Featured and Browse sections, both accessed on a light-blue menu bar that slides in from the left edge of the device’s screen. As a user of the old 3M Cloud Library app, I am delighted by the app’s vastly improved “discoverability,” courtesy of well-organized, readily accessible catalog offerings.
The My Books section shows all my checked-out books, the books I have on hold, and a reading history. I’m currently on Dave Eggers’s The Circle, David Shafer’s Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, and Dragonfly in Amber, the second book in Diana Gabaldon’s time-travel romance epic. Each is available with a tap. I am reminded below each when its loan term expires, and I can “return” a book with a tap at any time.
The app annoys in some ways. It’s not Retina-ready on either the iPhone or iPad, which means icons in the settings popover menu look badly blurred. Nothing about the app’s design is iOS 8-specific (3M needs to hire an Apple-knowledgeable app developer stat). Typography from title to title can be hit or miss. And the left and right margins in some books are too wide on my iPhone 6 Plus, although they look fine on the iPad.
The Cloud Library app for Mac is in even greater need of interface updates, though it is fairly functional in its current form. My checked-out books are shown against a wooden backdrop (ugh), a Shelves area shows long rows of other books in popular categories, and a Categories section allows users drill down into 52 topic areas, from Antiques & Collectibles to True Crime. Some, like Comics & Graphic Novels, have slim pickings.
You can also read Cloud Library books in the Windows app and Android app, and even in the Adobe Digital Editions for Mac, because 3M uses Adobe encryption. You can transfer books onto physical e-book readers from the likes of Sony, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble via the Cloud Library desktop app, as well.
3M does offer a method for installing the app on Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablets—I tried it and it works. But there’s no way to get Cloud Library books on Kindle e-book readers like the Voyage or the Paperwhite. This is Cloud Library’s largest shortcoming and perhaps OverDrive’s biggest edge.
Going into OverDrive
OverDrive is a wider-used and better-known system for lending public library e-books, which is why for many it is synonymous with digital book borrowing. But unlike Cloud Library’s centralized system, OverDrive takes a hydra-like approach with multiple (and sometimes conflicting) ways to borrow and read books. It has a bit of a learning curve.
OverDrive users in search of something to read will typically start on the Web, perhaps on their local library’s site. The St. Paul Public Library, for example, has an entire OverDrive section on its site.
Or you can use OverDrive’s site, which is as a kind of library metasearch engine that looks up book titles, and which libraries have them to lend.Once you’re ready to check out an OverDrive book from my public library, you have a variety of options, not all of which are available for every title.
First, you could read the book in the browser. This is a surprisingly good way to go because it turns the e-book into a sort of lovely Web app with sophisticated, thoughtfully arranged controls, including a choice of typefaces, a font-scaling slider, an offline mode and options for creating bookmarks, highlights and notes.
Second, you can hand off the book to Amazon for reading as a Kindle e-book. This makes it available on any Kindle device, within any Kindle app and within a browser via the Kindle Cloud Reader. It will remain in your Kindle library forever, but once the lending period is over, you can’t open it unless you buy or re-borrow it.
Either the browser or Kindle option works for me, but I don’t use them interchangeably because they can’t sync with each other. But if you stick to either browser or Kindle reading, syncing from device to device does work reliably.
There’s a third option: Downloading a book to your Mac as either a PDF or an ePub file. These are copy-protected files that use Adobe encryption, so you need to install Adobe’s aforementioned Digital Editions app for Mac. If you are also using Cloud Library, you can conveniently consolidate borrowed books from both systems in the Adobe app. But beware: Digital Editions can be unstable and uncooperative about loading e-books.
OverDrive has a selection of native apps for desktop and mobile, but these are optional, do not give you any additional reading options, and do not provide any significant advantages over browser-based access that I can see. In fact, the apps merely pull up my public library’s site, browser-style, when it’s time to check out a book.I couldn’t even install OverDrive’s Mac app for the life of me, and I have been trying on multiple Macs for weeks.
The upshot
Because of e-book borrowing, my e-book purchasing has taken a dive—my last Kindle purchases were in December of 2013. In the months since, I’ve checked out dozens of books from the St. Paul Public Library, and I’m having the time of my life.
3M Cloud Library and OverDrive are still far from perfect, as I’ve noted, but their flaws are now modest enough to forgive given how they put a world of books at my fingertips…and the price is certainly right.
Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details.
Two of the most exciting devices to be released in the last couple of years have been the iPad and the Kindle. Both of them make lives easier. The Kindle then came out with the Kindle Fire, their most expensive model. It’s been compared often to an iPad, with some people opting just to buy the Fire and skip the iPad, saving hundreds of dollars.
Yet Amazon has just released a new larger Kindle Fire, one that makes it even closer to an iPad, both in function and price. They just made that choice a little more difficult. The following is a list of differences and similarities between the newest Kindle Fire and the newest iPad, which should help you determine which choice you should make.
Software: Android vs. iOS
The first major difference between the Kindle Fire and the iPad is with the software that runs the two devices. The Kindle Fire operates on a fork version of the Google’s Android OS, while the iPad operates on Apple’s iOS. If you already have an Android phone, it could be an obvious choice for you to go with what you know. The same goes for iOS. If you have an iPhone, it’s easier to go with what you know. It’s also easier to share information back and forth between devices using the same system.
Apps
There’s no doubt when looking at Apps that the iPad has the edge. iOS’ tagline for awhile was “there’s an app for that.” And browsing the offerings, it does seem like there’s an app for absolutely everything you could dream of. The latest count is over 300,000 apps that are dedicated to the iPad. Additionally, many of the iPhone apps work on the iPad as well. The latest count for the Amazon App Store is one-tenth of that amount. That amount is growing, but it’s hard to imagine it ever catching up to the iPad. And if you are wondering, Google Play store is not available in the Kindle Fire.
Camera and Microphone
The iPad has both front and back back cameras to handle taking pictures, albeit awkward with the size of the device, and videos. The dual cameras make utilizing the FaceTime video chat, or even another video chatting service, such as Skyping, possible. There is a microphone as well for recording and/or use in the video chats. The new Kindle Fire has only a front-facing camera and microphone. This means you can use the camera and microphone for Skyping, but you won’t be able to take pictures with it, despite it having a photo app for editing and allowing free cloud storage. This is not a big issue for most of you unless you use your tablet to take photo everywhere you go. I think you will do better with your iPhone or Android phone than the tablet.
Media
The media offered on the two tablets is similar. The Kindle Fire offers Amazon media of books, videos, music, and the iPad offers their iTunes service offering the same. Again, if users own other devices and media from one system, it might be easier to stick with that system. Having $1000 of iTunes or Amazon media makes you less likely to decide to get a device with the other system and rebuild your media. The Kindle Fire does offer a month free of the Amazon Prime service which includes their media and also free shipping of their products. Of course, reading media will be better on a Kindle. It’s main purpose is as an e-reader. However, there is a Kindle app and other e-readers for the iPad. So it can be done there as well, just not as natively. In this case, Amazon seems to have the better edge since it is both available in the iPad and Kindle Fire, while your iTunes media is only available on your, you know it, iOS devices.
On the other hand, even with the Kindle fire’s improved display, the newest iPad is still slightly superior at 2048 x 1536 vs. 1920 x 1200, while the Kindle Fire now offers reduced screen glare.
Price and Storage
The new Kindle Fire is now offered in three larger storage sizes, 16GB, 32GB, and 64B, and also now offers a 4G LTE model. With the 16GB Wi-Fi only, you’re only into it for $299, while the 32GB with 4G LTE is $499 and the 64GB $599 On the other hand, the iPad starts at $499 for a 16GB with only Wi-Fi, and raises considerably with storage possibilities of up to 64GB and 3G possibilities as well. Both offer some type of storage in the cloud as well.
Conclusion
The are definitely pluses and minuses to owning each device. If all of your media collection of books, audio and video are from Amazon, it makes great sense to get a Kindle Fire rather than an iPad. You will get an equally capable tablet at a lower price. If you are going for the apps and retina display, iPad would be a better choice.
Kindle Cloud Reader Download For Pc
What do you think? Which one would you chooose? Kindle Fire or iPad.