Today Apple announced that the iBooks app, prominently featured when the iPad was introduced, will also be included in iPhone OS 4. Users will be able to purchase books or samples of books on their iPhones through the iBookstore. Conveniently, any books on the iPhone will sync with books on the iPad and vice versa. That way users never lose their place regardless of which device they carry with them. It will be interesting to see if Apple creates a Mac/PC iteration of iBooks as well so that people can read across all platforms.
One weakness of the iBooks app (for both iPad and iPhone) is that, as of now, it does not allow you to highlight passages or take notes. This is a major oversight that hopefully will be remedied in a future update. The Kindle allows for highlighting and annotating passages, but the UI is clunky, and typing on the Kindle is hardly a pleasure. The touch input on both iPhone and iPad lends itself to easy highlighting of passages, and a simple tap to enter notes would be an elegant feature.
The iBooks app for iPhone will be available when OS 4 comes out this summer.
