Hasta La Gadget!

The iPad might have iBooks, but if Apple’s built-in iPhone apps are anything to go by, then it will likely be gorgeous but limited (the Mail app, anyone?). We think that it’ll be the third party e-book readers that turn the Moses Tablet into the Kindle Killer people so obviously want it to be.

Ironically, the Kindle application will be among those that will run just fine on the iPad as it is, and Amazon is likely to update it. But the first third-party e-book announcement is from Kobo, the maker of the fine iPhone app of the same name. Kobo will run on the iPad as is, but the team is already working on a larger version.

In the screenshots, you can see that the bookshelf metaphor is there, as we presume it has to be with all future e-book applications, but it has been joined by a navigation list at the side, like the new Apple Mail application for the iPad. It’s fine, but little more than an amalgamation of two existing screens in the iPhone version.

What we really like is the reading screen. Instead of lamely aping the pages of a paper book like Apple’s iBook, the entire screen is available for text. A page-curl animation made it in, but you can switch that off, and the progress bar along the bottom is genuinely useful, like that on the Kindle only easier to read.

The one thing these reader applications will need is in-app purchasing. Not because Apple will necessarily demand it – Kindle for iPhone uses content bought at Amazon – but because the consumer will want it. Faced with a separate login, adding credit card details and having to navigate to a separate web site, most users will just use the simple, quick, built-in iTunes book store.

The iPad Is Finally Here And Kobo Is Ready!) [Kobo. Thanks, Nick!]