In a recent post, I asked if you were still using a print version Bible along with PocketBible. Although not a scientific survey, of forty-some comments via Facebook and the web, around 35% of you are still using print regularly and another 20% are using it occasionally – mostly for personal study at home or in preaching (we still can’t trust electronic entirely!). I related to the person who mentioned that he uses print so he is not distracted by emails, texts, Facebook, etc. when he is trying to read the Bible. I can further add that a printed Bible does not attract the notice of children (or adults) in the same manner that an electronic device does, giving the printed Word another advantage for quiet times. In summary, the electronic and print still seem to offer something that cannot be replaced entirely by the other. Although I couldn’t help but notice a certain “extra” enthusiasm about PocketBible from the iPad owners.
I’ve always thought the iPad looked cool but there’s no way I’d part with $500 for what I consider to be a non-essential electronic device. However, your comments intrigued me and I was able to borrow an iPad and use it for the last week or so. Let’s just say, I “get” your enthusiasm. I haven’t felt this way about a device since I first got my iPhone. As a personal study tool and a replacement for a paper Bible, I can’t imagine anything better. However, if I prepared Bible studies or wrote sermons, I think I would continue to use PocketBible for Windows at my desktop. And, of course, PocketBible on my iPhone would be used because I always have my phone with me. But, yes, PocketBible for iPad along with all the other features of the iPad is making $500 seem like a wise investment rather than an extravagance.
What’s to love about the iPad?
1. iPads are more portable than a laptop and they turn on instantly. I don’t carry my laptop around the house and it sure doesn’t turn on instantly even from sleep mode.
2. It still has that “geeky-cool” factor (as one customer put it) and everything, including PocketBible, game apps, web sites, looks great on it.
3. PocketBible for iPad. It beats out PocketBible for iPhone in my book for one really important reason: screen size. For the first time, I’m using the split screen option regularly – up to 5 windows open on the iPad is amazing. The extra buttons on the toolbar and the extra toolbox make changing settings and adding highlights and bookmarks easier. And I love that the search feature shows results for all my books instead of just the current one. On the iPad, there is more room to spread out and, for me, that makes it more enjoyable to use.
iPad owners, am I missing anything about PocketBible or the iPad in general?
I use my iPad, almost exclusively for reading the Bible. In fact, I’m not sure where my favorite print Bible is at the moment. Why do I prefer my iPad? I can have more than one translation open at a time,I can go to a specific book & verse in less time than with any print Bible, I can make the print larger or smaller, etc.
I originally bought PocketBible because I was using Windows Mobile and you offered a sync to the PocketBible for Windows. I’d been highly frustrated with electronic Bible products to that point with being able to sync my notes and bookmarks and highlights. You first offered sync between PocketBible PPC and PocketBible Windows.
I got fed up with Windows Mobile’s instability and crashing, and the second you said PocketBible for iPhone was in development, I got an iPhone. I had to patiently wait for the iPhone client. Flash forward 2 years to getting an iPad in 2011, and I have to say I’m happier than ever with your platform. You’re my favorite iOS developer, and God bless you for it.
I really enjoy being able to do Bible study on my iPad. The screen is big. I can keep my Bible open, with a commentary or lexicon open on the same screen. Doesn’t matter. I can check Greek and Hebrew words, check a parallel version, or check several commentaries with room to spare. But the beauty is, I can sync everything back to the server, so no matter whether I’m on my iPad, my iPhone, or my laptop, I have access to everything.
I’ve been doing a lot of my reading and study on the iPad, but I still feel kind of pretentious bringing an iPad to church. So I bring my iPhone. But when I want to make a lot of notes, I do it on PocketBible for Windows. Thank you for making an app that is universal across platforms, and allows me to sync my notes, books, highlights, and bookmarks seamlessly across the devices I use.
Gail, me too! I like it for those reasons and more.
Eric, sounds like you have the multiple formats working great for you. I need to take that next step and sync between my iPhone and iPad because I’m starting to feel the frustration of not being on the same day in my devotional on both devices.
PocketBible for IPAD is really easy to use and at the same time, packed with features. I love it! I use my PocketBible daily. Thanks so much for a Great product!!
Michelle, I’m an iPad only person for church. I’ve not taken a paper Bible to church in years. 1st it was MyBible on Palm, then PocketBible on Windows Mobile, then PocketBible on my iPhone and now PocketBible on my iPad. I can look up passages faster than a speeding bullet (smile) since Baptist preachers love jumping all over the Bible in their sermons. When someone quotes a fragment of scripture but can’t remember where it is, I’m the one that can find it in seconds. When in Bible study, I’m the one that can instantly look up a passage in a commentary or check out Strong’s and I can do it in seconds. None of these things can be accomplished as quickly with a paper Bible (not to mention bookmarks and notes).
Prior to getting my iPad, I did all these things on the other platforms I’ve mentioned on a small PDA or iPhone. The extra screen real estate of the iPad is a godsend! Five open windows with 2 Bibles and three commentaries (or 2 commentaries and a devotional) open and they all synchronise together. What’s not to love?
Eric says he feels pretentious taking an iPad to church. He shouldn’t. I don’t and in fact I’m the envy of those who can’t move from scripture to scripture or look up stuff as quickly as I can. I go to church to worship and to study and learn, and with the iPad as my tool, all these activities are enhanced.
I don’t have much to add, except that I use my iPad exclusively for Bible reading at home, and I love it. I’m sure I don’t use it to the fullest, but it’s definitely the most-used app on my iPad and I am so thankful that Laridian created this app. I use my iPhone at church, but I don’t use the sync function. I may need to look into that.
Donald, that is true about church but I find it is even better at a Bible study since you can share the results of your fast searches with everyone on the larger screen
Plus, in my small group, we have a video portion to our study which I can also pull up on the iPad for everyone to watch. It really is an amazing tool.
The main reason my husband surprised me with an iPad was for the Bible. I was using iPod touch and really felt there was so much potential but the screen was too tiny to do split screen, etc. I love the iPad and it is right on my nightstand for my morning Bible study. I love being able to take notes on one note and flip easily between the two. I do carry my iPod to church, but thats really the only time I use the Bible on it. I don’t use print Bible at all. Haven’t found a need to.
I use the iPad or iPhone exclusively for Bible reading. Having discovered the sync feature, I can keep my devices current on my reading plan. At church, I use the iPad for Bible reading and don’t even carry a paper Bible, just the iPad. I generally read my iPhone while in bed so the screen isn’t so bright to keep my wife awake.
I have been using my iPad to preach from and no longer print my sermons or other service materials other than an outline for those involved. If I am reading an extended passage of scripture, I multi-task to PocketBible and then back to my notes.
I have used Laridian Bibles as my Bible since I first got my Visor Platinum! It is by far the best Bible available! Love it!!!!
Have you announced a release date for the Blackberry tablet? Just kidding! I love PB on my iPad! The only thing I really, really, really (x 1 billion) miss from my WM days is being able to long press and look up a word in all dictionaries or look up a verse in all commentaries or bibles. Did I mention that I REALLY miss that feature? I understand why you don’t use scrolling, but after a year of using it daily, I still find myself trying to scroll when using it. To be honest, if it weren’t for the fact that the Excel replacements on the iPad are horrible, I’d hardly ever have a need for my laptop, especially since I have Bluetooth keyboard/case.
As Donald said, I started with a Palm, then WM, iPod Touch, iPhone, and now an iPad. I haven’t taken a paper bible to church for about 2 months, just using my iPhone and for the last 3 weeks my new iPad. I really like the size of the iPad and the ability to do split screen. The only thing I see that needs beefed up is to make syncing automatic, my phone is online all the time, so why can’t changes be synced as they are made? And on the iPad sync whenever Pocket Bible is opened and WiFi is active?
Tom,
I haven’t spent much time thinking about continuous synchronization because it isn’t a model that seems very practical. It would require a combination of the existing algorithms and some new strategies to maintain a list of changes to be uploaded at the next opportune time. It would also require some kind of push notifications from the server to inform the program that there were changes on the server that needed to be processed. Just off the top of my head that sounds like a pretty big job. It’s worth thinking about for the future but I can tell you it’s not in the plan right now.
If only there was a Mac version, that would be AWESOME! Just started to preach from my iPad. (Still have a printed version of my notes as a back up though.) I haven’t used a paper Bible for several years, except extremely occasionally when doing a one on one. Now that I have my iPad I’ve been using it to show them the scripture I am referring to. I love the ability to look things up quick.
I don’t like the tablet form factor for reading or studying books. I think the iPhone screen is too small at 3.5″ and my Droid X screen at 4.3″ is just perfect. That small amount of screen space makes a huge difference. Apple was foolish to go with a uselessly high dpi on the iPhone 4 and not change to a 16×9 aspect ratio. It’s really too bad that they stuck with a screen resolution and aspect ratio that are both from about 1994 when they made the iPad.
The slightly wider and much taller display is why my Droid X is great for reading. I have BlackBerry PlayBook (actually testing it for work) and I think that’s too big and heavy for comfortable book reading though it’s great for web browsing and media viewing. And that’s only a 7″ screen.
Basically, I think tablets are just too heavy to be used for any significant reading. The iPhone has too small a screen. I’m really not a fan of any Apple products though their fixing a few major problems with iOS in iOS 5 I still don’t like most choices that Apple makes. In generally my feeling is if someone has an iPhone, iPad, or iPod, they just paid a lot more than they should have for what they got. I do think OS X is great! I’m not a total Apple hater. I just think Apple did a really bad job with iOS and a lot of their mobile devices (Shuffle, original iPod).
I’m with you, Craig. If I was planning a sermon or something I would probably use PocketBible on my laptop. But I know from experience, it’s even valuable having a 4-screen (sometimes more but that was usually the most that was practical) split view on a 4″ 480×640 device. It comes it very handy when I want to view one verse in two translations as well as info from two different commentaries all at the same time. That screen handles it fine and it worked perfectly with PocketBible for Windows Mobile on my Toshiba E830! I can’t wait to do the same thing on my Droid X!!!
I’ve also not used a paper bible regularly for years. I love the iPad for use in study and the iPone for ad-hoc use (bus, train, etc.)
But the iPad version is still far from ideal for even Sunday sermons let alone serious study due to the limitations of the note taking. Being able to keep and search notes by DATE is really essential rather than only by verse. Many notes I take should be linked to a set of verses (e.g. Ps 1:1-5) or indeed many separate verses.
Also, rich text entry is a challenge, especially during a sermon so this needs to be easier perhaps by using Markdown.
I also still find the UI difficult to navigate, the icons a layout could be clearer.
But it is a powerful and very useful tool, far superior to a print version. So I look forward to using it for many years to come.
One new usage–My wife loves to read God’s Word but she is visually impaired and cannot read even giant print Bibles. But at 40 pt. on the iPad she once again can read with ease. Only down side is that she is dominating the iPad usage and I’m left out in the cold !!! But I’m so thrilled she has her Bible back.
The other thing that has been said in other ways–iPad PB is so nice simply because everything is in one place AND it is not bulky like my MBP. I just would encourage Laridian to consider that the Mac Book Airs will take off and there is no PB for that running on OSX. Big Market potiential to be gained.
Joel and Julian, thanks for the suggestions. A good thing can always be made better.
Rod and John, we dream of a mac version too (http://blog.laridian.com/?p=288)
Julian,
Please take a few minutes to get specific about your complaints and put them in an email to me at craigr@laridian.com. While I’m sure you have some good suggestions, sometimes we find out that people just aren’t aware of how the program works, and we’d like to help.
I take notes every Sunday with PocketBible on my iPad. My notes are in the form of a nested outline using the tag with different numbering styles so that my top level can be capital Roman numerals, next level is upper case letters, etc. I regularly use bold, italics, and centered paragraphs. It’s not a WYSIWYG editor, but remember that most people don’t take notes, most of the rest use NONE of the HTML capabilities, and only a few of us use the full range of features.
I disagree that markdown would be much better. I’ve looked into it and while it might require fewer keystrokes to make a word *bold* (as opposed to <b>bold</b>), if you select the word then use the menu to select “Bold”, there’s no typing involved and it would be the same effort as if we were using markdown instead of HTML. And there are situations in which markdown would be harder to insert using the menus (nested lists). (Harder from the program’s perspective because of the necessity of determining context, which may not be able to be determined accurately.)
PocketBible does not try to be a be-all and end-all journaling environment. We may add date-tagged or non-tagged notes in the future, but our primary goal has been to recreate the experience of writing in the margin of your paper Bible — only better. I use other programs for other types of Bible study notes (mainly Word on my Mac or PC). You can be sure that either a full-fledged word processor or a journaling program is going to do a better job than PocketBible will ever do for storing notes that are NOT connected to the Bible.
And if you have material that needs to link TO the Bible, consider using BookBuilder and creating your own add-in books for PocketBible.
Again, I’m interested in your comments on the UI, but by email since it’s easier to find and reply to than these comments.
I don’t own an iPad, but so many of the features I am reading here, I find in PB for Windows. There is a great feature for us using the desktop version. We have a real keyboard for note taking and sermon/lecture preparation.
I’ve never been an iAnything guy but after seeing that screen shot of the PocketBible for the iPad me and my Android (3.0/HoneyComb) Tablet are jealous! After the release of the PocketBible for Android phones will there be a similar product for the tablet line?
Al