Apple iBookstore app on iPad – is it iBooks Store or iBookstore?

There is another app named iBookstore already, so we are a bit confused about the name.

Picture: iBooks Store or iBookstore?

While Steve Jobs was introducing the Apple iPad – one thing that caught the attention of many was the iBooks store app – the official name seems to be iBooksstore. Why? Because there was nothing else worth getting excited about!

Despite that ‘screamer’ o a custom 1 GHz processor on the iPad, there is precious little indication that all that power is being put to any use. And that is obviously because the iPad is running a version of the iPhone OS – and not a touch-optimised version of the Snow Leopard.

Anyway, Steve Jobs gavce due credit top Amazon for introducing the Kindle and making it popular, and said that Apple would be standing on their shoulders to get started on the e-reading applications for the iPad.

Here is the basics of the iBooks Store. Similar to the Amazon Kindle, you cna pourchase books from the iBooks Store, and read them on the iPad. The main difference is in the screens. The Apple iPad has a color touchscreen, the Kindle has an e-Ink screen that is easier on the eyes while reading large amounts of text.

Penguin, Harper-Collins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan and Hachette Book Group are publishers who have already signed up to sell their books on the Apple iBookstore.

If standard books, converted to some e-reader format are what you are going to read, the experience will definitely be better on the Kindle. On the other hand, if books would have more – author interviews, colour photos, videos – the experience would be better on the iBooks reader. Such books do not exist as of now, but might be feverishly being worked on as we write this.

iBooks app is a free download from the iTunes App Store, and from the built-in iBookstore, you can buy books. Tap a book, and start reading, thats it.

Price of books purchased from the iBookstore app would be $7.99 and $14.99, from what we understand now. Either the first, or the second. Apple would not want too much confusion over there.

The Amazon Kindle DX is priced $ 489 compared to the iPad’s $ 499 for the 16GB starter model.

We are trying to find some high quality video demos or photos of the Apple iBooks store, but all we can find now are the standard pics.

There is an interesting nugget of info, though. Delicious Library, a Mac app for books which uses the wooden bookshelf interface, looks like the inspiration and much more behing the iBooks app on the iPad. Seems a lot of his former employees are working with Apple now, and the design is really, really similar. That is what Washington Post has reported, and we think they have a point.