“It. Was.
The. Best. Of. Times. It. Was. The. Worst. Of. Times.”
That’s how
a college student might encounter the opening of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens while reading the classic
novel—often assigned for English literature courses—on an Apple Watch. A new
app called Wear Reader functions as an e-book reader for the watch.
The 99-cent
app basically displays the e-book text word by word. You can adjust the reading
speed from 50 words per minute up to 1,000 and jump back to previous text if
you missed something. Wear Reader also allows the user to bookmark pages, pause
the display, go to a different chapter, and switch among various e-books.
To get an
e-book into the watch, though, users must attach the device to an iPhone in
order to import the reading material from iCloud or Dropbox. Wear Reader cannot
import e-books straight from Apple’s iBooks, but no doubt that capability will
be available in a later version.
However, in
the opinion of one reviewer for 9to5Mac, what’s the point of reading books on
your wrist?
“It’s not
only about battery life, but also the user experience overall,” wrote Jordan
Kahn. “Not to mention holding your wrist up for much longer is ergonomically
terrible, as Steve Jobs would put it.”
