iApp of the Week: Good Reader
Okay, okay. So I’m calling it iApp of the Week and everyone hates the “i” at the front. I get it. I’m just getting sick of saying and typing iPad/iPhone every time I want to talk about a cross platform Apple App. And now look. You’ve gone and made me type it anyway. Thanks.
This, in what I hope to be a weekly occurrence, is a way for us to highlight some of the better Apps that you can buy for your Jesus Phone that stand out from the crowd. Overall, the programs highlighted here will be Apps you can use on a regular basis and make your life a bit easier.
The App that I’m talking about today is called Good Reader and it is a rather full featured PDF viewer for your iPhone/iPad. Brought to us by Good.iWare.LTD, Good Reader has become an essential part of my daily iPad use. The main reason I acquired an iPad was for use as an instructional tool in my job as a teacher. In order to use the iPad effectively in my classroom, being able to read PDF files is a must. The one big problem with something like the iPad, however, is getting files onto it that are not Apple specific or do not fit into the common flow of Mac centered programs. The lack of any sort of USB port or CD drive being the biggest detriment to this workflow.
With the Good Reader app, this problem is solved in a number of usable ways. First off, if you have a pointer to any PDF file on the web, you can enter this URL into the Good Reader app, and it pulls down the file to your iPad/iPhone. This is a very handy tool and many websites are actually providing pages for doing exactly this. For instance, this page over at Sweetwater.com is an example of this. Sweetwater is a store that specializes in recording/music equipment and have made their catalogs available online for a long time now. However, this iPad specific page shows just how easy it has become for companies to deliver things such as online catalogs to the iPad. In addition, if you have a local file hosted on your WiFi network, you can also download from there using the WiFi Transfer option that is built into the App.
Browsing your PDF files on your iPad is a pretty easy affair, with everything laid out in a very organized fashion. The app is very quick and responsive and I noticed very little load times despite the PDF files being pretty large. I must admit that this was all done on an iPad, however, and your results will be slower depending on what Apple product you happen to be using. Files are easily viewed using built in tools from zooming the pages to changing page orientation. Bookmarking pages (a must for going back to a certain set of pages in a large PDF document) is easy and intuitive as well. The Good Reader app also supports high resolution files, Office and iWork documents, HTML archives and audio/video files. It’s all laid out in a clear and concise way and if you get stuck, a full featured Help section is also available to guide you through any questions.
The Good Reader is available in the App Store for $.99 and it’s a must have for anyone needing to view large PDF files on their portable device.
