Apple iBooks in page flip controversy

Apple’s e-reading app for the iPad has taken inspiration from another independent developer’s effort, so says the Internet rumour mill.

This particular story was unleashed by Wired writer Brian Chen, in a piece he published on Wednesday, in which he claimed that iBooks was very similar to an app called Classics.

Classics is a book reading app for the iPhone which gives the user access to a library of classic public domain texts.

According to Chen, the similarities between the two are “beyond the realm of coincidence.”

Specifically, the interface is very similar, with graphic shelves of book covers you can browse through and tap to open.

Moreover, the three dimensional page flipping effect appears to be “almost exactly the same.”

Chen concludes that “the only major difference is iBooks has a tool to change font point and type.”

Well, that and iBooks has more than just out-of-copyright books on it, having deals with a number of big publishers.

Mind you, one of the architects of Classics, Philip Ryu, admits he got inspiration himself for the app, from Delicious Library (a media organisation application for the Mac).

So Ryu didn’t seem too bothered about the situation, and when he spoke about iBooks to Wired, he said: “It stung a bit as a huge fan of Apple, but in the end it’s a page flip.”