14 DAY TRIAL // Phil Ryu and Andrew Kaz's "Classics" is currently awaiting approval from Apple to enter the App Store as a downloadable e-book for iPhone and iPod touch. Classics, as its name goes, will launch featuring 10 to 12 books, but additional volumes will be added as free updates every once in a while.
"Andrew Kaz opened the doors of the website of Classics, a great new iPhone application that will be out soon," reads a post on the developers' blog. "It was the 12th of September of this year, when I was sitting at home designing a great user interface concept for a desktop app, and Phill contacted me. He told me all about this new project, and we soon found out we were definitely on the same frequency," says Sebastiaan De With, the designer of Classics. "It’s interesting to see how such an app starts out; at first, we had this clean slate to work off of, and after a mockup session for the ‘reading view’, the idea started to take wings."
Sebastiaan notes that David Lanham took his mockups to develop a hefty color theme adding a set of adjustments to make the interface "a gorgeous whole that is very pleasant to read in." As you can imagine, the top feature of the eBook reader is the flip-to-turn-the-page capability, which, in Sebastiaan's opinion, is "the natural evolution of reading." Users flip the iPhone’s screen to turn the page just like they would with a real book.
"Classics boasts an impressively subtle interface, that’s still very attractive, and is perfectly suited to reading text in any situation," Sebastiaan further asserts. According to the designer, it becomes enjoyable thanks to the 'tactile experience', which makes reading an e-book feel "a lot more realistic and natural."
"It may sound gimmicky at first, but if you actually use the application, you’ll discover how pleasant it really is," the app's designer adds. "I’ve been reading a lot for all of my life, and Classics is really the natural evolution of reading to me."
Classics will be released soon on the App Store with an introductory price of $2.99. Stick around to find out when you can visit the venue to download the app.
Update: this article was modified to include the correct name of the person to which these quotes are attributed, namely the designer, Sebastiaan De With.