Audible (Audible Inc. FREE)
This is a great service to get if you are into audiobooks, not only does it provide a wide selection of books, but the service itself enables you to get a constant flow of audiobooks at a reasonable price. I listen to these books often on my daily commute. Whether you have a long drive, a train ride or even a walk or bike ride in to work each day, there is no better way than listening to your favorite books. I even listen to them when working around the house, just about any mindless task can be made better listening to an audiobook. The iPhone app is a companion to their service and of course requires a monthly subscription to take advantage of their service. Although if you previously subscribed, you will always have access to the books you have in your account whether the subscription is active or not. This app is a great way to use the service directly with your iPhone. It is not a universal app, but since most of what you do with this app is listen, not view, that may not matter to most.
It is all together possible to use the audible service without this app, going onto their website you can download audiobooks, import them into iTunes, sync with your iPhone and there you have it. Aternatively, this free app will allow you to download the audio files right into the app, listen to them through the app and in the background if you are doing something else. The entire process of purchasing an audiobook all the way to listening on your iPhone can be done 100% on the iPhone using this app. It tracks about how much you have listened to so you can pick up later should you have to stop, it also tracks details about how much you listen, how often, etc. The convenience with this app is that you can do the entire proess now right from your iPhone without ever having to go to your desk top machine. Additionally, since they save the audio files that you have purchased, there is no need to fill up your hard disk or the disk space on your iPhone with all of these files, they are always accessible and downloadable right through the app.
I first started using the app while I was beta testing iOS 4.0 last summer. There was a problem with the iPod app in the beta which made audiblebooks not work properly. So I switched to this app and it worked beautifully. It is a great way to access your entire library, redownload and listen to something or purchase something new (although purchasing is done through their website but still can be done via Mobile Safari on your iPhone). It is really easy to use and allows for bookmarks as well as overall stats that you can be proud of and post to social networking sites such as facebook.But really I like the app so that I don’t have to interface with my iTunes library in order to get the next book. The app functions well and has no visible problems for me. If I did (by chance) download the audiofile to my iTunes library and sync it to my iPhone, that audiobook will be available through the app as well with no download necessary.
FEATURES:
- Chapter Navigation.
- Sleep Mode.
- Button Free Mode.
- Play as you download.
- Multitasking (listen to your audio in the background while using other apps.
- Go back 30 seconds.
- Change the speed of the audio for faster or slower audio.
- Post information about what you are listening to, to Twitter or Facebook.
- Automatically stores the location where you last left off. This also means you can list on another device and pick up where you left off.
I love the play while you download feature, I can start the download and then start listening almost immediately afterward, no need to wait for it to finish before I can listen. This app is a great implimentation of their service and I highly recommend it. If you like audiobooks then I highly recommend you use their service. Great job audible for definitely putting together a wonderful app for using your service.
