Apple Books is my main reading app because of its page turning animation, which is far and away the best in the business. There was an animation that made it feel like you were moving cards through a deck instead of leafing through paper. I still feel like Apple destroyed one of the last ways that my phone brought joy into my life despite the fact that I have been trying to get used to the change.
I will try to explain the hole that has suddenly been punched into my reading life. The app used to play a page-turning animation whenever you tapped or swiped on the left or right edge of your device.
It wasn't just a cheap, pre-baked animation, but it was one of the highlights of the aesthetic that used to rule Apple's mobile OS If you change your mind and move your finger back to the edge, the "page" will fall back down.
As far as I can tell, that experience is gone in the new version of the operating system, replaced by an animation that wouldn't feel out of place in a utility app. I haven't been able to find a way to get the old flipping animation back in books and settings. The only way to change the page-turning experience is to turn the book into a single vertically scrolling page, which I find even more offensive than the new animation, since it was in the old version.
I am not going to critique why all the other reading apps I have used fall short of Apple's version in its glory days, because they either don't bother with a page flip animation or don't capture the nuances of shadowing. I don't want to, of course, but I think it's better to just show you a series of Gifs so you can see them for yourself.
A little over 1/3.
I have found that a physical page turn button scratches the same itch that Apple's animation used to, even if the transitions on e-reader don't change much. It wouldn't help me with the dozens of books I've already purchased on Apple's platform if I bought a Boox or something.
There are a lot of people who think that this is ridiculous to complain about, and I can just feel them. This may be a small article about a very small thing that won't matter to a lot of people. It was a feature that made me choose to buy e-books on Apple's platform instead of anyone else's, and given how same-y most book stores and reading apps are, it really is the details that get you locked into an ecosystems. The books app on the App Store has some nice improvements, but it is no longer a joy to use.
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