Kindle Reader for the Mac

Amazon.com very quietly released Kindle Reader for the Mac yesterday. I’m glad to be able to read my Kindle books (and highlighted passages and the reading notes I’ve taken) on my Mac. That said: this is a very ugly, very basic, quickly-cobbled-together piece of software.

There’s a nice library of full-color book covers. And the software compensates well for one of the Kindle’s short-comings, allowing me to actually see the maps and read the tables and enjoy the illustrations that my trusty Kindle simply can’t display. 

On the down side: the lack of a text search option is just lame. The fact that the software won’t let me highlight or annotate text as I read is annoying. 

But the MOST annoying thing about Kindle Reader for the Mac is the fact that it will not allow me to select and copy text. I take frequent notes as I read, and my strong preference is to store those notes in a personal database, where they can be indexed and summoned up when needed. Without the ability to highlight, copy text, and paste it elsewhere, the Kindle Reader is pretty much useless to me. 

(I did manage to get text into my database this way: using Skitch, I took a screenshot of the quote I liked. Using PDFPen, I converted that image to text. It’s not simple or easy, but it works.)

Here’s hoping that Kindle Reader for the Mac is so lame because all of Amazon’s programmers have been staying up late, creating an amazing iPad app for the Kindle.