The Best iPod Touch Bible App

Sorry about the lack of posts. I have a project coming near completion and have been busy the last several weeks. I can now see light at the end of the tunnel, however, so in the near future I'll be back blogging on what I consider a regular basis (i.e., one or two posts a week).

Anyways, I promised a review of Olive Tree Software's Bible Reader, so here it is.

Before I get to Bible Reader though, I must say that if I didn't know how to read the biblical languages (and if Olive Tree hadn't offered me this free beta!), I would definitely go with BibleXpress since it easily offers the best value for the money.

So far BibleXpress has five English translations: ESV, NASB, NRSV with Apocrypha, KJV, and ASV. Ben Spratling (the developer) is also attempting to get the NIV, the Message, the NLT, and a Greek NT and LXX, which would be added as a free update. All of this for the very reasonable price of $30. Go ahead and compare this value with any other bible program that offers a comparable set of core modern translations and texts that isn't tethered to the Internet in some way.

The same five translations already offered by BibleXpress (i.e., ESV, NASB, NRSV, KJV, and ASV) would cost $62.75 on Bible Reader when purchased individually, and this is without factoring in the additional translations that Ben Spratling will be adding for free at some point. In light of this, I think that those Christians who had the gall to complain about BibleXpress's initial purchase price are simply empty-headed.



Having said all that, since I can read the biblical languages, however, I will be adopting Bible Reader as my main bible app for the iPod Touch. While BibleXpress will eventually offer a Greek NT and LXX, it is highly unlikely that Ben Spratling will be able to offer the morphological data to go with these texts, and besides which, the Hebrew Bible isn't in the plans to this point and of all the potential texts available, that's the most important to me.

It appears that Olive Tree Software has a solution to the problem of combining all the various translations and texts into one program. On my beta version of Bible Reader, there is a way to access the store and my Olive Tree account to download translations and texts. On my beta version of Bible Reader, I have the following translations:

• Bible in Basic English*
  
• English Standard Version
  
• Green's Literal Translation*
• Holman Christian Standard
• JPS Tanakh
• King James Version
• New American Bible
• New American Standard Bible.
• New English Translation (with limited notes)*
  
• New International Version
• New King James Version
• New Living Translation (2nd ed.)
• New Revised Standard Version
• Revised Standard Version
• The Message
• Today's New International Version
• Young's Literal Translation

In order to purchase all these translations individually it would cost you just under $225 (* indicates a free translation). If you omit the KJV and Young's Literal translation which are very cheap ($5 and $2, respectively), the average price for the individual translations runs to about $18 each. The good news is that Olive Tree Software will offer many of these translations in combination in a variety of packages, bringing down the cost considerably (indeed they have already begun to do so).

Overall, this beta version (4.02.024) is remarkably bug free (it's the fourth one I've received). There are still a lot of formatting issues for many of the translations, but they are aware of them and are in the process of smoothing those out.



When I got my first bible app, I didn't really expect to use it much. Initially, I refused to bring it to church, since I thought it would be a distraction to those around me, but I noticed that there were quite a few others around me who actually use some sort of portable electronic device for not only referring to the bible, but also to take notes (there's a high yuppie quotient at my church).

So I started bringing it along with me on Sundays. The great thing is that I now have a lot of different translations at my fingertips. This comes in handy because at my church there is no standard translation used by everyone, though a couple of pastors appear to be partial to the ESV.

This can be rather problematic since it's quite rare for the same pastor/person to preach two Sundays in a row (and forget about three Sundays in a row, which almost never happens). For one thing, we have four pastors at our church. In addition, several members of the congregation have attended seminary (I can think of 6 off the top of my head, and I know there are others I can't think of at the moment) and are often called on to speak (I fall in this category). We also regularly have outside speakers as well. In fact, this past September we had four different outside speakers giving the sermon on four successive Sundays.

This generally means a different translation is used each Sunday, even if it happens to be the same pastor, since I've noticed that some of the pastors like to use different translations on different occasions.

In the past I simply had to follow along in my ESV regardless of the translation used by the pastor. So, for instance, when Eugene Peterson's The Message was used, as is sometimes the case (a couple of the pastors were students of his), trying to follow along in my ESV was next to useless. This is no longer a problem, thanks to Bible Reader.



Anyways, since it is a beta, rather than lauding the numerous things that the Bible Reader does right, I figure it would be far more useful to offer constructive criticism. Here are a list of some modest improvements in the interface that I would like to see:

1. Adjustable margins. I put my iPod Touch in a leather flip case that protects it. However, one drawback is that the protective leather tends to crowd the edge of the screen. This means that the biblical text runs right up against the leather edges, becoming a distraction.
2. Optional red letter text. It's nice that the font color can be changed. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of the red letter text. It stays red no matter what color you change the surrounding text to. Of course, you can change the font to Dark Red, and Jesus' words will be indistinguishable from the rest of the text. However, looking at all that red text is simply annoying.
3. I'm not sure the verse chooser (which I like a lot) needs to go down to the verse level. I'd like to see this as an option you could toggle on and off.
   
4. There has to be a better way to switch chapters rather than scrolling downwards through the text to the next chapter. Perhaps a sideways swipe to change chapters could be implemented. Ben Spratling's BibleXpress already has such a feature.
5. There should be an easier way to change font sizes, rather than going to the setup menu. Perhaps a pinching motion on the screen could be implemented. Ben Spratling's BibleXpress already has such a feature.
   

Review of the NASB Classic Companion

I thought I'd take a page from a couple of other bloggers (Rick Mansfield at This Lamp and Mark Bertrand at Bible Design and Binding) who inspired me to start my own blog and provide a review of a bible, complete with pictures.

Like them, I prefer single column, paragraph formatted texts with no red letters. As many have commented, this is how books that are meant to be read are formatted.

While most bible translations and publishers are addicted to the double column format, the NASB alone among the more contemporary translations appears to be fixated on the verse-by-verse format which drives me batty. A few weeks ago, I finally gave away my NASB single column wide margin (along with most of my English language bibles) because it was just sitting on my shelf unused due to my abhorence of this format.

Well, I finally found an NASB in a single column with the paragraph formatting I've wanted for about 20 years. It's the NASB Classic Companion (1995 update) published by World Bible Publishers (ISBN: 0529110628). I was very excited to finally get my hands on it and while it doesn't live up to my wildest hopes, it is still quite a nice cheap edition.

The picture makes it look browner than it is. It's actually a deep burgundy.

To start with, the form factor is very handy. It's only slightly larger than the ESV Personal Size Reference Edition that I recently bought. It's the same thickness, but about 1 inch taller and 3/4 of an inch wider. It's dimensions are 8.5" x 6" x 1".

The NASB Classic Companion is on the left and the ESV Personal Size Reference is on the right. The lighting in this shot gives a truer indication of the bible's real color than the first photo.

The cover is a cheap burgundy bonded leather that nevertheless is flexible enough that the bible will lie flat provided the bible is opened somewhere in the middle third of the book and with a little coaxing, you can up that to about the middle half of the book (from about 1 Samuel to the end of Mark) though it won't lie completely flat, since one end will hang suspended in the air an inch or so off whatever surface you're using.

When you hold it in your hands, the bible will stay open without anything holding it. However, to see the text easily right into the gutter, use of your free hand will be required to hold the bible fully open at the extreme ends of the bible (the books of Genesis & Exodus on one side and the General Epistles & Revelation on the other).

The poetic sections are laid out nicely. My camera stinks so the text is a bit muddy, but this will give you a general idea. Notice that it does manage to lay flat in the middle of the bible.

I'm hoping that with some use, the binding will loosen and this will improve. As is, functionally speaking, this is better than most bonded leather bindings I've encountered (especially glued ones as this one appears to be). It's not nearly as good as the TNIV Reference bible that I recently bought, which is one of the best functional bonded leather bindings I've ever seen, but it's definitely not as bad as I feared. I've found that bonded leather bindings are sometimes so stiff that both hands are required to pry the book open and keep it that way. That is thankfully not the case with this one.

I can't tell if the binding is sewn or not, but I strongly suspect that it's glued given the price I paid for it (less than $25 Canadian from Amazon.ca) and the tightness of the text block at the spine.

Notice how the TNIV Reference (sewn) binding lays almost completely flat.

In contrast, the NASB Classic Companion looks as if the text flows up first and then outward from the binding. A sure sign that it's a glued binding I'd venture to say.

My edition doesn't have tabs, but you can get one that does. I believe that the cover is available in black as well, but on Amazon.ca, they were sold out.

As mentioned above, the text is single column, paragraph format, but unfortunately uses red letters for the words of Christ. Another problem is that the text goes too far into the gutter (the part where the pages join into the spine). This means that the lines of text are extremely long, over 17 words per line on average, rather than the optimum 12 words per line. Happily, due to the generous font size, following the text across the page is not much of a problem. There is also some bleed-through, but not to the point where I find it too distracting. There are no cross references or maps, but it does contain a short 3 column concordance as well as a topical index and a bible reading plan in the back.

The font size is quite generous for such a handy edition. It's quite a bit larger than the ESV Personal Size Reference which is 7.4 pt type. In comparing the two, I'd say that the NASB Classic Companion is in the 9 pt range. In fact, the print size compares favorably with the TNIV Reference which uses an odd choice in font styles, and which is a much larger bible (the NASB font actually looks a tad larger and darker).

The text on the left is the NASB Classic Companion while the text on the right is the ESV Personal Size Reference. Again, the picture isn't very clear but you can see a distinct difference in type size.

The red letter is annoying to look at for long periods and the bleed through is a tad more distracting behind the red letter text in those instances when the text on the other side is mostly black letter. Thankfully, my focus of study is the Old Testament and since this translation is mostly used for study purposes, I have little occasion to turn to the New Testament in this particular bible, at least not for long periods of time.

You can see that this bible has a problem with text slipping into the gutter. However, it's no worse than what you get with the ESV Deluxe Compact or the cross references in the ESV Personal Size Reference.

All in all, I'm quite pleased with this bible for the price I paid. It won't last forever, but that doesn't matter to me since I usually clean out my old English-only bibles every 5-7 years or so. I tend not to get too attached to my bibles, because I've never come across the perfect one. If I ever did, this practice would change. As it is, eventually a newer and/or better edition will come along to replace it and when that time comes this one will simply have to go.