Interactive Gloster Gladiator eBook Review

By Michael Benolkin

Review

And now for something different...

I have been using the Apple iPad for years now and it has become an essential tool for may things, but it still hasn't realized its full potential. One dream I have is to be able to carry my reference library all electronically. The resolution and screen size of the iPad makes this a very comfortable tool for reference and I use an older one at work to carry a virtual reference library of technical manuals and engineering standards. While my colleagues get good upper-body workouts lugging their binders to meetings, I simply search my iPad for the obscure reference in question and enjoy the envy of my peers. What would happen if my hobby technical library was also available electronically? There are a variety of standards available from the iBooks format used by Apple to the Kindle format used by Amazon, both of which operate nicely on the iPad. For that matter, PDFs are also easily viewed on the iPad, but I digress...

Mushroom Model Publications has translated their first title from hardcopy to electronic. This is the Interactive Gloster Gladiator and it is the electronic version of their Volume One hardcopy title. If they would have simply translated that title into electronic form, I would have been happy. They didn't stop there.

This electronic version is fully interactive using the touch screen interface of the iPad quite effectively. Not only can you flip between pages, but some pages have multiple images you can view. Simply tap a thumbnail and the full image or color profile comes into view with its associated caption.

As with the hardcopy version, coverage of this title includes:

• Development
• In RAF Service
• Sea Gladiator
• Foreign Service
• Gladiator Survivors
• Construction

You can see in the image below Chapter 1 and the thumbnail view that is scrollable across the bottom. You can page through the title like a hardcopy if you wish, or you can use the menus to jump to specific chapters.

While none of this sounds too fancy, wait until you get to the construction section. This is full of scrap drawings of different parts of the aircraft. If you tap the image, a 3D viewer activates and you can rotate and zoom the graphic to examine details from almost any perspective. Nice!

Some of the graphics and images allow you to zoom in closer, others do not. Some consistency here would be nice. The narrative and captions are all in English, but for some reason, the section titles are in Polish.

This is a great first effort from MMP and I'm sure these will only get better with experience. Can you imagine an entire MMP library on your iPad? Can you imagine how handy that would be and how little shelf space (none) it would require? At under 13 Euros, this electronic copy is superior in content yet cheaper than the hardcopy. If you're a novice iPad user, you may not realize that these titles are backed up on the iTunes server under your account so if anything happens to your iPad, or you simply buy the next generation iPad, all of you purchases will transfer to the new or reset system. Welcome to the new age of electronic media!

This title can be purchased on the Apple iTunes online store. Full details of all MMP publications can be found on their web site at: www.mmpbooks.biz

My sincere thanks to MMP for this review sample!