On the plus side, careful (read: overly-obsessive) analysis of Apple's iBooks screenshots reveals a few interface elements where iBooks clearly one-ups the Kindle. First off, assuming those pages in the background accurately reflect approximately where you in the book, that's a great recreation of the analog book experience that the Kindle lacks.

Second, it looks like iBooks is using genuine page numbers, as opposed to the Kindle's "locations." How (or if) those page numbers change when you enlarge the font, however, remains a mystery. Perhaps the greatest plus of all is the small text indicator on the bottom-right of the screen, indicating how many pages are left in the current chapter. There's no easy way to know that on the Kindle, and it's a considerable annoyance to click ahead to find out when you'll reach a good stopping point. It also looks like Apple's recreated the Kindle's "dot" approach to show how far along you are in the book overall, which may or may not be necessary depending on how the page imagery and page numbers work.

I'm okay having more than one e-book reader, and I'm even content to use the iPad as a Web surfing/e-mail/gaming machine without ever launching iBooks. But if the iPad does have ideal solutions for the issues I've raised, I'm pretty sure my wife's about to score a free Kindle.