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Amazon unveils Kindle app for iPad

With the iPad release less than two weeks away, Amazon details plans to release a Kindle app for the Apple device and other tablet computers.

Jim Dalrymple Special to CNET News
Jim Dalrymple has followed Apple and the Mac industry for the last 15 years, first as part of MacCentral and then in various positions at Macworld. Jim also writes about the professional audio market, examining the best ways to record music using a Macintosh. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. He currently runs The Loop.
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Jim Dalrymple

Amazon.com plans to release a free Kindle app for Apple's iPad and other tablet computers.

The Kindle app Amazon

Amazon said Monday that the Kindle app for iPad will offer access to more than 450,000 e-books. The app will also feature the same Whispersync technology found in its PC, Mac, iPhone and BlackBerry apps that remembers and syncs your last page read.

The Whispersync tech means that you can start reading a book on one device and continue reading it on another device, picking up right where you left off. The app will also sync bookmarks, notes, and highlights across devices, according to Amazon.

"We have actually developed a tablet-based interface that redesigns the core screen and the reading experience," Ian Freed, vice president for Kindle at Amazon, told The New York Times. "Our team had some fun with it."

The Kindle app for iPad allows you to change the background color and font size to customize e-books for each customer. The app will also feature extras such as animations of pages turning if you want the full effect of reading a book. That feature can also be turned off.

This isn't Amazon's first app targeted at Apple users. Last week, Amazon released a beta of its Kindle app for the Mac, giving desktop users many of the same features. And Kindle for the iPhone has been available in Apple's App Store for more than a year.