Comments on: Natively Add the LDS Scriptures to Your iPhone or iPod Touch

By: Eric

Eric — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 21:55:47 +0000

I have been putting off the purchase of an iphone until microsoft word and excel can be edited and until something equal to the old lds reader for palm is available. Both seem to be here or close. For a scripture reader equal to the old lds reader, $100 would be a bargin. I think a profit is very appropriate for developer’s time and effort.

By: Scott Taylor

Scott Taylor — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 18:30:53 +0000

Some of these people need to get off their high horses. An application to view the scriptures and other references is not a necessity, it is a luxury. If they don’t want it, use the standard set. I am about to purchase it because I WANT it. I don’t NEED it. I have no problem whatsoever paying somebody a fair price for work they performed. If someone puts long hours into developing an application I want and they are going to spend time making it better, maintaining it, etc, I have no problem paying them a fair price for it.

By: Alexander Jenkins

Alexander Jenkins — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 14:37:11 +0000

With the iPhone platform readily becoming a standard, does the church have any plan to provide the app in a church approved format like they have for Pocket PC and Palm? This would solve the entire “we can’t afford to do this for free” issue and would let us have the Church’s stamp of approval on the materials. eReader app would be just fine if the scriptures were available for download in that format from the church site. (in the meantime, thanks for your time you have spent on this whole thing)

By: phil scoville

phil scoville — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 08:04:12 +0000

I too am part of the beta testers for the new scriptures app and it does take a lot of time to put together. I couldn’t do the work either.

By: devin

devin — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 12:27:12 +0000

You make a good point. I agree that the church is about service. I would never want to make money off the scriptures. It’s not my work. This is why I’ve decided not to provide the scriptures at all because it’s better for me to just work at my regular job then to charge people for my time in putting an application together and having people assume I’m making money by selling the scriptures. I should probably phrase the question a little different. It should say, “How much would you be willing to pay for someone for their time to provide the programming, testing, and development of an application that would include information like the scriptures?”

I suppose the same point goes for those people that put together a Book of Mormon that includes commentary and additional pictures and then sell that at a local bookstore. Are they practicing priestcraft by making a profit on their work?

The current LDS app is getting a lot of heat for not being free. There’s another one coming out which I’m a beta test for. I know the developers have put in hundreds of hours in development in it, but no one sees that, they only care about the price and if the developers are make a “profit” and not providing service.

By: Sam

Sam — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 03:25:26 +0000

I appreciate what you are doing in providing the scriptures for people to download and I’m sure you have put a lot of work into it. However, if I were you, I don’t know how comfortable I would be making money by selling the words of the Lord or the doctrine of the church. In my mind it comes dangerously close to the priestcraft line. Though I am a capitalist through and through, the church isn’t about making money. It’s about service.

By: Howard, Devon Engalnd

Howard, Devon Engalnd — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 16:50:25 +0000

Yes, I’ve downloaded “scriptures” from the apps store — great….

I’ve also downloaded some items from the LDS ‘handheld’ archives. I saved the ‘eReader’ pdb files and uploaded them to my free eReader account. I then downloaded those files to my iPod touch. They are now on my ‘bookshelf’. available offline..

By: Nathan

Nathan — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 07:24:01 +0000

Hey Devin. Appreciated your repository for installer. I’m now 2.0 and haven’t seen anything up in Cydia. However using SSH one can simply place the eBook files in /var/media/eBooks/ provided one has the files!

Any chance of you providing a link or download of the eBook files themselves? I’ll do the rest. Of course a Cydia install would be nice too!

In regards to the recently released scriptures app I was hoping for a far better version for a native app not just a rehash of the webapp. Hopefully this will improvec. Or the other scripture app being developed may do this as well.

By: Ryan O

Ryan O — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 18:30:37 +0000

Hey Devin. Are you going to make a fee downloadable scripture app for apples app store? It appears the readscriptures.com person will be charging $15 for the download. Kind of stinks if you are used to having it for free. Also, how about a version of scriptures for the new cydia app when you pawn 2.0? There is already a book reader that works with .HTML books.

Thanks

By: devin

devin — Wed, 28 May 2008 00:29:10 +0000

June 6th is the magical date. If there is not an LDS program that has all the standard works and a bunch more, I’ll write one. I know that readscriptures.com will be coming out with a version. Can’t wait? Check out http://hiarmen.googlepages.com/, he did the same thing I did, but has a working books program.