ReadAnywhere for PC and Mac

Software Reviews and Criticism

• By Caleewa

  Horrible for adult students that have busy lives

  I rely on etextbooks because with kindle and other PDFs I can have my phone read the pages aloud to me while I am cooking, cleaning, commuting and managing my family. Moreover, I have issues with my eyes where I cannot stare at screens for long periods of time so I reserve screen times for when I have papers and online research. I can understand not allowing copy and pasting for copyright reasons but spoken screen and spoken content with iOS does not work at all for this app which is absolutely absurd. Why would you prevent people that can’t see digital content very well from being able to have the content read to them?!?! If I were any more blind than I currently am I would not be able to use this app at all so those with vision impairment should STAY AWAY!! The “highlight and speak” feature worked the first day I tried this app and has not worked since, a feature that is also poor because you cannot pause long segments so you have to highlight very short segments at a time (which is extremely inconvenient when driving). Since that KY worked one time I have deleted and redownload this app 5 times and it still dies not work. I hope professors in the future will stay away from McGraw Hill products all together because the snout of money paid for this textbook and the lack of accessibility is absolutely outrageous.

  
  
• By kaylee1224

  Absolute Crap

  I don’t understand how such a big company like McGraw Hill could come up with such an utterly lousy app. I would give it 0 stars if I could. I am being forced to use this app for school because of school, but if you have ANY CHOICE WHATSOEVER, DO NOT USE THIS APP. You’re better off taking pictures of every single page of your textbook and using photos on your phone than using this app. The entire app is the most inconvenient and poorly formatted. First of all, “continuous scroll” is the only option. I put continuous scroll in quotes because it isn’t even continuous. The pages are all strangely different lengths and the application stops you at the end of a page so you have to swipe multiple times before you can access the next page. Moreover, the markup features are absolutely pathetic. There are very few markup options; they have four highlighter colors and don’t even have a handwriting option. Also, seeing as this app is geared towards iPads, the fact that Microsoft Pencil does not work with it is absurd. You also have to select the text you want to markup by dragging your finger around for an unholy amount of time before the markup options even show up, because as i mentioned earlier, you cannot draw on the book with Microsoft Pencil.

  
  
• By T.C.2000

  Not useful for mobile devices

  How a Textbook company cannot make the "Connect" website mobile friendly is beyond me. Plus, I have issues with the site outside my mobile experience. If this is their attempt at mobile friendly it is hands down one of the worst I have ever seen. I have to constantly switch between landscape and portrait modes to be able to skip questions or submit assignments while on a mobile device. I have noticed they place videos on each question, but the videos rarely have anything to do with the question being asked. You'll need to skip one or two questions to find the relevant video. I have issues with words overlapping or it displaying a couple letters before going to the next line to finish each word down the whole page. There is no excuse to not have a user and mobile friendly website during our society as it stands today with technology. I would not recommend wasting time or money with this app unless you're required to for class. That is even questionable. This website has made me so mad. I'm supposed to be doing homework, but I'm so frustrated with the site that I had to write this review.

  
  
• By Wholenut

  Works well & needs more functionality

  Seems to do the minimal of what’s needed. Download for offline use, highlight text, underlines text (wish you could choose the color for underlining!...just does black, so it’s difficult to tell if you did it or if it came with book), and add text-notes to specific words/phrases that you highlight. However, this app could be MUCH more dynamic. Functionality that would give this app a 5 star: -The ability to write/draw with finger/stylus! -pre-made shapes/figures -add text boxes so we can fill white sides next to e-book text -Highlight ability simply by sliding finger over desired text (like iBook) If we are required to use an e-book for our courses, then McGraw Hill apps should give us close to the same functionality as a real/physical book. I want to be able to make “mark-up” additions to the e-book like I can in iBooks (iOS is capable of these functions; please make this app capable as well). I want to be able to draw arrows between paragraphs, and I want to add in text boxes that overlay onto white spaces near book text. Most especially with Chem books, there are a lot of equations, and in my mind, I need to draw connections between what the text is saying and how the equation is manipulated to answer the question. Since more effective learning is the main goal of this publisher, please make this app more dynamic and give us more functions than physical books could ever give us =)

  
  

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