OakTree Software announces that the brand new Accordance version for iOS devices (iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch) is now available on the App Store. This free app brings the power and elegance of Accordance for Mac to mobile devices. For full details, read the official announcement here.

This is just the 1.0 release of a program that will surely bring unprecedented power to mobile users. For starters, its search capabilities (including modern languages, Strong’s tagged texts and original language modules with grammatical tags) are unparalleled. What a nice way to finish 2010!

Quite recently we learned that John Fidel’s blog (Bible Software Newsletter and Comments) is closing down. Hopefully, he will be able to contribute to BSR every now and then, as he has in the past. Today, he brings us some thoughts on the current state of the Bible Software industry. Do read it and feel free to leave your comments here.

Happy New Year!

OliveTree managed to release BibleReader 5 just in time for the Holiday Season. As I write this post, only BibleReader ($0.99) is available on the iTunes App Store, but BibleReader Free should be ready anytime now.

BibleReader 5 has taken Bible study on iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch to a whole new level. At last it is now possible to do devotions, study and research on the go in a truly efficient way. Zachary Klein has done a great job at showing some of the main features of version 5 in his comprehensive review.

BibleReader 5 is an excellent example of what the future holds in store for mobile Bible study, and thanks to OliveTree, the future is now!

A brand new version of Accordance Bible Software has just been released. You can read the official announcement and a general description of what’s new in version 9.

Personally, I am very excited about the greatly enhanced Search All window and the new syntactical databases. The latter ones will eventually comprise the whole Hebrew Bible and Greek New Testament, but the initial release includes only Genesis and John.

The main change to the UI, apart from the minor ones, is the ability to work with different zones within workspaces. This should make one’s workflow a lot easier and avoid clutter.

After a long time in beta, Logos 4 Mac was finally released October 1, 2010. There is a product tour that does a good job at introducing the application, particularly for new users, and a good collection of video tutorials.

If you are acquainted with the Windows version, Logos 4 Mac, while not yet on feature parity with its older brother, is basically the same. This is one step forward in the company’s aim to go multi-platform. You should keep in mind, though, that L4 Mac only runs on newer Intel machines with Mac OS X 10.5 or higher.

I like the convenience of the automated reports and, above all, commend Logos for the implementation of the reverse interlinears. Let’s hope that the development team manages to optimize it for speed, because it is currently a very slow application.