Verse Explorer and Morph Explorer look like nice additions, but do check out the whole list of enhancements and new features. I’ll post more info when it becomes available and/or can lay my hands on the new version.

The application can be downloaded for free from the App Store, and current BibleReader users will be able to access all their titles when logging into their accounts. Here is a nice BibleReader for Mac overview, as well as a Quick Start Guide.

For those who already use BibleReader on an iDevice, the user interface will be quite familiar. Although I haven’t upgraded to Lion yet, and thus cannot install and use the program, I must say that BibleReader has the prettiest UI of all the Bible software apps currently available for Mac, as well as many interesting and robust features for Bible study and research.

The full list of new features is found here. Personally, there are two features that I find particularly useful:

Dynamic Interlinear

Any morphologically tagged Bible (except LXX) or Bible with key numbers (Strong’s, revised Strong’s for NASB95 or Goodrick/Kohlenberger’s) can now be used as a traditional interlinear or a reversed interlinear on steroids (hence the use of the label “dynamic”). All the available information (original language, transliteration, parsing, syntax, other modern translations or ancient versions, and so on) can be displayed in an interlinear format. Stacking multiple tagged Bible versions becomes a great study tool for comparative studies. And the best thing about this features is that it doesn’t require any additional purchases. All tagged Bibles have now become interlinears!

Smart Amplifying from Analysis

The Analysis window has become a lot more useful and flexible with the ability to amplify directly from the search results. This means that results from searches conducted in tagged Bibles can be the springboard for further searches. Not just plain, literal searches, but “smart” searches, since the tagging (grammatical info or Strong’s number) attached to that particular result will be automatically added and searched when clicking on the Search button of the Resource palette. Again, no new or additional modules are required. It just works!

In sum, this is an excellent update that everybody should get. Really. Version 9 users have no excuse, and those who are still using earlier versions of the software should seriously considering upgrading. Upgrade prices are very competitive.

Reference Library

The Reference Library is now the central place to view your downloaded Topic files and a new type of file called Reference Books (.refx). In previous versions of e-Sword, the Topic Notes window displayed downloaded, third party Topic Notes. Now, this material is viewed through the Reference Library instead of the Topics Editor. Also new with the Reference Library is the ability to convert a Topics Note file to Reference Book format (.refx). This file is compressed and prevents others from modifying your data! You can convert your Topic Note files into Reference Book format.

Search All Topics At Once

The Reference Library lets you filter your resources by title and search all of your Topic Notes at once!

Support For Pictures

The new Reference Library Book format supports pictures. And that’s not all. Topic Notes also support pictures!

New Editor with True Word Processing Power

e-Sword 10′s editor seems less like an editor and more like a word processor. The new editor is more robust and supports an array of new features. Now your Journal, Study, and Topic Notes will benefit from Hyperlinks, Bookmarks, Images and Pictures, Tables, Borders, Columns, Headers and Footers, Page Layout View.

SermonAudio.com Integration

e-Sword is integrated with SermonAudio.com. You can listen to sermons while you study the Bible. Sermon Audio organizes sermons by verse and the Sermon Audio integration for e-Sword is context-sensitive. That means Sermon Audio opens sermons about the active verse in the Bibles window!

Notice that all properly constructed e-Sword 9 modules are compatible with e-Sword 10. Also, there is an excellent non-official e-Sword User Guide available from BibleSupport.com, where the old e-Sword-Users.org site is now hosted.

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!

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!

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.

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.

The editors have been broken out into their own view and are no longer located in the Commentary view. Also, a new Journal Notes editor has been added to the Editor view to join the Study Notes and Topic Notes!

You can now Search the Bibles and other modules using Regular Expressions (REGEX). While a bit complicated for typical use, this functionality adds powerful searching capabilities when that might be needed.

Inline notes and cross-references are now possible in Bible modules.

This is a widely used application, but in my opinion it is lagging behind other freeware Bible programs.