Meanwhile vs Bookoscope
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Meanwhile
Explore a mad scientist's wonderland and make choices that shape your adventure. This interactive comic offers thousands of branching paths, leading to various outcomes, from doom to success. Experience a unique story with full audio accessibility.
- Branching narrative paths
- User-driven story choices
- Thousands of adventure outcomes
- Infinite scrollable canvas
- Full audio accessibility (VoiceOver)
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MEANWHILE: an interactive comic by Jason Shiga On the way home from the ice cream store, little Jimmy discovers a mad scientist’s wonderland: an experimental mind-reading helmet, a time machine, and a doomsday device that can annihilate the human race. Which one would you like to test out first? MEANWHILE is not an ordinary comic. YOU make the choices that determine how the story unfolds. MEANWHILE splits off into thousands of different adventures. Most will end in DOOM and DISASTER. Only one path will lead you to happiness and success. - A thrilling adventure of quantum physics, self-discovery, and kids getting into trouble. (We mentioned the doomsday device, right?) - Completely redesigned by the author for an infinite scrollable canvas. - Full audio accessibility with VoiceOver; every panel and choice can be spoken.
Bookoscope
Browse and download public domain ebooks or access your own self-hosted library. This app crawls OPDS endpoints, caches book data, and allows quick export to your preferred ereader.
- Browse self-hosted ebook libraries
- Download public domain classics
- Searchable by metadata
- Cached feeds
- Quick download and export
- Compatible with Calibre-web, Kavita, Ubooquity
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Bookoscope is a fast, searchable ebook catalog. With Bookoscope, you can browse your own self-hosted ebook library as well as download public domain classics from Project Gutenberg. FEATURES: - Fast - Easy on the eyes - Includes over 70,000 public domain books from Project Gutenberg - Uses cached feeds (refresh on demand) - Searchable by any available metadata - Quick download and export to the ereader of your choice COMPATIBLE WITH: - Calibre-web - Kavita - Ubooquity - Any ebook server with OPDS 1.0 functionality WHY USE BOOKOSCOPE? Some ereader apps can connect to OPDS endpoints, but the functionality is tucked away and awkward. There's no way to browse and search all the ebooks you have access to, all at once. Bookoscope fills that niche. It crawls your OPDS endpoints, finds and caches all the books it can, and lets you easily download any of them to your device. From there, you can export them to your preferred ereader. BOOKOSCOPE IS NOT: - An ebook reader, sync client, or annotator, like Apple Books, Google Books, or Kindle. - A metadata editor or organizer, like Calibre. - A self-hosted ebook server, like Kavita, Ubooquity, or calibre-web. Bookoscope may be used with any of the above, but is not affiliated with any other app or tool. WHAT IS OPDS? OPDS is the open standard for web endpoints that expose catalogs of ebooks. Many people use home OPDS servers for their personal ebook libraries. WHAT IF I DON'T HAVE AN OPDS SERVER? That's okay! You can use Bookoscope to browse and download free, completely legal books in the public domain. Start with classics like: - Moby Dick - Frankenstein - Pride and Prejudice - The Great Gatsby - The complete works of William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Frederick Douglass, and more!
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: Meanwhile at 79% against Bookoscope's 0%. Meanwhile also leads on ratings volume (10 vs 1) and chart position (#23 vs unranked). Bookoscope's advantage is rating (5.0 vs 4.1) and update cadence (every 5 days vs every 12 months). On ads, in-app purchases, monetization model and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Meanwhile costs $4.99 and Bookoscope $2.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Bookoscope holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.1. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Meanwhile has 10 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 79% of Meanwhile's written reviews are positive against 0% of Bookoscope's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Meanwhile ships an update every 12 months, Bookoscope every 5 days. The most recent releases landed on September 18, 2026 and September 11, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Meanwhile | Bookoscope |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $4.99 | $2.99 — better |
| Rating | 4.1 (10 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 79.2% of reviews — better | 0.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 10 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 12 months | Every 5 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Paid |
| Best chart rank | #23 — better | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod, Apple TV — better | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 15.6 | 13.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 55 MB | 35 MB |
| Age rating | 9+ | 12+ |
| Developer | Zarfhome Software Consulting | Isaac Lyman |
Customer experience
Meanwhile
Bookoscope
In-app purchases
Meanwhile
No in-app purchases
Bookoscope
No in-app purchases
