M.G. Siegler:

Sometimes I feel like I hold a bit of a secret weapon. A “life hack” as it were. I not only read a lot on my iPhone/iPad, I listen to a lot.

Podcasts, yes. Music, of course. Audiobooks, sometimes. But the real key for me is being able to listen to just about anything on these devices. How? Thanks to the accessibility features of iOS.

And:

I’m a little wary of sharing this “hack” broadly because I worry that content publishers will ask for Apple to remove such functionality.¹ If that sounds crazy, remember that when the Kindle originally launched, it had the ability to read any text outloud to users. The publishers/authors, not wanting to cannibalize their extremely lucrative (read: rip-off) audiobook sales, quickly put an end to this feature.

And, if I remember correctly, the Kindle’s read-back feature was decent. But the feature on iOS is great — not only thanks to the ease-of-use, but because of the voice, ‘Alex.’

Read the whole thing, consider downloading Alex.