Apple has collected a selection of self-published titles on the iBookstore under a new “Breakout Books” section. The section is intended to give special attention to “emerging talents,” according to Apple, and each is both independently published and highly rated by users. Some are free, most are cheap, and the effort looks like an attempt to remind users that just like Amazon, Apple’s digital… → Read More
Apple’s iBooks 3.0 update just went out via the App Store, bringing the features it demoed on stage at the special Apple event earlier today. That brings iCloud books to the app’s virtual bookshelf, and vertical scrolling as a new reading paradigm. Also new to the update is the ability to receive free updates to existing books, with chapter additions, corrections and more. → Read More
There’s been plenty of buzz about the iPad mini and the potential role in could play in reaffirming Apple’s commitment education, and now CEO Tim Cook is spending some time on stage to discuss the sort of impact immensely-popular tablet has had in schools. After noting that the iPad (and iBooks) has now found a home in 2500 classrooms in the U.S., Cook revealed that a new version of the… → Read More
Well, there you have it. As more than a few pundits had predicted in the days leading up to the event, Apple has just officially pulled back the curtains on an updated version of its iBooks iOS app.
The update may not pack the same sort of sweeping changes that characterized the last big version of iBooks , but there are quite a few notable tweaks for the e-bibliophiles among you to dive into. → Read More
Sourcebooks, a U.S. book publisher, has used Apple’s iBooks Author tool to launch iPad editions of three Shakespeare plays on Apple’s iBooks 2 store. The iBooks include extra content focused on the history of each play’s performance — including photos, videos and audio clips of readings from various actors, along with study-friendly staples such as glossary resources, note-taking and highlighting… → Read More
I keep a close and interested eye on the world of ebooks, and I’m pleased to report that it keeps getting weirder. British supermarket chain Sainsbury – who I worked for once, helping to program a new payroll system for a few months, until they scrapped the whole project – recently bought HMV’s share in ebook hub Anobii for a whopping, er, one pound. (Americans: that’s about $1.50.)… → Read More
In what I suspect will be an increasing trend, cartoonist Bill Amend has released three “packs” of his popular FoxTrot comics for the iPad. He built the books by himself using iBooks Author and proceeds go to the Help Bill Amend Eat Food Fund (I suspect).
He’s selling three titles including a special issue — number 3.14 — featuring geek strips. Each book contains 100 strips and is optimized… → Read More
As I watched Apple’s iBooks event in New York City last week, my mind began to race about the ramifications of such announcements. Everyone had a pretty good idea for weeks (or months if you read the Steve Jobs biography) that textbooks would be a focal point for Apple, but there wasn’t much thought given to what this would mean. During the event itself, I just kept thinking, “wow, Apple just… → Read More
With the shift from print books to digital books come a few nasty side effects. Sure, it’s much easier much easier to acquire and read books when you don’t even have to get out of your chair, but those digital copies can be cracked and disseminated for free with only a little more effort.
As ebook sales expand, so does ebook piracy, so I have to wonder if Apple’s concerted efforts in creating… → Read More
Apple is making a play for the textbook market with its launch today of iBooks 2 and the new textbooks within that app. It’s Apple, so they are going to reinvent the textbook industry, right?
Well, maybe not today. If you fire up your iPad and update to the latest version of iBooks (Apple’s app for books with its own store separate from iTunes), you can check out all of the new textbooks Apple… → Read More
Today at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, Apple held an event to talk about two key things: “Reinventing textbooks” and “Reinventing curriculum”. But perhaps lost amid the tentpole announcements (iBooks 2, iBooks Author, and the all-new iTunes U) were some subtleties of those products and Apple’s plans for the education space.
Among them: → Read More
I do not want my children learning math proofs on iPads. I simply do not see the value in it. iPads will not help with identifying sentence clauses or writing an essay. There’s a place for interactive learning and there’s not. It’s a clear line. Give science and history teachers iPads loaded with demos, videos and soundbites. Allow children to pinch and zoom DNA strands and the inner workings of… → Read More
Following this morning’s education event, Apple has launched a new, dedicated iOS application called “iTunes U.” This educational content portal, previously available only in iTunes, has now arrived in the App Store for all iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touch devices. It has also undergone a major revamp so as to better complement Apple’s newly-announced educational offerings, including iBooks 2 and… → Read More
Today at Apple’s education event, the company introduced iBooks 2, a textbook platform that effectively transforms $200 textbooks into iPad apps at a much more reasonable price. But of course, a textbook platform isn’t worth a thing without the educational powerhouse publishers behind it.
Luckily, the first up to the bat on the iBooks 2 platform are names we know well: Pearson, McGraw Hill and… → Read More
Apple has spent the past few moments demoing all the new education-friendly featured in iBooks 2, but they have just now answered the question of how authors can create that kind of rich content. All the magic happens in a new OSX application called iBooks Author, which gives users a simple way to integrate different types of media in order to create iBooks of any stripe. → Read More
The days of the $500 college textbook bills are, it seems, over. With Apple’s announcement of iBooks 2, the world of textbooks is changed forever.
Education is a hard nut to crack. There are bright spots and clever new ideas, but technology hasn’t quite figured out how to do a better job than the “old ways.” That’s why Apple’s decision to launch iBooks 2 and the attendant editing tools is so… → Read More
At Apple’s education event today, the company revealed a number of compelling stats regarding iPad use in the education and learning space. Apple’s SVP of Marketing Phil Schiller announced that there are currently 20,000 education and learning applications that have been built for the iPad.
He added that 1.5 million iPads are currently in use in educational institutions and schools. Obviously… → Read More
“Education is deep in our DNA, and it has been since the very beginning,” said Phil Schiller, Apple’s SVP of Worldwide Marketing. On that thought Apple just announced iBooks 2.
This move is centered around reinvent the textbook. Schiller explained today that Apple sees textbooks as amazing devices, but they’re heavy, not searchable or durable. According to Apple the iPad is the perfect counter. → Read More
A publisher, John T. Colby, bought a series of old titles and sold under the name iBooks in since 1999. Around the same time, Apple sold laptops under the iBook name and, more important, began its iBook store in 2010. Colby is stating that Apple has essentially destroyed his business and that:
“Apple’s use of the mark ‘iBooks’ to denote the electronic library that can be accessed via its… → Read More
In what they’re calling a throwback to the original comic book they released to announce the launch of Chrome, Google has today unveiled a new site meant to educate users about browsers and the web. 20 Things I Learned About Browsers & The Web is actually an interactive web app meant to look like a children’s book. And while the book’s content is all about web technology, the interactive book… → Read More
Buying a digital book for your iPad is a very odd experience. If you fire up iTunes, you can find music, movies, apps, even audiobooks, but there is no category for digital books. You need to first download the iBooks app, and then buy books within that app. So it is like a marketplace within a marketplace that also happens to be a reader. The Kindle app also works that way. It is… → Read More
Books are becoming electronic like every other form of print media, but they still lag in their social skills. A startup called Rethink Books wants to incorporate sharing features into every electronic book and turn them into social books. I caught up with founders Jason Ilian and Jason Johnson today at the TedxEast conference in New York City, where they presented a demo f their… → Read More
Starting today, O’Reilly Media will be selling some 600 titles in Apple’s iBookstore, along with almost 150 more from (yes, ironically) Microsoft Press, whose books are sold and distributed by O’Reilly.
The iBookstore is of course included in the free iBooks app for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch (iTunes link). For now, the availability of O’Reilly and Microsoft Press titles is limited to the… → Read More
If you’re comfortable traveling with your iPad (and why not?), these Lonely Planet guides look pretty amazing. Regular books seem like they’d be a pain on an iPad, but picture books for kids and interactive, picture- and link-rich content like travel guides are made for it. You can search, bookmark, leave notes, link out to maps and related websites. Wish I’d had all that with my… → Read More
Doxie, the cute but functional little document scanner, just got an interesting update. Version 1.2 of the Doxie software adds a Devices tab which allows you to send scanned items to your iPhone or iPad. You can read those items on your iThingie using iBooks. This may make your iPad even more useful, and certainly opens new doors to productivity. → Read More
iBooks just received an update that adds dictionary look-up of words as well as quick, closer views of in-line images, and updated PDF controls for quicker browsing. Generally, it adds a number of features missing both from iBooks and the iPad Kindle app. → Read More
During Apple’s iPad event in January, CEO Steve Jobs announced that Apple now had over 140,000 apps in the App Store (along with over 3 billion downloads). If the numbers by app analytics company Distimo are correct, that number is now past 150,000.
But the App Store is growing so big, so quickly that these milestones alone are hardly noteworthy anymore. But Distimo also offers up some nice data… → Read More
When Apple was demoing its new iBooks application for the iPad today during their keynote address, I just kept thinking to myself: this simply must have been designed by Delicious Monster, the shop behind the brilliant Mac app Delicious Library. I’m not the only one who thought that either. Delicious Monster founder Wil Shipley thought the same thing. The only problem? His shop didn’t make… → Read More
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