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Apple iBooks 2 textbooks video walkthrough and screenshots (hands-on)
We had a few minutes to browse through iBooks 2 textbooks following Apple's press conference this morning, but now we have a fully-loaded iPad 2 to play with, so we decided to spend some more time getting educated in the comfort of our in-house studio. You already had a chance to get familiar with the new app and associated media earlier today, so this time it's all about the visuals. Browse through the galley below as we explore Life on Earth before taking a front seat in Biology and getting our hands dirty with Frog Dissection. And if you're feeling brave, there's a juicy video walkthrough just past the break.
iBooks 2 lets authors set textbook prices in exchange for Apple exclusivity
Were you wondering about the economics behind Apple's new e-textbooks? Well, it turns out that Cupertino is giving authors the ability to set their own prices as long as they remain $14.99 or under. In exchange, Apple takes a 30 percent cut, and requires authors take an oath of fealty to Tim Cook -- ok, not really, but any e-textbook author that wants access to the iPad-toting masses must make his or her work an exclusive to iBooks 2. So there you have it folks, if you want to take a gander at these awesome new e-textbooks, you'll have to jump on the iOS bandwagon.
Apple's iBooks 2 e-textbooks pack tons of info, take up tons of your iPad's memory
Apple just got done unveiling its new iBooks 2 platform, letting us in on its plan to revamp education (in part) through its fancy new e-textbooks. These digital volumes look beautiful and come at a relatively meager monetary cost ($14.99), but a quick perusal of the textbooks available in iTunes reveals they'll take a sizable chunk of your iPad's memory. The current lineup of eight texts range in size from 800MB to 2.77GB, so folks looking to grab a full semester's worth of materials may have to carry an extra iPad or three to get the job done. Not an ideal solution, but a few Apple slates are still easier to schlep across campus than those massive texts you're used to, right?
Apple launches iBooks 2 e-Textbook platform (video)
We're here at Apple's education-flavored event at the Guggenheim museum in New York City. Phil Schiller has just taken to the stage and announced the first half of Apple's platform that's going to "reinvent the textbook:" iBooks 2. Saying that there were 1.5 million iPads currently in use in Education (using 20,000 specific apps), the revamped book-stand now includes education-specific features to help the budding students of the world. You'll be able to paw through content, stopping to flick through detailed 3D animated models of elements within, access video and definitions without leaving the page. VP of Productivity Applications, Roger Rosner said that "Clearly, no printed book can compete with this:" given the constantly-updated data available, that's kinda obvious. Still, you'll be able to read in a text-heavy portrait or picture-biased landscape mode and there's also the option to have random pop-quizzes appear to keep you on your toes. Annotations is an integral part of the system: you can add stickies to individual pages and aggregate them into virtual 3 x 5-inch note-cards for revision during finals. You'll also get the same purchase, download and re-download rights you enjoy in the company's other stores. The company's partnered (initially) with textbook makers Pearson, McGraw Hill and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, as the trio are responsible for 90 percent of all textbooks sold -- as well as DK and the E.O. Wilson Foundation. Phil was gushing, saying that he couldn't "overemphasize the importance of these partners working with us." Pearson's High School Science, Biology, DK's Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life, Natural History Insects, Animals and My First ABC as well as the first two chapters of E.O. Wilson's Life on Earth will be available at launch -- the latter is free. You'll be able to download iBooks 2 from the app store free of charge, whilst textbooks themselves will cost $14.99 or less : a far cry from the $80 dead-tree textbooks we shelled out for in college. Update: We've got a hands-on up live from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City!
Watermelon Express now BenchPrep, publishing academic prep texts to iPad
Educational app maker Watermelon Express has shifted gears and entered the electronic textbook market. The Chicago-based company, now known as BenchPrep, has over 75 educational apps in the App Store, most of which were interactive textbooks and test prep materials made for larger, more traditional textbook publishers, like educational publishers McGraw Hill and John Wiley. BenchPrep CEO Ashish Rangnekar told VentureBeat that a single, stand-alone free BenchPrep app made more sense than multiple educational apps, hence the shift in business to interactive prep textbooks for the iPad. Rangnekar also noted that the future of educational materials isn't limited to e-textbooks on the iPad. "Our definition of content is much broader than the textbook," he told VentureBeat; he said that in addition to books, BenchPrep will eventually branch out into other electronic educational materials, such as videos and presentations.
Princeton to start publishing Kindle-edition textbooks
Amazon's Kindle ebook reader has been doing pretty well as a consumer device, but we've always thought it had amazing potential as a textbook reader -- especially coupled iTunes-style with Amazon's online distribution system. Apparently Princeton University (Jeff Bezos's alma mater) agrees with us, because it's just announced plans to publish Kindle version of its textbooks this fall, joining Yale, Oxford, and Berkeley in supporting the device. It's not clear how many books are due to be published on the device or how content like photographs and full-color diagrams will be handled (what's a bio book without red mitochondria? They're the "powerhouse" of the cell!), but we're certain students will gladly make the tradeoff to reduce their backpack loads just a little bit.
