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Daily Update for January 19, 2012
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen.
Apple posts video of education event
Apple has posted a video of the education event it held earlier today. The video is available for streaming on Apple's site, or you can download a higher quality version from iTunes. This is Apple's first public event since October's introduction of the iPhone 4S. In this video you'll see the debut of iBooks 2.0, iBooks Author, the iTunes U app, and Apple's partnership with textbook publishers to offer electronic textbooks directly to students for just US$14.99.
iBooks Author accounts are free, existing developers need a new account
Setting up an account to publish books to the iBookstore has always been free, and the new iBooks Author tool has brought that fact into the spotlight. Self-publishing books to the iBookstore does still have a few hurdles you have to leap through, however. As AppleInsider points out, for iOS and Mac developers in particular, one hurdle is that existing iTunes Connect App Store accounts won't allow you to upload books to the iBookstore; instead, you'll need to set up a separate Apple ID associated with iBooks Author. Account setup also requires you to input credit card information and have a US-based tax ID -- for individuals self-publishing content, a Social Security number will suffice. For some odd reason, iBooks also require an ISBN (a requirement the Kindle Store doesn't have), and those aren't cheap. In the US, purchasing a single ISBN from Bowker costs $125, or you can buy them in discounted packs. Personally, I have no idea why they're allowed to get away with those prices; ISBNs in my country are available for free. Speaking from personal experience, setting up a publisher account on the iBookstore is a lengthy and somewhat unintuitive process -- but nowhere near as slow and frustrating as dealing with traditional publishers. Developers not being able to use an existing iTunes Connect account to publish iBookstore content is a bit baffling, however, and hopefully it's something Apple will address.
Apple's iBooks Author hands-on (update: video!)
Inside every frustrated journalist is an even more frustrated author, and self-publishing is an evil that many of us have succumbed to over the years. Still, much as we may want to resist it, we couldn't help ourselves when it came time to test Apple's iBooks Author app, designed for educators to push out textbooks to students for a fraction of the cost, time and energy it would traditionally take.So, how does it feel when you're working inside the software? Could you use it to prepare seminar materials for the class of 2015 or, more importantly, launch your own career as Stephanie Meyer's successor? Head past the break to find out!
iBooks Author makes its debut today for creating ebooks (Updated)
Apple has announced the free iBooks Author, an OS X application for creating any type of ebook. As with Pages, a number of templates are available for authors to use to get started with making a book. With a tap, they can be filled with stock text. Elements such as audio and video can be dragged and dropped onto the page. Keynote slides and other widgets can be added as interactive elements, and glossaries can be created with the click of a mouse button. You can even instantly preview a book on the iPad via the USB sync cable. This is a boon for content creators who want to make interactive books for the iPad, but aren't quite sure where to get started. As with the now-dusty iWeb, it offers a user-friendly way to test the waters of interactive design without being forced to learn a bunch of new code (although those who do know HTML or Javascript can use the Dashcode developer tools to build in web-based widgets that will work in the new iBooks 2). I'm looking forward to seeing how this stacks up against Adobe InDesign for creating a basic book. iBooks Author is a free download in the Mac App Store. It's not available yet, but should be within the next couple of hours. You can download it right now, if you have a Mac running OS X 10.7 Lion. We'll have a fuller look at it later on today.
