Apple has just vowed to reinvent textbooks, and of course the perfect delivery vehicle is the iPad. The big unveiling at today’s education and eBook related event in New York City was iBooks 2 for iOS. The latest version of the app now gives access to interactive textbooks. iBooks textbooks make things more exciting than you typical paperback with interactive 3D models, video and audio. You now also have the ability to pinch for the table of contents, and of course you still have all the typical multitouch navigation gestures.

Besides saving you from lugging big blocks of wood, electronic iBooks textbooks allow you to quickly search for content, highlight text, take notes and even turn them to virtual study cards. Textbooks are rather competitively priced at $14.99 or less, and publishers on-board for the launch include McGraw Hill, Pearson, DK Publishing and Mifflin Harcourt.
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