The iPad goes to school: iBooks 2 app brings interactive textbooks for $14.99 or less

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  • January 19, 2012 at 3:51 pm

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iBooks 2 Textbooks on iPad

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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iBooks Author hands-on: how anyone can now publish interactive books to the iPad

Reviews

  • January 19, 2012 at 12:45 pm

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iBook Author: template chooser

Apple has just announced the free iBooks Author Mac OS X application, which allows anyone to create and publish eBooks to Apple’s iBooks platform for the iPad. I went ahead and downloaded the free app from the Mac App Store, which only took a couple of minutes, and fired it up to for a first test.

First impressions are really good, the key to the application is simplicity. If you’ve ever used Blurb to publish a book, the experience is similar but faster and more accurate. On launch, you get a choice from six existing templates, or you can start from scratch. The six templates are OK for a start but relatively limited.

After that it’s a matter of putting down the text, either writing it directly or dropping a document on the page (you have full control on the typography and colors of course), and other content. Dropping images works very smoothly and you can easily move, resize, bring to front or send back. Things auto-align nicely and text boxes can snap to the end of other boxes automatically. While you are moving objects, guides pop-up to show you the margins between other objects and the page ends.
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iBooks Author is a free Mac app that brings drag and drop simplicity to publishing books on the iPad

News

  • January 19, 2012 at 11:57 am

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Apple iBooks Author Mac OS X app

Apple’s education and iBook related event in now underway at New York City’s Guggenheim museum. The company just unveiled iBooks 2 for the iPad which now includes textbooks, but that’s hardly the only important announcement for today. In a bid to make every person a book publisher, Apple has just unveiled a free Mac OS X application, names iBooks Author, that will allow anyone to design and publish their own books on the iBooks platform.

iBooks Author can be downloaded now from the Mac App Store, as we’ve said for free, and the idea behind it is that it brings drag and drop simplicity to authoring multi-touch eBooks. The application comes with a host of templates to get you started though you can completely customize the look of your book. You can enter your text directly to your book’s pages and you can drag and drop photos, videos and even Pages and Microsoft Word documents directly into your book. You also have the option of making your iBook interactive and for that you have the widgets. Widgets add multi-touch interactivity and include photo galleries, 3D objects, animations and Keynote presentations. You can also add your own Javascript or HTML if you are feeling more adventurous.
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Apple NYC end-January event about iBooks, no iPad 3, iTV or Mac Pro updates yet

News

  • January 3, 2012 at 5:05 am

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Apple iBooks on iPad

Apple is preparing a media event in New York City at the end of January. Similar to previous events held in NYC, this one will more likely be focused on content/platform updates rather than hardware. TechCrunch is reporting on its own sources that indeed the event will focus on eBooks, publishing and Apple’s iBooks platform. It’s also expected that the event will mostly be attended by the publishing industry.

There have been a number of rumors floating around that Apple will soon be announcing a Mac Pro line refresh as shipping dates had been slipping to 1-3 weeks, though checking the online Apple Store now most models appear to be in stock. Of course, everyone is also anxiously expecting an iPad 3 announcement, while Apple’s much rumored iTV voice-controlled television is another hotly awaited product. Nevertheless it’s expected that at this event there won’t be any major hardware announcements.
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