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[Fleet_of_Foot]

How am I wrong? I witnessed it first hand, every year, during college. For my first 2 years, I bought the prior year edition and attempted problem sets, only to find the questions were reordered and mixed on different pages. It would often take me much longer to complete assignments because I spent a huge amount of time trying to match questions up.

I'm not saying that didn't happen. It definitely does. For good and obvious reasons. I'm saying there was a certain amount of other content in the book that changed, too.

If we are adding new content to each chapter, then yeah, the page numbers will change. Sometimes we take out chapters completely, or add new chapters. There is no consideration given to keeping page numbers consistent between editions just to make it easier for you not to buy our newest, most expensive product. Sorry about that.

The authors will change the numbers in problem sets for a variety of reasons. The main one is that if someone gets hold of the instructor's manual (where the answers are), they're only going to benefit from it for one edition.

 

[FrontalMonk]

Make no mistake that this is to sell iPads. Hey these textbooks would great on a hi-res display don't you think?
These announcements are fantastic if you live in an Appletopian society, but unfortunately the real world will get in the way here.

This. I got all excited, then came down to earth and said "how will they actually get iPads into kids' hands?" Like, I remember when my elementary school had Apple IIgs computers in the computer lab, and did fundraising through the local supermarket chain (Giant Food for all you DC area cats) then it worked out. Also, lived in a relatively rich community, but I can't imagine even here of the elementary school affording to get all the classrooms iPads.

 

[Blackhead]

I can definitely see an aggressively-priced iPad 2 in a couple months.

We'll also likely see a 10" Kindle table for $300 or less. The race between these two is going to be fascinating.

iBooks 2. Boring. We already have interactive textbooks in the app store.
iBook Creator. What format is the output? Unencumbered ePub3 = yay; proprietary Apple nonsense = boo.
iTunes U. Great. I'm going to use this a ton when I get the iPad 3. Lots of great free portable content on there.

No Notes app = utter fail. No mention of other platforms apart from the iPad = total fail.

 

[flyover]

somehow trying to make books cheaper, easier to get into the hands of people, with "important partners" that also facilitates all the things we typically do with books(highlight, compile notes, make note cards/re arrange them)

is a meh endeavor?

Happens with many Apple events. Then Apple makes a killing with whatever they've released (well, usually). I think this will be a big hit. I work for a public school district, and we're already starting to get iPads in the hands of students and teachers. At some point, we think they'll be ubiquitous, so we might as well get in on it now. This event drew a lot of interest at our office.

 

[teamaxe]

I'm a little surprised by the short-sightedness in this thread. The only thing this needs to take off is like 1 or 2 private or charter schools to go all in. I don't think the point of this is to take the Algebra textbook you learned and dump it onto iBooks.

Instead of seeing a static parabola drawn on the page, you can now get an HTML 5 version of it drawing out, maybe even interactive being able to point ot each point on the line and get it's value.

This is pretty neat. Expensive, sure, but neat.

 

[Tobor]

Apparently 600 school districts nationwide are already using iPads. That's only going to grow with today's announcement..

http://www.usnews.com/education/blo.../07/more-high-schools-implement-ipad-programs

 

[Gamecocks625]

I can definitely see an aggressively-priced iPad 2 in a couple months.

Yeah, I could see the iPad 2 staying around at a lower price while the 2S or 3 is intro'd next month.

 

[LCfiner]

Guys, we can create/write books on a Mac but cant actually read them? I don't get it. What's the punchline I'm missing here...why is there is no iBooks app? Legal? Financial? Ancient curse? I need an explanation

Apple is pushing an agenda where they want you to buy an ipad because they see it as the future and they don't care if people without one are inconvenienced and can't read an ibook on a laptop (Mac or PC).

 

[FrontalMonk]

Edit: Wow. Way more iPads out there than I thought.

 

[elohel]

Make no mistake that this is to sell iPads. Hey these textbooks would great on a hi-res display don't you think?
These announcements are fantastic if you live in an Appletopian society, but unfortunately the real world will get in the way here.

in the real world there are 250 million iOS devices

just a heads up

not sure if they really HAVE to sell anymore iPads

 

[sk3]

I'm a little surprised by the short-sightedness in this thread. The only thing this needs to take off is like 1 or 2 private or charter schools to go all in. I don't think the point of this is to take the Algebra textbook you learned and dump it onto iBooks.

Instead of seeing a static parabola drawn on the page, you can now get an HTML 5 version of it drawing out, maybe even interactive being able to point ot each point on the line and get it's value.

This is pretty neat. Expensive, sure, but neat.

So what's the logical conclusion?

Schools jump on this, its a great success. Every student then has a taxpayer-bought ipad and interactive textbooks. Every textbook in the country is now locked in apple's walled garden and one company controls the flow of knowledge to all the kids in your country.

Not going to happen, but does that sound like something you want to strive for? Apple is not doing this out of the goodness of their heart. They have no heart. They want money.

Any etextbook format needs to be open and cross compatible to different devices. Not one company. Not one device.

 

[flyover]

Apparently 600 school districts nationwide are already using iPads. That's only going to grow with today's announcement..

http://www.usnews.com/education/blo.../07/more-high-schools-implement-ipad-programs

Yep. If Apple lowers the cost of previous-gen iPads, coupled with educational discounts, a district could wind up paying under $500/year per student for each student's textbooks. A lot less if kids keep the same iPad for several years. That's not too bad at all.

Districts will respond to fiscal incentives, and this could be a big one.

 

[SimleuqiR]

Again, who puts just a book onto an iPad? You're comparing a book with a portable computer with a billion uses, apps, games, music, accessing an infinite source of information and communicating with the rest of the world (ie, the web).

Besides, most kids already have access to an iPad, so what's the problem with adding the ability to read school books on it?

Start looking at the bigger picture instead of looking for negatives.

In The Bronx (NY)? Not likely. I'm thinking about public schools here.
But I think it's time for me to step out of this thread, and take my "negativity" to the Android thread.

 

[Nero3000]

in the real world there are 250 million iOS devices

just a heads up

not sure if they really HAVE to sell anymore iPads

But how many are in use?

and how many are owned by students?

 

[teamaxe]

Not going to happen, but does that sound like something you want to strive for? Apple is not doing this out of the goodness of their heart. They have no heart. They want money.

Yes, I know that Apple is more evil than all other corporations, but I'm not particularly concerned with that right now. I like that we saw the first major push by some evil corporation into improving our education system. Of course profiting in the meantime. Yay capitalism.

I'm just surprised that people are arguing that textbooks are superior to what was shown today.

Any etextbook format needs to be open and cross compatible to different devices. Not one company. Not one device.

I'd agree with that, but what company is doing that with textbooks right now? I'm in the same group wishing that iBooks would be web-based and use HTML5 client-side cacheing or something to that effect.

Besides, most kids already have access to an iPad, so what's the problem with adding the ability to read school books on it?

WHAT!??!?!?!

 

[nel e nel]

Are you talking about reselling it to the campus bookstore? Then yeah, I agree that they bone you (although I would get back more than you did) but you can sell textbooks online now pretty easily. I know a lot of people who did that. Sure it can take some work, but you can make a lot more money that way.

Yes to answer your question. And a lot of kids do use online methods to resell their books, or sell directly to other students on campus. But...the demographic at my school is much higher blue collar/first generation college/immigrant so not all of them have online access at home. And that obviously varies from institution to institution.

 

[Meus Renaissance]

Question is will these annotations/highlights be saved on iCloud? How big will these textbooks be on the iPad? I imagine around 500MB if not more. What happens if you need to remove one of these books? Do you lose all your notes? I don't believe these questions to have been answered

 

[LCfiner]

So what's the logical conclusion?

Schools jump on this, its a great success. Every student then has a taxpayer-bought ipad and interactive textbooks. Every textbook in the country is now locked in apple's walled garden and one company controls the flow of knowledge to all the kids in your country.

Not going to happen, but does that sound like something you want to strive for? Apple is not doing this out of the goodness of their heart. They have no heart. They want money.

Any etextbook format needs to be open and cross compatible to different devices. Not one company. Not one device.

I could possibly see this happening in the future but I think someone had to make a move now, even if it's just one player offering a solution.

if the idea works and it ends up being successful, then maybe, the publishers will want to expand to more than just publishing on the ipad and we'll see more compatible reading devices.

I am curious to see the ibooks author app publishing options. I wonder if some of the wacky interactivity is limited to the ipad but a plain jane textbook just publishes as epub and any ereader could open it.

 

[elohel]

But how many are in use?

and how many are owned by students?

okay, knock off 150 million JUST TO BE SAFE

so just 100 million

how many 360s sold in the US?

how many are in use right now? lol

edit: my point from above was that, I don't think that this event was solely for new iPad purchasers(consumers) it's aimed at people already adopting them or schools thinking about purchasing them, more about adding value to consumers who already have them

 

[SRG01]

Happens with many Apple events. Then Apple makes a killing with whatever they've released (well, usually). I think this will be a big hit. I work for a public school district, and we're already starting to get iPads in the hands of students and teachers. At some point, we think they'll be ubiquitous, so we might as well get in on it now. This event drew a lot of interest at our office.

I don't know about iBooks. Have we actually seen numbers?

Also, how is iTunes Match going for them? Or iCloud? Or even Ping? Any concrete numbers on those Apple endeavors?

 

[Technosteve]

Apple has been known to give the education market steep discounts and donations.There is a reason majority of kids from the 90's first PC's were Macs. This is a long term investment in the education market.

 

[SRG01]

So what's the logical conclusion?

Schools jump on this, its a great success. Every student then has a taxpayer-bought ipad and interactive textbooks. Every textbook in the country is now locked in apple's walled garden and one company controls the flow of knowledge to all the kids in your country.

Not going to happen, but does that sound like something you want to strive for? Apple is not doing this out of the goodness of their heart. They have no heart. They want money.

Any etextbook format needs to be open and cross compatible to different devices. Not one company. Not one device.

You totally missed my Coursesmart post a couple of pages ago. There's already a platform out there for this.

Apple has been known to give the education market steep discounts and donations.There is a reason majority of kids from the 90's first PC's were Macs. This is a long term investment in the education market.

The cynic in me says that it's a very lucrative segment compared to others, hence the continued investment in it.

 

[Nero3000]

okay, knock off 150 million JUST TO BE SAFE

so just 100 million

how many 360s sold in the US?

how many are in use right now? lol

edit: my point from above was that, I don't think that this event was solely for new iPad purchasers(consumers) it's aimed at people already adopting them or schools thinking about purchasing them, more about adding value to consumers who already have them

Also, how many of those are in the US.

on your edit, i agree.

 

[Technosteve]

You totally missed my Coursesmart post a couple of pages ago. There's already a platform out there for this.



The cynic in me says that it's a very lucrative segment compared to others, hence the continued investment in it.

Renting text books?

 

[elohel]

why is all of this about apple taking over? lol at what point in their presentation did they go "we're gonna take over the classrooms!"

why can't it be that some schools choose to adopt this and some don't? why is it so remarkably binary when it comes to initial reactions to these things?

lol

 

[Nero3000]

Some thoughts on the Apple Education Event.

* This was one of the strangest events Apple has held in a long time. One thing: they started off by saying how poor US education ranks vs. its peers, and then introduces textbooks and iTunes U, which can be a global thing. There was no US specific offering here.

* Without any program to get the content windows (iPads) into the hands of every kid (even in a pilot school), i feel this will be relegated to personal companion use with the high school textbooks. I see exam targeted revision guides doing very well here.

* By far the most interesting thing announced was the iTunes U app. It is the most genuinely useful tool announced, having all the information for a course in a handy journal, with (im assuming here) smart links to textbooks, reading lists and external content.

* Who is the textbook authoring tool aimed at? By being free, i can only see it as aiming for the teachers. So now they will have to learn how to author books. Although this is very interesting, if they can create their own mini-text book for each class/topic and release via the iTUnes U application for the course. Then improve every year, soon they won't need textbooks for every child, just a few reference ones for the class.

* Is this a US only thing? As i have stated before, everything announced today can be rolled out beyond the US.

* Without any accurate stylus implementation, the iPad remains a poor note taking tool. Once they fix this, (i.e. start replacing notepads) then they have another leg in the enterprise market too.

* As stated by others, a lack of a way to view textbooks on other devices (even just the web) hurts the overall viability.

* IMO: iPads should not be a single user device. All things announced today stress that limitation. I doubt a parents with 2 kids are going to buy each of their kids an iPad, and then not use it themselves.

Maybe more to follow...

 

[nel e nel]

Renting text books?

Our school offers this.

 

[elohel]

Our school offers this.

ours too

 

[sk3]

why is all of this about apple taking over? lol at what point in their presentation did they go "we're gonna take over the classrooms!"

why can't it be that some schools choose to adopt this and some don't? why is it so remarkably binary when it comes to initial reactions to these things?

lol

Probably because that is Apple's goal with anything they do.

 

[flyover]

The cynic in me says that it's a very lucrative segment compared to others, hence the continued investment in it.

I agree. I mean, it must be, for them to prioritize it the way they do.

 

[neojubei]

I'd love an interactive Japanese Language textbook. I'm shocked Amazon didn't jump on something like this with their kindle fire.

 

[flyover]

* Who is the textbook authoring tool aimed at?

I think it's going to be one of those things that's more popular among people who just want to publish their own book -- of any sort. Not teachers. I mean, it will be used by its intended audience, as well. But, ultimately, I think it will have a much wider reach among those who want to write, dabble with design, and publish a vanity book.

I can see tons of people writing short cookbooks (making them more of cookbook apps than books, like Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything app) and interactive kids picture books with it.

 

[kingocfs]

I'm a little cloudy when it comes to the textbook market, but I know for a fact that the model it currently runs on is conducive to one thing, and that's taking our money.

So forgive me if this question seems, well, dumb, but why would publishing companies endorse a mass move to electronic alternatives when they make a ridiculous amount of cash charging for bullshit "updates" to paper books that professors order every semester?

 

[LCfiner]

Probably because that is Apple's goal with anything they do.

I think this is hyperbolic.

yes, they want to make money but they never chase market share beyond all other considerations or a have shown a desire to please everybody in every market with their products.

 

[elohel]

Probably because that is Apple's goal with anything they do.

think it's more about making the best product, people just have a tendency to want to copy the best

 

[teamaxe]

iTunes U is pretty great. I'm playing with it now. It uses iCloud to sync your notes and stuff. The WWDC stuff is in there, actually, as I had a WWDC video synced on my iPhone, and it shows up there.

I'm trying out the Stanford iOS dev class right now.

...now if only I could use a stylus to write notes.

 

[Tobor]

I think it's going to be one of those things that's more popular among people who just want to publish their own book -- of any sort. Not teachers. I mean, it will be used by its intended audience, as well. But, ultimately, I think it will have a much wider reach among those who want to write, dabble with design, and publish a vanity book.

I can see tons of people writing short cookbooks (making them more of cookbook apps than books, like Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything app) and interactive kids picture books with it.

On a personal level, that's what I'm most interested in today. Anyone download it yet? I want to know if there are export options.

 

[Meus Renaissance]

iBooks author requires 10.7.

"Free" my ass

 

[Red]

You totally missed my Coursesmart post a couple of pages ago. There's already a platform out there for this.



The cynic in me says that it's a very lucrative segment compared to others, hence the continued investment in it.

It's not only lucrative, it also normalizes mac use and builds the brand. It ensures that all kids know what Apple is and are comfortable with their products. Apple's targeting of the education market is one of the reasons they've been so successful.

It's very smart, and borders on insidious.

 

[LCfiner]

iBooks author requires 10.7.

"Free" my ass

Jesus Christ. Lion is 30 bucks and has been out for ages. of all the things to complain about...

 

[Treefingers]

iBooks author requires 10.7.

"Free" my ass

Google Chrome requires XP SP2.

"Free" my ass

 

[elohel]

Jesus Christ. Lion is 30 bucks and has been out for ages. of all the things to complain about...

thanks, wasn't sure how to phrase this one lol

agreed

 

[Technosteve]

Gaf magazine is the killer app

 

[neojubei]

Jesus Christ. Lion is 30 bucks and has been out for ages. of all the things to complain about...

People are going to complain about everything.

 

[Meus Renaissance]

Jesus Christ. Lion is 30 bucks and has been out for ages. of all the things to complain about...

This is irrelevant. There's no reason why this program has to be Lion-exclusive. I don't need Lion it nor want it, but if you're declaring an app to be free whilst I'd imagine the majority of your users are not on 10.7, then its disingenuous. They should have said "Available on Lion only, free". It's not so much as a complaint as it is a statement of fact. It's funny that the criticism here is towards me rather than that

Google Chrome requires XP SP2.

"Free" my ass

How much does SP2 cost?

 

[teamaxe]

They should have said "Available on Lion only, free".
How much does SP2 cost?

Hmm. IE9 is about what, $120 then?

 

[Tobor]

Ok, I couldn't wait, so I used LogMeIn and downloaded iBook Author. Looks like you can export to a new .ibook extension, PDF, or .txt.

.ibook requires iBooks 2.0.

 

[Alucrid]

I'm a little cloudy when it comes to the textbook market, but I know for a fact that the model it currently runs on is conducive to one thing, and that's taking our money.

So forgive me if this question seems, well, dumb, but why would publishing companies endorse a mass move to electronic alternatives when they make a ridiculous amount of cash charging for bullshit "updates" to paper books that professors order every semester?

I asked this in the other thread but it went ignored. And if apple can't get themajority publishers to publish through the istore, what school is going to pick this up?

 

[Chris R]

This is irrelevant. There's no reason why this program has to be Lion-exclusive. I don't need Lion it nor want it, but if you're declaring an app to be free whilst I'd imagine the majority of your users are not on 10.7, then its disingenuous. They should have said "Available on Lion only, free". It's not so much as a complaint as it is a statement of fact. It's funny that the criticism here is towards me rather than that

I'd imagine that a vast majority of the users (outside of Mac Pro owners) are on Lion. Do we have a breakdown showing install rate between the different versions though?

 

[Nero3000]

Hmm. IE9 is about what, $120 then?

And safari is $1000?