Apple Unveils Software To Reinvent the Textbook

redletterdave writes "At the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Apple announced on Thursday it would update its iBooks platform to include textbook capabilities and also added a new platform called iBooks Author, which lets anyone easily create and publish their own e-books. Apple's senior VP of marketing, Phil Schiller, introduced iBooks 2, which has a new textbook experience for the iPad. The books themselves display larger images, and searching content is made significantly easier: all users need to do is tap on a word and they are taken straight to an appropriate glossary or index section in the back of the book. Navigating pages and searching is also easy and fluid, and at the end of each chapter is a full review with questions and pictures. If you want the answers to the questions, all you need to do is tap the question to get instant feedback. Apple also launched the iBooks Author app, which lets anyone easily create any kind of textbook and publish it to the iBookstore, and the new iTunes U platform, which helps teachers and students communicate better, and even send each other materials and notes created with iBooks Author. All of the apps are free, and available for any and all students, from K-12 to major universities."

Comments

I was at the announcement

[Anonymous Coward]

It was a textbook example of a product launch.

Re:I was at the announcement

[ColdWetDog]

You actually read your textbooks? And you admit that?

I'll bet you even stoop so low as to read instruction manuals.

Lame

[Anonymous Coward]

No Wireless. Less Space Than A Nomad. Lame.

Re:Revolutionary?

[Stewie241]

It's revolutionary because it is on an iPad.