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Apple Nets 350K Textbook Downloads In 3 Days
redletterdave writes "On Jan. 19, Apple introduced iBooks 2, its digital solution to the physical textbook. In the first three days of release, users have downloaded more than 350,000 e-textbooks from the new platform, and more than 90,000 users have downloaded the authoring tool to make those e-textbooks, called iBooks Author. It makes sense that Apple's iBooks 2 platform is taking off in such a short period of time; there is very little merit to the physical textbook, and the education industry has been waiting for a viable solution like this for some time. Physical textbooks lack portability, durability, accessibility, consistent quality, interactivity and searchability, and they're not environmentally friendly."
...that you can resell a physical textbook, sometimes, and that cuts into textbook publisher profits.
The numbers have been released by a third party. Remember that before you take them for granted and/or bash Apple.
I for one can't imagine what "proprietary methods" are able to estimate download numbers from Apple's servers.
My systems analysis textbook set me back almost two hundred dollars brand new. My database management book was $120 used. My professor was the author of the latter; he had said he had asked his publisher about eBook editions, and they demurred, because their profits would be cut in half.
The textbook industry needed this swift kick in the nuts to break up the racket.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
forces you to sell only via the Apple Store. So, Apple will make 30% on every text book sold which is written in their new tool, and likey 30% on every new, yearly addition which changes a picture here or there and yet charges full price (what, you don't think this odious practice from physical books will make it into electronic textbooks?)
Talk about vendor lock-in.
And good luck trying to sell your book at the end of the year back to the Apple Store...
So how does this "iBooks 2" work on non-iOS devices? Android? Linux? MS-Windows?
I have nothing against digital books, but if they are going to be locked up on a single platform, this is not a good thing (especially for educational uses).
Great, too bad if you are poor, no more textbooks for you. No iPad no education. There is no merit in this kind of lock in.
They lack... portability? Ok, if you have to carry 5 of them around, I see your point. .... ok, you win.
Durability? Like, when I spill coffee on mine? Or, drop it? Or, draw mustaches on the people in it?
Accessibility?
Consistent quality? So, you're going to GUARANTEE consistent content quality in eBooks?
And, of course, the ebook argument wins on searchability. But let's face it, an Index/TOC is practically just as good. Unless you're searching for absolutely every occurrence of a specific word, a good index is just as good.
But, are we really going to argue that iPads are more environmentally friendly than text books? That would be an interesting discussion.
sig: sauer
"Physical textbooks lack portability, durability, accessibility, consistent quality, interactivity and searchability, and they're not environmentally friendly."
For me studying physics every day the e-textbook is still years away from being useful. I can agree with the portability argument but thats about it. I can, with a real, physical textbook have the following advantages over an iTextBook however:
- drop a textbook without breaking it, and even if I damage it I can still use it, not wait for my insurer to maybe replace it because the screen shattered
- flick open at the index and quickly find what I want, and flick back and forth between sticky marked pages, and generally navigate a real book a lot faster
- have several books open on my desk at once - rather a necessity for any scientist
- be sure that the textbook I have bought is decent, well edited, well peer reviewed and correct, because it came from an internationally renowned publisher not "#physicsgeek78695#", as Apple seem to want to make the e-textbook market the same as the Android App Store
- keep a real book if I decide to change my computer manufacturer, phone, name, credit card number etc.
- Be sure that my textbook, while murdering some tree somewhere and not being 100% green and hippy, did not cause several factory workers to jump to their deaths, add to the toll of heavy metal pollution in east asian watercourses, or pad the coffers of Apple in preference to the Authors who sweated over the book. Odds are Apple will take a bigger cut than conventional publishers, because brand power means they can.
Just my $0.02
Book: Grow tree. Create paper. Use for a hundred years or so. Paper rots. Repeat.
iGadget: Mine toxic heavy metals. Make gadget with slave labor that last for a few years. Burn electricity to use gadget. Throw gadget in landfill when done. Repeat.
I think I'll stick with real books, thanks.
I don't respond to AC's.
Depends on volume. An iPad (Or comparable tablet) is a lot more polluting than one book, but less than a million books. Somewhere in that range is a number where they are equal, which may or may not be less than the number of books an iPad can replace for a typical student (Including a couple of novels for recreation). Estimating that number is going to be hard though.
And what precedent in history have you seen that would make you believe this?
They will still be overpriced, locked into the walled garden and the secondary market will be eradicated. Thinking otherwise is just falling into the trap that has already been laid with other eBooks.
Win for publisher, fail for students. Apple is just a profit machine for content creators and evidently there are a lot of suckers who believe otherwise.
I just dropped a real book on the ground. I can still read it. Now, somebody please to that with an iGadget and please tell me what happens...
I don't respond to AC's.
Physical textbooks lack:
What Apple has really done is taken a cornered market (students being forced to buy new editions every year) and changed the entity doing the cornering from something students hate (publishers) to something students blindly adore (Apple).
...the '1984' Apple commercial
Now they are going to be telling us what to learn and think.
We were never at war with innovation, we are always at war with innovation.
Coming to you soon on the iBigBrother (with CarrierIQ).
Silence is a state of mime.
If they're anything like me, they downloaded the Author application, played with and saved a test "publication", then tossed the application into the shitcan with all the other applications that save only to proprietary venues/formats.
.pdf, or .txt (the latter without any graphics, of course). And it will not "publish" to anything but Apple's store for use on iPhones and iPads.
.PDF instead. Sure, it will get "illegally shared" some, but as far as I am concerned that is still better than this. And there are ways to help prevent that, too.
Author will save only to ".ibook" (a modified version of ".epub"), a crippled
I have no use for such lock-in, proprietary bullshit. I'll publish my work in a
I'm a bit of an apple fan boy and am all for promoting them but could you please do better than directly quoting verbatim their own promotional material in the summary?
example:
"...there is very little merit to the physical textbook, and the education industry has been waiting for a viable solution like this for some time. Physical textbooks lack portability, durability, accessibility, consistent quality, interactivity and searchability, and they're not environmentally friendly"
Seriously, go to apples website and watch their promo video (it actually is pretty cool) You will find that the summary was largely directly lifted. Are you trying to use these as your own words? They are not used in the story so...
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm
Well, they are environmentally friendly as long as you ignore how the devices were produced, where the electricity comes from and the effects of having to replace one when the device finally fails. Not to mention the frequent resale of textbooks and that they don't require any energy to work.
But what happens when I want to go to school with my Galaxy Tab, and I'm told that I can't get my "digital textbooks" because they're not supported on my device? Now I'm forced to buy another electronic device in order to study, rather than just being able to download (and pay for) said books on my current device. Terrible idea, in my opinion.
"there is very little merit to the physical textbook"
--Pierre de Fermat
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
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Does anyone have documentation for the used format? I know it is almost epub/Html5 but exactly what did apple add, and what do they not support yet?
I can't use apples software due to the insane license deal, but would still like to produce books in this format.
I have a nice little anecdote on that topic.
Being a Version Management fan, I got hold of some Second Edition of a Psych textbook back in the day, when I think the class was up to Fourth Edition. Besides saving the (then cheap!) $90, it in fact was bigger and better! I checked the introductions. Second Edition: "Blah Blah thank you to the 40 people who reviewed this, and my grant". Fourth Edition: "Streamlined with less common content removed for better initial presentation".
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Irregardless isn't a word. Bonus points for using it while complaining about writing textbooks.
It doesn't matter if the University recommends them or not because prior to this announcement if I wanted to learn University Level Physics I had to spend $250 bucks on the textbook, now I can buy a comparable textbook from iBooks for $15.00 and receive information updates for the life of that edition.
Whether its a big deal in schools or not, though I really have a feeling this will be huge in the K-12 market, my desire to learn something isn't tied to expensive textbooks anymore. This is a good thing.
But I liked the easy homework assignment of putting a cover on my textbook :-(
The education industry has certainly NOT been "waiting for a viable solution like this for some time". The students have, and maybe even some sympathetic teachers, but textbooks are outrageously expensive, even the e-book versions, and somebody is profiting off it all.
A solution to the problem of expensive textbooks exists. There is an entire world of public domain textbooks out there, but all of them are useless when the professor tells you to read p.67-123 from the official textbook for a quiz tomorrow.
But I would even argue that textbooks are an outdated mode of communication. We live in a world of instant reference. Have you ever tried to search an e-book using Ctrl-F? It is absolute hell, because you keywords either occur on every other page, or they don't occur at all in the specific string you are using.
And inside of it on one page was a picture of a disk, a back flap, and a scorpion.
So not only is the fanboy drivel not edited out, blatantly moronic statements like this are left in the summary.
...no. That's never what happens. Textbooks occupy a fairly distinct part of the market. There are no substitutes if your course requires the book, and there are typically not many books with the information you will need (especially as you go on to higher levels of education). Once paper textbooks are gone, the prices will just shoot back up to where they always were, if not higher since you no longer have the option of buying used (or international).
What I want to know is if I can resell the digital textbook once I'm done with it like with a paper-based textbook. It's one way to help offset the price of the next textbook I might buy, but knowing Apple probably not.
"Physical textbooks lack portability, durability, accessibility, consistent quality, interactivity and searchability, and they're not environmentally friendly."
Apple textbooks lack portability (can you use them on Android or Windows?), durability (iPads are not drop friendly), accessibility (how many people have iPads? Granted, there are a growing number, but they are usually the elite), environmentally friendly(electronics made of rare metals and other things that are not environmentally friendly. In addition, you have to pick up a new iPad every couple of years because the old one has been made obsolete by Apple.)
It's very attractive in theory, but when I look at the license agreement I'm not sure I can go with it (About iBooks Author->License Agreement). If I use these tools and charge a fee I *have* to distribute the book through Apple. I understand the rationale. Why should the tool be free if I can turn around and distribute it somewhere else? It's only fair for Apple to expect something in return.
On the other hand I'm picturing what would happen if I put a few months work into a text, it becomes popular/useful to others, and then someone asks if other arrangements can be made for distribution (e.g., maybe someone wants to make and sell a regular paper edition). I'm stuck if I ever charged money for it.
Granted, the restriction only exists if you charge a fee. If the text is free "you may distribute the Work by any available means". This part is awesome! Full kudos to Apple for that and for making the agreement relatively simple. But what if I wanted to charge, say, $5 a textbook to help cover costs of its development and maintenance? Nothing substantial, but covering things like hiring a student to do drafting of figures, preparing photos, editing, that sort of thing. This would be publishing on the cheap rather than completely free. Unfortunately once you cross into the "fee" realm at all, you've made a deal for sole distribution with Apple, and it isn't clear whether there is any alternative.
Thus, as much as I like it, I hesitate, because I'm not certain I want to distribute my work for free rather than very cheap compared to the usual textbook. Maybe this is Apple's way to encourage people to write free works. If so, then I applaud their approach. I'm just not sure it is the way I want to go. At least with licenses like the GPL I have the *option* to charge money without having further license complications.
You're probably all thinking I'm a stingy old !#$%!% now :-)
I have to say, I enjoyed the fact that the university I went to had none of these problems because textbooks were included. Before classes started, you went to the bookstore and got all the textbooks you needed for a flat "textbook usage fee" I think it was somewhere around like $15-20 a class. You got the version the professor was using and didn't have to worry about reselling it. About the only drawbacks is you weren't supposed to really deface it (though in reality they really didn't care) and you didn't get to keep the books. However, looking back, I can't say that there was any textbook that would be any too useful if I had it today.
I don't understand why more universities and colleges don't do this. It saves a lot of time and hassle and is much cheaper because the costs of a $100 book are spread across many different departments and years. So books which need updating frequently (law, computers, modern history) could be quickly updated while books which rarely need updating (mathematics, English, some sciences, etc.) weren't which allowed for up to date textbooks when needed.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I have been looking forward to going digital with my library for a long time now. I almost went with Kindle, but the cost of buying a another device always held me back. A free app for reading books on a device I already own, and the convenience of the app store to purchase at? YES PLEASE.
Then I saw the prices. Just skimming a couple classics, I was shocked to see the digital sticker prices consistently 30% HIGHER than a physical copy from Amazon. Sometimes it was even higher than the MSRP of the same book (you know, that price you never pay because everything is always on sale?).
I went from being a fanboy who couldn't wait to line up to take it, to a hater in about 5 minutes. Its not the actual sticker price that bothers me. Its the blatant gouging on something that costs less than ever to distribute, and can't be resold or lent out to a friend/family member easily. I'm not paying more something that actually does less, per my own personal usage scenario.
Luckily, it only takes buying 2.1 books before you've paid for your iPad at that rate, and hey, then you've got a really pretty awesome tablet too!
That's fine if you just want to learn University Physics on your own, but in college the professor will usually assign homework from problems in the book, which a comparable book won't have.
Also, for K-12, although the thought of being able to buy books for $15 sounds great I think the start-up/maint costs will be too much. Hardware will increase every year, and hardware requirements for software will increase to match that. You end up with 4-5 year lifespan before you have to buy new iPads because the old ones aren't compatible with new textbooks/educational software. Plus you add in the IT related costs of having to maintain a fleet of iPads along with replacements for breakage/insurance premiums. Most schools use books for many years before they replace them with newer editions.
I'm not trying to down play the how awesome it would be to go digital with textbooks, I just think with the resiliency of books and the cost of hardware this is not going to be the revolution apple thinks its going to be, right now anyway. (But then again, maybe I'm wrong)
Too lazy to sign up for an account. Posting as AC
"Physical textbooks lack portability, durability, accessibility, consistent quality, interactivity and searchability, and they're not environmentally friendly."
I disagree with at least three of those points:
Durability: Have you tried throwing your e-reader around like a frisbee? I bet you dollars to donuts your paper textbook can survive getting run over by a car better than your iBooks2 can.
Consistent Quality: Are we talking about the medium or the content? Most (hardcover) textbooks I have are printed on quality paper. Maybe the poster is only buying cheap pirated books out of China printed on green bible-like paper (ala the official Chinese translation of Harry Potter I saw in the bookstore the other day) The quality of the content... well that has nothing to do with whether it's electronic does it?
Interactivity and Searchability: I yield half the point. Interactivity, embedded videos, and links to online content is great. But the searchability point.... sure you can't do a keyword search on a paper textbook, but that's not really how people use them. When you're looking something in the text half the time you don't *remember* the keyword to search for. Physical textbooks give you the ability to flip through the pages quickly and scan them visually to find what you need. "Page flipping" on e-books SUCK. Electronic bookmarks are annoying, for the same reason (sometimes you mark a page because there's useful information on several pages near it, but it's less convenient to flip around because... well, page flipping sucks!)
Environmentally Friendly: Really? Trading a renewable resource (paper) for silicon, rare earths and plastics is more environmentally friendly? Sure you can make an argument for the hardware environmental costs being offset by savings in transportation / shipping of the textbooks, but you also have to keep in mind the hardware is NOT THAT DURABLE and will have to be replaced every few years (planned obsolescence!). It's not obvious which side wins out without hard numbers.
Interesting, Where's the option where student buys no iDevices and 5 paper books per term?
Physical textbooks lack portability, durability, accessibility, consistent quality, interactivity and searchability, and they're not environmentally friendly.
On the other hand, they're not encumbered by DRM, they don't vaporize after a hundred readings or a year, whichever comes first, they don't demand that you read them with Apple (R) iGlasses and they don't have to be vetted by a gatekeeper (who takes 30%) before being published.
So the big idea is to use...ebooks to distribute..books? Oh, wait "textbooks". I forgot those are _totally_ not books.
I hope Apple patented this idea, because it sure is earth shattering. I mean who would have thought one could not only distribute books but _textbooks_ electronically. Genius, I tell you! How did Apple develop the brilliant insight to invent this?!
No, seriously. WTF? This is some big idea? I assumed the reason textbooks are still largely physical is because of the scam publishers and schools use to change one or two words and call it a new "edition" every year? What new technology is Apple providing that didn't exist 5 years ago?
Then take the MIT courses for free. they give you the textbook as well as all the lectures in video form. And I am certian that the MIT professors teach a lot better than a podunk college professor like you find at Notre Dame, UofM, or Brown.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
"Not to mention the frequent resale of textbooks and that they don't require any energy to work."
Someone Failed physics. Textbooks do in fact require energy to work, If yours open and flip pages without any energy then a lot of people would like to see this book in their labs.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
"But what happens when I want to go to school with my Galaxy Tab, and I'm told that I can't get my "digital textbooks" because they're not supported on my device?"
The rest of your students don their white robes point at you and emit a screetching sound that penetrates your soul. as you run down the hallway you hear chants from the other students of ...."join us, be one of us...join us...."
That is pretty much what happens.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Physical textbooks do not require an iDevice to read, do not give Apple a significant cut of first-sale profits, and they can be resold. These are clearly the fatal flaws; the Apple zealot who posted the story (who was also the submitter on the iBooks announcement story) somehow overlooked these.
"Physical textbooks lack portability, durability, accessibility, consistent quality, interactivity and searchability, and they're not environmentally friendly.""
Portability: I could carry my entire year in my backpack.
Durability: Yea, that little piece of silicon you're holding is just as susceptible to fire, heat, water, OH AND CRASHING. Books aren't crashing. Books don't need an expensive proprietary OS to work, they truly 'just work.'
Accessibility/interactivity/searching: Most books meant for rapid searching/accessibility have both indexes and a table of contents - TWO SEARCH ENGINES! IMAGINE THAT!
Consistent Quality: Books don't need software updates, and aren't prone to getting hacked. Revisions do happen, but they're few and far between because of TRUE quality control.
Environmentally Friendly: They're more environmentally friendly (and trap lots more carbon) than your strip-mined piece of silicon, iridium, cadmium, etc. Takes less energy to manufacture, too!
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
... there is very little merit to the physical textbook, ..... Physical textbooks lack portability, durability, accessibility, consistent quality, interactivity and searchability, and they're not environmentally friendly...
Bunch of CRAP. Of the above quoted criticisms the only valid one is the lack of interactivity. I can still read (accessibility) my 40 year old (durable) texts that I transported (portable) as an undergraduate and every time I look up (searchability) Lenz's law in my 1970 edition of Halliday and Resnick I get the same (consistent quality) information and, if I wanted to, I could give my old printed texts to another person (environmentally friendly).
The only significant disadvantage of printed texts for the majority of subject material is the high cost ; that is not a fault of the medium but rather a reflection of the rapacity of the publishers.
submitted by,
Retired old fart who was using computers and writing software before many slashdot folks were born and who recognizes a solution in serach of a problem or gullible customer when he sees it
I can throw a book across the room and it might damage the cover of a hardcover, but it will still work fine. I wouldn't want to try this with an ipad or a kindle. Under reasonable storage conditions, paper will remain readable after magnetic platters have gotten demagnetized and CDs have corroded.
College students eventually figure out that it is completely unnecessary to carry textbooks to class. It does, however, take time, so most go through the same progression: freshmen carry EVERYTHING and need to wear both straps of their backpack. Sophomores lighten the load and can use just one strap. Juniors carry a notebook. Seniors carry beer.
After the whole microsoft office document format snafu, I'm surprised people are embracing this. It's not a crime that Apple is tackling the move from paper textbook to digital, but I think there are some very key factors being overlooked which will come to light only after it's too late to go back. But hey, it's Apple. They won't do anything bad, right?
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
To add one more major benefit of paper textbooks to your (fairly exhaustive) list:
- I can put it on a public bookshelf. Every office I've worked at has had a few bookshelves where people deposit their useful textbooks to share with their coworkers. This would be either impossible or illegal with ebook textbooks.
When I went to Uni I had to buy a Windows PC, because that's the only computer the course software ran on. I didn't really want to because Microsoft was "evil". But I bought a PC because that's what was needed for my course.
That's what you do. You make like an adult and forget the computer geek ideology.
Would you give a first-grader an iPad? I don't care if it's got a Kevlar cover and bulletproof glass; a first-grader can't be trusted to keep track of a lunchpail, let alone a $600 smart device. They'll lose it, trade it away or steal it from other students. Until at least the High School level, paper books are not going away anytime soon.
Physical textbooks lack portability, durability, accessibility, consistent quality, interactivity and searchability, and they're not environmentally friendly."
I'm not sure what school this guy went to, but we used to have backpacks (portability) when I was in college. The books all lasted really well because I didn't abuse them (durability). I was able to open the cover and read the contents (accessibility). I suppose they all had nice quality paper and printing; but really, how will being an ebook ensure more consistent quality? (consistent quality?). I'm sure some topics would have been more interesting, like Sex Ed, if there were popups that preschool books have, and I'm sure that most of them all had a Table of Contents and/or and Index (interactivity and searchability). Since when were books less environmentally friendly than various metals and other possibly-toxic substances (that are often sent to third-world countries to be discarded)?
What I like about books is they don't need a battery charge to be read and they have wonderful contrast. If you want to make the font bigger, I suggest a magnifying glass or reading glasses.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
As a matter of fact, many schools do use iPads with kindergartners (and younger!) as part of special education. They make great replacements for low tech communication boards. As long as you're monitoring the students (which you really ought to be at that age) and don't let them take the devices home, you don't have much to worry about. It's actually the older kids who you need to worry about... they're clever enough to know how to lie and steal.
Is it possible to view the list of textbooks currently on the system (without buying the app)?
Physical textbooks lack portability, durability, accessibility, consistent quality, interactivity and searchability, and they're not environmentally friendly."
Portability : I never walked around with textbooks. Used them at the library or rented out for a few weeks and used it at home.
Durability : some 84 copies of the original Guttenberg Bibles still exist. They printed ~150 in the 1450s. I think that settles the question of durability, especially in the light of my experience with home-burned CDs and DVDs.
Accessibility: I guess those e-books will be free to copy, ehm... For books we have a nice, tried and true system, libraries. Also, you can give it to someone / keep it the family.
Consistent quality : just check reviews on Amazon plus if the authors are respectable academics in their fields.
Interactivity : WTF? Yes, you can take notes on margin. You can underline. You don't need animations popping up dozen times per page.
Searchability : Index, Contents. Works like charm.
Not environmentally friendly : see durability point above. Make it once, teach people to respect the knowledge in there and it will last for centuries. 10-50 trees can grow full size during the period. Compare that to landfills with outdated appliances.
As of present, printing is still the best way to preserve information. I don't care for bills and similar crap but knowledge in textbooks is valuable, we should not just dump all that into the "cloud".
Of Course Apple is crowing! But they are not the first to have computer books... I don't really know who did it first, but the XO from OLPC has Apple, Kindle and everybody else in this article beat. And don't forget E-How, etc., either!
While that is true I think you're missing the point of my argument. If I'm learning for the sake of learning I don't care whether the professor assigns an assignment out of one book or another. I, as a non-student, have an interest in a subject and I am now able to buy an equivalent High School, College, or University Textbook to learn from for 15 bucks. I don't have to spend hundreds of dollars, I can now spend fifteen, and if I decide I like it enough to attain formal education in the subject, I might even be able to take a placement exam that would give me credit for the self taught material I've already covered.
Its cheaper than you think, if you think it through. Think of the average Grade 9 student: Math, General Science, Chemistry, English, General Computing, General History, Geography.
They'll need text books for all those classes, sometimes more than one if multiple topics are covered during the year. Lets assume they only need one for each for a minimum of seven textbooks and estimate a hundred bucks a pop, now they're going to need to buy textbooks for each year that student is there. Lets assume the same number of textbooks each year for the student's four year run: 7 x 100 = 700 x 4 = $2,800.00 per student per four year period.
Most schools replace their textbooks every four - five years, so basically once a student graduates they replace their entire textbook roster for all classes all at once.
Or they can spend $599.00 on a 32 GB iPad, lets get the mid line model in case the textbook authors decide to go a bit crazy with the video, and give the student 28 redemption codes for their textbooks over the four years which tacks on an additional $420.00. All told the district would spend $1,019.00 per student per four year period. And we haven't even covered off on any education discounts Apple would include in selling them an iPad, which there probably would be since Apple usually does provide the hardware at education discounts.
With proper care the iPad would certainly last for four years and as an incentive to treat it well, and solve the updated hardware problem, we could let the student keep it when they graduate; what an incentive to the student, do well in school and keep your iPad for College / University. Sure it would cost a fair bit to get the program started but once its running the cost in new hardware would be limited to the freshman class size each year and you wouldn't have to worry about disposing of obsolete hardware since the student's would be taking it with them.
As for insurance premiums use some of the savings for Apple Care, that should cover most stuff, and then set aside a bit more for breakage. Most schools already do something similar with their paper textbooks anyway by purchasing a number of extra copies allowing them to replace excessively damaged ones as needed.
In relation to IT costs, its an iPad and not a general purpose computer. It therefore wouldn't need the same level of IT support as a general computer would, a bunch of Wi-Fi nodes and a copy of iCloud set up for the school to coordinate textbook and lesson plan distribution should cover that. Hell that sounds like it'd be fun to set something like that up, I wonder what it takes to become an Apple Certified Technician.
The University / College library usually won't let you into them unless your a paying student and if they do let you in they definitely won't let you take anything out since paying students need those books. Which gets back to the basic problem, I'm not paying 200 bucks because I'm curious about something but I will pay 15.
So this means that all homework is going away once paper books are gone, as the kids can't be trusted to take the devices home? I know a lot of kids that would be pretty excited to hear that...
Look up the chemicals that are used in the manufacture of paper. Also consider the environmental cost of chopping down trees.
"But what happens when I want to go to school with my Galaxy Tab, and I'm told that I can't get my "digital textbooks" because they're not supported on my device?"
The rest of your students don their white robes point at you and emit a screetching sound that penetrates your soul.
Like this?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I think you're trolling on this one. Being a PhD in particle physics and working at CERN I can claim that I longed for e-Books for years. I have shelves full of physics and math books, but my job makes me travel a lot and it really sucks to prepare a course for students on a plane and discover that you need another book that you didn't really want to lug around for the long haul. At some point I basically looked up scanned copies of every single book I had (so yeah, a bit vague on the legality of it, but at least I did have the paper copies at the office) and could lug around only my laptop with hundreds of books that I could use at any given time.
And with regard to flicking between index and notes and any particular page on the book. Did you even watch the keynote about iBooks 2? That's made trivially easy considering that this is what most people would do. Any place you mark up will be by default added to notes index that you can access from anywhere and switching back and forth between current page and index is also trivial.
Oh and I'm so tired of all the Apple bashing for Foxconn suicides. You have to think of the scale. Foxconn employs ca hundred thousand people. The factories are kind of mini-cities. I'm giving Apple the benefit of the doubt here, but they do claim that taking the average of non-foxconn employees of about the same sample size in the vicinity in China and the employees the statistics are for the employees. They get benefits at the workplace that the average person doesn't AND their suicide rate is actually LOWER than the average for that population. Just a quick google gives that in U.S. the rate is 11 suicides per 100k and 120 suicide attempts per 100k. In China the average is ca 22-23 / 100k. So the Foxconn number is really below the average for China. Also, Apple's one of the first companies to publish the list of suppliers it's using. It's already creating waves on the stock market and they do put a huge concern on environment and publish a decent report on this. I'm not sure your average Android supplier does that...
So stop the bashing just because it's Apple and think about the real things for a while...
The average number of books required in three years of education (estimated lifetime of an iPad before the upgrade cycle is forced upon the user) is approx 40. An iPad is way more polluting than 40 books, especially if you factor in recharging power and defect replacements. I think the iPad packaging alone is equal to one textbook in terms of ecological footprint.
Ever tried to travel with 10 books? How'd it feel?
- Be sure that my textbook, while murdering some tree somewhere and not being 100% green and hippy, did not cause several factory workers to jump to their deaths, add to the toll of heavy metal pollution in east asian watercourses, or pad the coffers of Apple in preference to the Authors who sweated over the book. Odds are Apple will take a bigger cut than conventional publishers, because brand power means they can.
American college students kill themselves at 4 times the rate of Foxconn employees, who have suicide rate still well below the national average. Chinese students kill themselves at much lower rate than American students. I could be an ass and infer without any logic or basis in fact that the overpriced textbooks are at fault for this extremly high suicide rate in american college kids and spread that idiocy around just like you.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
I can carry an iPad with 200-300 text books loaded on to it.
I wouldn't want to put 200-300 text books into my back pack and try walking anywhere.
I can search through any of the 200-300 text books quickly and easily for any search term.
I wouldn't want to do that manually one book at a time to find all the references in those 200-300 text books.
See you can come up with straw man arguments for either side of this debate.
I'm not so sure. These are textbooks, remember: Thousand-page tomes like small telephone directories. Add in the savings for personal use of the iPad - movies downloaded rather than DVDs shipped, novels read as ebook - and it might be possible to break even.
One day we might achieve the fabled state of heirloom electronics, and then it'll be easy.
It's amazing how many people on here seem to have completely passed over that it's ePub with no DRM.
years from now Apple won't be remembered for the iMacs or iPods, but for successfully revolutionising education as we know it
Here's a better prediction: 20 years from now we'll all wonder why anyone ever thought Apple revolutionized anything. Old Slashdot users with those coveted low 8 digit UID's will talk about how people thought they were cool. (That is, in between bitching about how much Slashdot sucks now and was way better back when they started reading the site in 2022).
"Revolutionising education" Do you hear yourself? Look at what Apple is offering. Look at what has been on the market for years. Now, do you still think they've done something special?
Required reading for internet skeptics
"Environmentally friendly" is BS. I saw a documentary a few months ago, about the conditions that underage kids live and are forced to work, in Congo and other African countries, to mine needed compounds for the mobile/xPads companies. It's disgusting how big companies continue to ignore that problem, and to lie to customers about where they get their so needed stones...
...For "something completely different": I also like to write some side notes on the books I own. I like to highlight important parts that I will, most likely, be searching for again. Unless you can edit the content of the eBook and are allowed to make notes, highlights and the occasional devil horns and mustache, the whole experience is not yet attainable.
Also there should be a converter from the eBooks you might have already purchased for other platform. I HATE that every time some new gadget/format appears and replaces previous ones, you have to pay the same or even more for the same thing. In relation to vhs/dvd/br I understand because it had to be remastered, digitized, bla, bla, but with something as simple as a book? - There's no justification, it's just pure greed.
I was about to make similar comments. The oldest books in my collection are from 1941 and 1943, and it still work well without recharging. They're considerably older than I am. There are plenty older books still in use, but I don't use anything older because my field (RF engineering) is relatively young. Think about this timescale, Ipad fanboys. Seventy years is not so long. And we haven't even started to talk about eye-strain and LCDs yet...
Did I read that correctly? You seriously think you can get a degree by reading one textbook? It takes a little more than that. Fortunately, your university will have a large building somewhere on campus full of books (you might know the coffee bar). As a student, you can borrow these books, for free. You will find a great many texts, specializing on different parts of your course. Reading some them will greatly enhance your grades.
trees for paper are grown on tree farms. like any other crop. nobody chops rainforest for books.
Deforest. Transportation for logs. Pulp and paper mill. Effluent. Heavy acid tanks for breaking down wood particles. Lime kilns. Styrene fumes. Recycling chemicals for reuse, evaporate waste into air and or dump in river. Burning massive piles of oil-infused wood waste products. Send off pulp to paper mill for further processing. Transportation to paper mill. Continue process.
Apparently /. thinks paper magically appears from trees.
It's amazing how many people on here seem to have completely passed over that it's ePub with no DRM.
Wow! I didn't know that epub allowed such rich content!
And good catch on the DRM! This is in keeping with Apple's stance of NOT using DRM unless there is simply no other way to get "the industry" to go along with allowing certain content (like with movies on the iTunes Store).
....NOT THE STUDENT. So until the University recommends those e-books, which they won't, it don't mean squat.
So if they recommend you use "Algebra I" by McGraw Hill, they won't let you use the version from iBooks 2?
Fandroids hate facts.
It doesn't matter if the University recommends them or not prior to this announcement if I wanted to learn University Level Physics I had to spend $250 bucks on the textbook, now I can buy a comparable textbook from iBooks for $15.00 and receive information updates for the life of that edition.
Oh, so those ebooks come with free iPad? That's great! And here I thought we'd have to throw away 500-800$ before we could buy any of those $15 books, as they're unavailable on other platforms.
Funny you believe that "other platforms" are free.
Fandroids hate facts.
Yep, and if you were so stupid to buy an Android tablet
Hate to break it to you - but most Android tablets cost as much as an iPad. Unless you count unusable shit, which costs a little less.
Fandroids hate facts.
Physical textbooks lack portability, durability, accessibility, consistent quality, interactivity and searchability, and they're not environmentally friendly.
Really? Books lack durability? Drop your shiny new gadget from 100 feet and I'll drop my book. So which one is lacking durability? Not a fair test? Ok, drop your gadget from desk height onto a classroom floor 3 times and I'll drop my textbook.
Accessibility? As long as you can read the language printed in the book, you can read the book. I have books that are 100 years old. I can still read them. How many different file types out there from 10 or 20 years ago can no longer be read because the software to do so just doesn't exist any more? Hand someone a book. They immediately know how to use it. Hand someone the latest shiny new gadget for reading books.......then hand them the manual on how to use it.
Searchability? Flip to the back of your physical textbook. There's a thing there called an index.
Consistent quality? So digital textbooks will never contain any errors or omissions? Bullshit. Digital textbooks will suffer the same quality problems as physical textbooks.
Not environmentally friendly? I see. So the metal, plastic and silicon gadget that you buy a new one of every couple of years that is used to view the digital textbook is more environmentally friendly than all the textbooks I used in my 4 years of college?
Which means each book is used by 4 students, not one: 2800/4 = $700 per student.
--
JimFive
Please stop using the word theory when you mean hypothesis.
"Physical textbooks lack portability, durability, accessibility, consistent quality, interactivity and searchability, and they're not environmentally friendly." Poppycock! An e-reader, dropped once will break, unlike a book, making the durability and portability questionable. While the quality of an iPad, may be consistent, so are conventional books. As far as interactivity, a book requires you to physically manipulate a page to get more information, activating parts of your brain associated with learning. An e-reader requires you to stare at a screen that is as easy to ignore as any TV commercial. Searchability? That is called an index. If you don't know how to use one, you won't do much better with keywords. Finally, environmentally friendly? E-readers are made of non-renewable resources that must be mined, causing environmental destruction, toxic byproducts, and greenhouse gasses to power them. Books are made from trees, which unlike rare earth metals are renewable.
Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so- Zaphod beeblebrox
There is no IT cost in a fleet of iPads. The students buy and own them, and the university IT department has nothing to do with them. I'm not sure I buy your argument that iBooks will tax the iPads to the point you need to accelerate the iPad release cycle to run a book. And if you've ever taken a class that you didn't buy the book for, you know that it's easy to find a person in the class willing to do the work with you there, using their book and you help them out (or just copy the pages in question, there are a limited number of problem pages in a book, concentrated at the end of chapters and the like).
It seems more like you don't like the idea and are finding reasons against it, as the reasons you give seem weak, rather than having no opinion on the matter before having looked at it. It'd have been much cheaper for me to buy an iPad for 4 years for college just for books and throw it away after 4 years and not worry about hardware updates and such. Instead, I wasted thousands on books (even counting selling them back to stores or other students).
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Hi AC,
I clearly should have added "written on my Mac" to the bottom of that post then.
And don't get me wrong, I own an ebook reader and for some things, scientific papers included I think it's great. Still, having etextbooks just doesn't make up for being able to have multiple books open on my desk, not being tied to a platform, and being able to get books out of the library, a point I initially missed. My university, department, and research group all have great libraries, which could well die a death in the DRM laden ebook world. I can see that eventually pricing a lot of students out of the market. In reach of my desk at the moment I have ~£1500 worth of reference books, just about all from the library. There is no way that is sustainable in the Apple model of the education world, but it could happen if publishers all decide that ebooks are the future.
"As for padding Apple's coffers, their agency model of pricing is the same or LOWER than Amazon, and if you think big publishing houses are giving you a bigger cut as an author then you are deluded." That I can't put figures on but then odds are you can't either. But if you think that any multinational in the modern world, will even think twice about squeezing a captive audience as hard as it can then YOU are deluded. Reel them in with a good deal, then screw them once they are stuck. Happens everywhere, every time.
I will freely admit to having a grandstanding moment wrt to the whole Foxconn plant thing, but I still find the idea of labour camp esque factories abhorrent, and though sadly for the tech I essentially *need* to have, i.e a computer of some kind, mobile phone of some kind, I still do my best to find the least unethical manufacturer I can, (hollow laughter).
-FS-
Haven't you seen StarTrek TNG? They have multiple pads all over the place. Piles of them at times. Everyone needs one iPad for every class.
Learn to love Alaska