Apple Nets 350K Textbook Downloads In 3 Days

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Apple Nets 350K Textbook Downloads In 3 Days

Posted by Soulskill on Monday January 23, 2012 @10:57AM from the but-what-do-we-leave-on-the-teacher's-desk dept.

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."

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Not to mention... by bhtooefr · 2012-01-23 11:00 · Score: 5, Insightful

...that you can resell a physical textbook, sometimes, and that cuts into textbook publisher profits.
1. Re:Not to mention... by twotacocombo · 2012-01-23 11:08 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Which is why they come out with a 'new' edition every couple of years, rendering the previous editions 'obsolete' and therefore worthless on the secondary market.
2. Re:Not to mention... by somersault · 2012-01-23 11:25 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Irregardless not of unwhat you maynotbe athinking, tis not unprecisely an acromulent word.
  
  --
  which is totally what she said
3. Re:Not to mention... by mjwx · 2012-01-23 20:26 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Physical textbooks lack portability, durability, accessibility, consistent quality, interactivity and searchability, and they're not environmentally friendly."
  Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha,
  
  Oh wait, their serious.
  
  Durability:
  I still have textbooks from 1997,
  My boss has a textbook from 1956 (borrowed from a university library, hate to imagine what 56 years of late fees look like).
  My texbook gets rained on, 95% chance I can use it again.
  I have a pile of broken Ipads out the back, they aren't even 3 years old yet.
  
  Accessibility.
  Ipads have about 6-7 hours of usable battery life (yes fanboys, this is what they get under real world conditions, especially after the battery has gone through a few charge (read: abuse) cycles).
  Books dont run out of batteries and become unusable.
  
  Not Enviromentally Friendly:
  Right, we all know paper can be recycled right. Then made into new paper.
  Sustainable forestry, try looking it up.
  Ipads make more pollution when being made, then they continue to produce pollution whilst being used (they use electricity, producing electricity creates pollution).
  
  The green angle has to be the most laughable out of all of these. Especially with Apples reputation.
  
  --
  Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Unofficial Source by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 11:01 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.
... and the EULA for the authoring tool... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 11:02 · Score: 5, Informative

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...
What platform? by markdavis · 2012-01-23 11:06 · Score: 5, Insightful

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).
Every student forced to buy Apple by grege1 · 2012-01-23 11:07 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.
What?! by ichthus · 2012-01-23 11:10 · Score: 5, Insightful

Physical textbooks lack portability, durability, accessibility, consistent quality, interactivity and searchability, and they're not environmentally friendly."
They lack... portability? Ok, if you have to carry 5 of them around, I see your point.
Durability? Like, when I spill coffee on mine? Or, drop it? Or, draw mustaches on the people in it?
Accessibility? .... ok, you win.
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
Environmentally friendly? by DogDude · 2012-01-23 11:15 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.
Speaking of not mentioning...oh hell, I will by RobinEggs · 2012-01-23 11:27 · Score: 5, Insightful

Irregardless isn't a word. Bonus points for using it while complaining about writing textbooks.
1. Re:Speaking of not mentioning...oh hell, I will by jc42 · 2012-01-23 14:19 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  That's because [ain't]'s also a word.
  It's an especially fun example of the futility of this sort of "peevery", since the peevers' campaign against "ain't" has had the effect of increasing its use.
  The original use of "ain't" many centuries ago was as the contraction for "am not". Now, you might wonder how "am"+"not" gives "ain't", and one answer is that it's the same process that turned "will"+"not" into "won't", which is every bit as silly. Human languages do silly things like that all the time. But the peevers don't seem to rant about "won't"; they only declared a pogrom against "ain't". And the result has been that the common speech in many dialects now also use "ain't" as the contraction for "is"+"not" and "are"+"not". It has become the general negative for all present tense forms of "be".
  But really, we should probably let the language peevers have their fun. At least they're not rounding up the ain't-sayers and burning them at the stake. They're just posting peeves in discussions like this, because to them the war against their favorite banned contraction is more important than, say, massive increases in availability and decreases in price for educational textboooks.
  Some people just have different value scales than the rest of us.
  I wonder if any of the newly-available electronic textbooks include linguistically valid histories or grammars of the English language?
  
  --
  Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
As a university professor, I've taken a look by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 11:39 · Score: 5, Interesting

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 :-)
1. Re:As a university professor, I've taken a look by whisper_jeff · 2012-01-23 14:41 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  ...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.
  No. You're not. You're misunderstanding the license restriction. The .ibooks file that iBooks Author creates can only be distributed through Apple. The book can be distributed any way you want. If you make a .ibooks file and sell it through Apple and garner some interest for a print version or a Kindle version or whatever, all you need to do is transfer the information to the new format and you can sell it.
  
  The restriction applies to the _file_ that iBooks Author creates, not the book that you write. And, given that Apple is the only company to publish software that can (currently) read a .ibooks file, that is a reasonable restriction.
  
  The key reason for the restriction is so that, should someone (such as a Cydia developer) create a program that can read .ibooks files, you cannot sell the .ibooks files created with iBooks Author on that store.