Opinions about Apple's announcement today?

[CommonReader]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

For no identifiable reason? What about the fact that it is an easy way to e-books in the hands of students...and there are no other alternatives?

It locks the educational institution and the students into a money making scheme for Apple, forcing students to purchase Apple hardware.
What's to say against PDF? It displays properly across a large range of different platforms. Therefore it is no surprise that there is a huge supply of non-fiction books in PDF available (both legal and illegal).

[wannabee]

Originally Posted by CommonReader

It locks the educational institution and the students into a money making scheme for Apple, forcing students to purchase Apple hardware.

It might, but it also might not. For the time being keep your shirt on and see if it's as sinister as you believe. I think you're spending too much energy looking for demons when it's just a company trying to sell software.

What's to say against PDF? It displays properly across a large range of different platforms. Therefore it is no surprise that there is a huge supply of non-fiction books in PDF available (both legal and illegal).

Nothing except that it has been available for over a decade and hasn't caught on. If it were the answer it would already be being used.

[bhartman36]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

For no identifiable reason? What about the fact that it is an easy way to e-books in the hands of students...and there are no other alternatives?

I mean, I'm a little skeptical that technology will help much with education - but getting righteously indignant over this program when no one else has done anything like it seems misplaced.

Would students be better off if Apple did nothing? I don't think so.

Yes. Yes, they would.

This scheme means that, for authors that choose Apple's authoring software, there's no choice in format, very little choice in device, and no choice in where to get the books from. At least Amazon doesn't force users to use only Kindles. Apple's trying to get a lock-in on a sinister, almost handlebar-mustache scale of evil.

It's one thing to say, "Our software only publishes to our devices" (even though that's an amount of lock-in that I'm not entirely comfortable with). It's quite another to say, "If you use our software, any content you create is partially ours, and you can't sell it anywhere else." That's just ludicrous.

[Nexutix]

Here I found something:


http://9to5mac.com/2012/01/19/ibooks...s-controversy/

Isn’t this the equivalent of a car dealer trying to bind you to additional terms by sticking a contract in the glove compartment? By driving this car, you agree to get all your oil changes from Honda of Cupertino?… a contract of adhesion which I was not required to sign (or even indicate my agreement to by clicking) before installing the software.

[petermillard]

Originally Posted by bhartman36

This scheme means that, for authors that choose Apple's authoring software, there's no choice in format, very little choice in device, and no choice in where to get the books from.

None of which is hidden from the (potential) authors in advance; you pick your software and make your choice...

It's quite another to say, "If you use our software, any content you create is partially ours, and you can't sell it anywhere else." That's just ludicrous

And as I understand it they're not saying that - the content you create is always yours. What Apple are saying is that any iBooks you make and sell for profit using the free iBooks Author software must be sold through the iBooks store, where Apple wil take their usual 30%.

You can use iBooks Author to make books and give them away, no problem. You can use iBooks Author to make books and export the results as a PDF (albeit without all the bells and whistles interactivity, apparently) no problem.

At the risk of labouring the point, this free software is not called eBook Author, or TextBook Author, or ePub Author; it's called iBooks Author. If you want to make a multi-media-rich ebook for sale outside of the iBooks Store, then this isn't the free software for you - you need to be using something else.

[elcreative]

Originally Posted by petermillard

None of which is hidden from the (potential) authors in advance; you pick your software and make your choice...


And as I understand it they're not saying that - the content you create is always yours. What Apple are saying is that any iBooks you make and sell for profit using the free iBooks Author software must sold through the iBooks store, where Apple wil take their usual 30%.

You can use iBooks Author to make books and give them away, no problem. You can use iBooks Author to make books and export the results as a PDF (albeit without all the bells and whistles interactivity, apparently) no problem.

At the risk of labouring the point, this free software is not called eBook Author, or TextBook Author, or ePub Author; it's called iBooks Author. If you want to make a multi-media-rich ebook for sale outside of the iBooks Store, then this isn't the free software for you - you need to be using something else.

Tut tut, you're trying to let facts get in the way of trad Apple bashing... get ready for the fallout...

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by bhartman36

Yes. Yes, they would.

And I thought it was a rhetorical question.

But apparently some people would rather deprive schoolkids of textbooks than allow them to have textbooks on a platform they dislike.

Wonderful.

This scheme means that, for authors that choose Apple's authoring software, there's no choice in format, very little choice in device, and no choice in where to get the books from.

Well, it is authoring software designed to create iBooks. Not e-books. Which are only available for iDevices now.

At least Amazon doesn't force users to use only Kindles.

True. You can also use Kindle Apps. Big difference.

Apple's trying to get a lock-in on a sinister, almost handlebar-mustache scale of evil.

Yes, Snidely Whiplash was always writing textbooks for children before tying the woman to the railroad tracks.

Second - "evil?" Seriously "evil?" I don't think you know what the word means.

It's one thing to say, "Our software only publishes to our devices" (even though that's an amount of lock-in that I'm not entirely comfortable with). It's quite another to say, "If you use our software, any content you create is partially ours, and you can't sell it anywhere else." That's just ludicrous.

Here's a free product you can use to create iBooks. If you use the program to create free iBooks, you can distribute it however you want. If you are going to charge for the iBook, you need to sell the book through iTunes.

Sorry, that just doesn't meet the test of evil. If authors don't want to use the product, they're free not to. Just as they would be free to not use a product that cost too much. (And it's not evil to charge for software, either).

It's not like you are required to use this program to write an iBook...and it's not even like iBooks are a significant part of the market. But I don't think that the conditions are particularly evil.

(I may be wrong, but I also don't think that the program will be very successful...while I think that e-textbooks will (eventually) be the future, I don't think that the interactive part of the textbooks is much more than a gimmick. (It's a little more than a gimmick, but not a lot more.) It's cool that you can see a DNA strand rotate...but when it comes down to what HS kids learn about DNA in biology, the rotation won't cause them to actually learn any more than they would from a color picture.

Also, mac only is too limiting.

A lot of people are rightfully concerned that Apple is trying to lock schools into their own platform by enticing them with very appealing goodies. The strategy is simple: once you are vested in a platform it becomes very expensive and very difficult to move to another vendor. Better yet, if publishers have everything vested in a platform, other competing platforms will be locked out of the market. Incidentally, this criticism isn't targeted solely at Apple. A lot of vendors pursue it (Amazon, IBM, Microsoft all come to mind). It is probably safe to say that developing a platform and opening it up to the competition is an exception these days (Adobe's PDF/PS, Phillips' CD, Sun's Java come to mind).

[Elfwreck]

I pontificated about this at length, elsewhere: Apple is not going to do what it would take to make etextbooks really useful, and will fall into the same traps that all the other attempts did.

They won't make them accessible to students with disabilities, which will make them ineligible for required public school use. They won't add the software features that are needed to make e-textbooks actually *better* than physical ones, rather than a trade-off of weight-vs-usability. And they won't be getting content from the current publishers who are fighting hard to hold onto their dwindling hardcover market.

So they'll have a swarm of self-published and tiny-indie-press textbooks, some of which will be awesome--but you won't have any way of knowing which those are, because they can only be sold for the iPad, so only iBooks buyers will review them. And they'll only sell to people who can afford a $500+ piece of delicate hardware in their school supplies.

This is not an attempt to improve the academic world & bring it into the digital era; it's an attempt to get lucrative hardware contracts with schools that aren't aware what they're buying and what it won't do.

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

This is not an attempt to improve the academic world & bring it into the digital era; it's an attempt to get lucrative hardware contracts with schools that aren't aware what they're buying and what it won't do.

It's also my understanding that the books will be tied to individual iPads, which means that (a) students can't buy/bring their own (else the school would lose the book permanently when they graduated) and (b) if an iPad is damaged, it has to be replaced at great expense.

ETA: S/b "tied to individual accounts"

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

It's also my understanding that the books will be tied to individual iPads, which means that (a) students can't buy/bring their own (else the school would lose the book permanently when they graduated) and (b) if an iPad is damaged, the book license is lost.

Of course they'll all be DRM'd! How else could publishers of $15 textbooks *possibly* make money? And why would anyone want to print sections of a textbook, or copy & paste the text into a report, or read sections of it on an e-ink screen instead?

You're just trying to hold back The Future.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Of course they'll all be DRM'd! How else could publishers of $15 textbooks *possibly* make money? And why would anyone want to print sections of a textbook, or copy & paste the text into a report, or read sections of it on an e-ink screen instead?

Current iBooks are DRM'd, but they are not linked to specific hardware.
I'd like to see a source for the latter claim.

[heySkippy]

DRM ties the book to the iTunes account, not to a device.

[elcreative]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

Current iBooks are DRM'd, but they are not linked to specific hardware.
I'd like to see a source for the latter claim.

The source is currently anarmadoll's "understanding" as above...

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

It's also my understanding that the books will be tied to individual iPads, which means that (a) students can't buy/bring their own (else the school would lose the book permanently when they graduated) and (b) if an iPad is damaged, the book license is lost.

Why do you believe that? The "Fairplay" DRM system that iBooks uses ties a book to an iTunes account, not to a specific iPad. I'd be very surprised if Apple changed their DRM system after so many years.