Apple Discontinuing iTunes U at the End of 2021

[MacRumors]

Apple will be discontinuing iTunes U at the end of 2021, according to a new support document shared by the company today.

Apple says that iTunes U tools have been replaced with next-generation apps for teachers and students, which include Classroom and Schoolwork, plus the Apple School Manager tool.

Apple has been hard at work building the next generation of apps for both teachers and students:

- Classroom turns your iPad into a powerful teaching assistant, helping teachers guide students through a lesson, see their progress, and keep them on track.

- Schoolwork helps teachers save time and maximize each student's potential by making it easy for teachers to share class materials, get students to a specific activity in an app, collaborate with students, and view student progress.

In addition to Classroom and Schoolwork, Apple also introduced Apple School Manager to enable IT Administrators to easily manage iPads, Macs, Apple TV, Apple IDs, books, and apps, while ensuring data is kept secure and private. Apps such as Pages, Numbers, Keynote, GarageBand, iMovie, Clips, and Swift Playgrounds have education-specific features that are used regularly by teachers and students.

With this in mind, Apple will discontinue iTunes U at the end of 2021. iTunes U will continue to be available to all existing customers through the 2020-2021 educational year.

According to Apple, iTunes U will be available for the 2020 to 2021 educational year, with support ending in late 2021. For public content publishers, until iTunes U is discontinued, new and existing content will be available publicly, but Apple suggests creators start exploring other options. Current iTunes U users can continue publishing content through Apple Podcasts or Apple Books.

Apple suggests private publishers transition over to the Schoolwork app, and Apple plans to add ClassKit support to iTunes U to make transitioning easy. Materials in iTunes U courses can be transitioned into Schoolwork Handouts, and iTunes U will also get an export feature so those who want to move to third-party apps or Learning Management Systems can do so.

iTunes U has been around since 2007, and was built in to the iTunes app to provide university lectures and learning content from U.S. colleges. iTunes U allowed educators to create courses with audio, media, handouts, ebooks, and more, with the iTunes U app available for users to access their collections on iPhone and iPad.

When Apple started to transition away from iTunes in 2017, iTunes U content was discontinued as a standalone feature and was transitioned into the Podcasts app and the Podcasts section of iTunes. Support for iTunes U has since been dwindling, with Apple instead focusing on new educational tools.

Article Link: Apple Discontinuing iTunes U at the End of 2021

 

[Mr. Awesome]

I know no one who used iTunes U.

 

[chrono1081]

Noooo! I loved iTunes U!!! Apple just sucked at advertising it.

 

[The Clark]

Truly the end of an era.

 

[Expos of 1969]

I know no one who used iTunes U.

And how does your insignificant sample matter?

 

[MacFather]

Deleted.

 

[farewelwilliams]

likely AR glass will revolutionize education

 

[Mr. Awesome]

And how does your insignificant sample matter?

I didn't say that it did. I was just stating my personal experience, but if you want to be a pessimist, go ahead.

 

[nattK]

iTunes U, iBooks Author, Apple photo books and letterpress cards...

Still better than the Google graveyard. That company is notorious for killing products

 

[CarlJ]

likely AR glass will revolutionize education

Uh, once they’re perfected, and in the hands of millions of students, sure.

 

[Expos of 1969]

likely AR glass will revolutionize education

likely AR glass will revolutionize education

Ok, take a deep breath Apple has lost the education market with its ham fisted approach so far. There is little evidence Apple has any clue what the education market needs, wants and can afford.

 

[Mac Rules]

Funnily enough I deleted the app last week after many years; apps from Coursea, Udacity, Datacamp, etc have taken over with much more course availability and newer, interactive tools.

It was a good app to kickstart the MOOC environment we have now but it has been past its due date for a while.

 

[69Mustang]

likely AR glass will revolutionize education

What makes you feel that way? To date, Apple's education initiatives have been less than stellar. And AR? I have serious doubts because education is, unfortunately, a bottom line game and AR really isn't a bottom line product category. It's fairly cost prohibitive.

 

[DisraeliGears]

Ok, take a deep breath Apple has lost the education market with its ham fisted approach so far. There is little evidence Apple has any clue what the education market needs, wants and can afford.

This certainly has elements of truth, but i would argue that nobody actually “has” or “had” the modern education market quite yet. Apple has been shifting hardware in that direction for a year or two now (lower entry cost iPads in particular), but iTunes U is legacy software at this point. With the uncertainty of the next school year, the digital shift we saw for the Spring will certainly continue, but I‘ve yet to see an all in one software solution for e-classrooms (mostly it’s an amalgamation of SeeSaw, Zoom, Google Classroom, etc.) The discontinuing of iTunes U might signal a significant upgrade of the newer apps mentioned at WWDC. Imagine Apple debuting a fully featured classroom app with virtual whiteboard, video conferencing, web browsing, and assignment submission all integrated.

On a personal note, I will be sad to see iTunes U go, I have fond memories of the Yale programs featured as well as Mythgard Academy. In a strange way, iTunes U acted as an entry point into podcasts for me.

 

[nutmac]

Apple Schoolworks, which is more similar to Google Classroom, is currently iPadOS only. It needs macOS and web versions. In addition, it needs to support public, non-private, classes.

 

[CanyonLizard]

iTunes U, iBooks Author, Apple photo books and letterpress cards...



View attachment 923065

...Aperture, Back to my Mac, Airport Routers...

 

[happyprozak]

iTunes U, iBooks Author, Apple photo books and letterpress cards...



View attachment 923065

I have always lamented that Apple's push into books never took off. It was a mistake to not release a dedicated e-ink reader and to allow Amazon to dominate the e-reader space through the 3rd party acquisitions of Audible and Comixology.

 

[BaltimoreMediaBlog]

Tim Cook is a been counter with no grasp of what the education market wants or needs.

 

[UltimaKilo]

I have always lamented that Apple's push into books never took off. It was a mistake to not release a dedicated e-ink reader and to allow Amazon to dominate the e-reader space through the 3rd party acquisitions of Audible and Comixology.

There’s just not much money in the e-ink market. I love my Kindle and have had one for a long time, but demand was never overwhelming, particularly among millennials.

It’s sad to see Apple discontinue iTunes U; I would have doubled down on it. It was great to follow courses on history from te known professors.

 

[mrbobdobolina]

iTunes U, if I understand it correctly, is a brilliant idea, but it was poorly marketed, poorly explained, and never mentioned by Apple. Seems like 2020 would have been a huge year for iTunes U and/or the team behind it, but with iTunes being rebranded and so many alternative services sprouting up so rapidly, I'm not surprised it's going away.

 

[DeepIn2U]

Noooo! I loved iTunes U!!! Apple just sucked at advertising it.

Nooooooo!!!!!

iTunes U is an INCREDIBLE resource for trusted, accurate, and dedicated information on things such as coding, ethics, legal, sciences and more.

This is self learning at self paced. The education apps and services Apple is pushing for has a monetary focus and thus leaves out a LOT of people (not just geographically, yet temporary or long term financially restricted).

Apple really needs to think this one over!

Apple has poorly advertised this and hasn't expanded this out of the USA where in S.Africa, China, and even India could have had an INCREDIBLE impact for localized or international learning, not to mention better chances to improve on trade relations!!

For the most part, the alternatives in Apps (for iOS/iPadOS, macOS) are a complete joke: Coursera I'm pointing at you.

 

[farewelwilliams]

Uh, once they’re perfected, and in the hands of millions of students, sure.

that is what i'm saying.
[automerge]1591815629[/automerge]

Ok, take a deep breath Apple has lost the education market with its ham fisted approach so far. There is little evidence Apple has any clue what the education market needs, wants and can afford.

There was little evidence Apple had any clue what enterprise users wanted in a phone, but now plenty of enterprise users use iPhone. You're sounding very much like what Steve Ballmer said: "$500 fully subsidized with a plan...doesn't appeal to business users because it doesn't have a keyboard which makes it not a very good e-mail machine". Look at iPhone in the enterprise environment today.

I know someone close with the LAUSD board and they're finding out that Chromebooks are turning out to not be a smart choice. The schools are constantly turning to their IT department to figure this stuff out, which in turn the IT department is asking for more funding to support this type of product. MacBooks/iPads are known to be extremely easy to maintain and IT departments (which I used to work in) definitely prefer them over PC/Chromebooks. Students as well are confused as to how to use them properly. Sub $100-$200 Chromebooks are turning out to be an expensive choice.

*deep breath*

 

[DeepIn2U]

iTunes U, iBooks Author, Apple photo books and letterpress cards...



View attachment 923065

Further agenda of Tim Cook making Apple 'Cooks Apple' (anyone else see the similarities of current vs former presidents here)? Books still exists though, Apple Photo Books now that was really nice. Anyone have those?

 

[farewelwilliams]

What makes you feel that way? To date, Apple's education initiates have been less than stellar. And AR? I have serious doubts because education is, unfortunately, a bottom line game and AR really isn't a bottom line product category. It's fairly cost prohibitive.

The past isn't a good indicator of what a breakthrough product can do. Apple sucked at audio but AirPods turned out fine. Apple worked on some trashy cell phone software before the iPhone came out.

Likely AR glass initially will be adopted by normal consumers while students will utilize $200-$300 tablets to view AR content. Then over time AR glass prices will drop.

 

[Analog Kid]

I'm well out of school, but have browsed through iTunes U for content and learned quite a bit. This is really sad. I don't understand the motivation.

This was a far better platform than YouTube for content like this. Merging it with Podcasts was the beginning of the end. It functioned better as a stand alone app. I'm guess Apple intended it to be picked up by more Universities in their day to day and are disappointed that didn't work out. Still, as a self learning tool it was fantastic.