This has happened last year at a faculty at our University (in Australia), except the faculty PAID for all of the iPads, we just had to pay for our e-textbooks...
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple's January Event to Focus on Publishing and eBooks
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
This has happened last year at a faculty at our University (in Australia), except the faculty PAID for all of the iPads, we just had to pay for our e-textbooks...
The publishers decide the prices, not apple. On the other hand, amazon decide the prices in their books, so thats why they are cheap. And since apple take 30%, the publishers want their dough
A lot of colleges and universities in the USA give laptops to all incoming freshmen. (I'm sure it's included in your tuition... but whatever)
I guess they want every student to have a computer... even though many students barely use their laptop outside of Facebook. Maybe for the odd term paper here or there.
And then there's the support cost... paying the IT department to keep all those laptops running. I can't tell you how many of my friends got a virus or something, and they had to turn in their laptop for a few days while it got fixed. A school with 20,000 students... and those problems begin to add up.
The iPad solves a lot of those problems... plus you can easily read your textbooks on it.
I think it's a cool idea.
Seriously? Your reason for not using eBooks is because of the prospect of the device failing? I think I have enough trust in Apple to know that my iPad won't **** up every time I try to use it. And the battery? Do what people already do when they take their laptops to class and 1) charge it beforehand or 2) bring a charger. Not that difficult.
And you're questioning my strength as the reason why I don't want to carry around books? Have you considered that carrying all my "textbooks" on a small iPad is just more convenient?
Why don't we throw our iPhones away because they might run out of battery the next time we need to make a call...because landlines never run out...
Lmaoooo!
I think it's great, I loaded all but one of my last textbooks for this semester..& it's mince having all the resources right at my fingertips
10 Hour battery + textbook on iBookstore = Very light schoolbag
It's rather a very expensive schoolbag that only wealthy parents can afford. It's certainly not for the majority of this world's population.
Unless you can sell something like an iPad for educational purposes for under 20 bucks and eBooks become generally available for 99 cents, this technology is not really revolutionizing anything for normal people - it will only transfer power from old technology content sellers to new technology content sellers.
Apple certainly is NOT the company that will bring that revolution to the under and middle class. They certainly have the financial and technological power to do it, but after all, they're still just another greedy American corporation, so I don't expect anything altruistic or philanthropic from them. Maybe, with some luck, we will see the OLPC project shape-shifting itself into an OPPC (One Pad Per Child) project. Until then, tablets will remain toys for higher-income earners.
It will be interesting to see if this is another game changer or if it is just similar to that of iAd and how that turned out.
Boy you're smart. You should make this your signature for when it actually comes true.
----------
"text"book what a silly english word. Every book has text
You've never heard of picturebooks? :/
----------
Really.
If you ever calculated the amount of money a student spends on Textbooks in their current form, adding the cost of an iPad suddenly doesn't sound that bad any more. Many student spend several 100 dollars or euros on textbooks every semester .. textbooks that often stay at home, because they are incredibly heavy and thus less useful.
Studying is expensive, textbooks are only one part of this experience.
Plus, nobody is claiming altruistic motives for Apple behind this. Revolutionizing the market will earn them a ton of money (see iPod, iPhone, iPad ..).
T.
I've found some books that I can read on my iMac. I love the experience except that my legs go to sleep with that big 27" monster in my lap.
That sounds really sweet. Great for students. Whatever Apple does, I'm betting that it will be a twist in how things have gone before.
That's gotta be in the works as iBooks needs to be as device independent as anything that the iCloud would sync with.
As a college student, I have to say, unless the pricing is SUPER competitive, as in books are 50% less than I can purchase used, I'm gonna stick with paper. Why? Resale value. Can't resell an e-book too easily, now, can I?
What if you could re-sell your e-book like any printed book? You'd be turning over your access to the book to someone else to complete the sale. Like moving it from your iCloud to someone else's iCloud account.
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)
I don't want my textbooks on my iPad...I mean, it would be a nice option; however, I don't trust technology enough. It would suck if I was in the middle of an open book test and my iPad crashes! Ugh.
I don't want my textbooks on my iPad...I mean, it would be a nice option; however, I don't trust technology enough. It would suck if I was in the middle of an open book test and my iPad crashes! Ugh.
Excuse me, but doesn't Apple make two events yearly? One in January and one in June? What happened to the one in January? No more? Or is this it, the one about publishing?
Usually by this time of year there would be a ton of rumors about upcoming products and where the event will be.
Usually by this time of year there would be a ton of rumors about upcoming products and where the event will be.
When I was 8-till-6-ing the library during my University days, part of the value text books offered for research was that you had a nice big pile of books and you could have several open in front of you, as well as being able to flick to bookmarks/pages easily enough.
Viewing a 'textbook' on an iPad may be revolutionary from a technological standpoint, but I can't see it being any more convenient when you have to constantly leave a book and enter a new one on the App. In addition, the books have no re-sale value, you have to purchase a £400 device and you're stuck if the device fails on you or you lose it.
Plus, you can't draw dirty pictures and graffiti about how your lecturer is a ***-head!
Viewing a 'textbook' on an iPad may be revolutionary from a technological standpoint, but I can't see it being any more convenient when you have to constantly leave a book and enter a new one on the App. In addition, the books have no re-sale value, you have to purchase a £400 device and you're stuck if the device fails on you or you lose it.
Plus, you can't draw dirty pictures and graffiti about how your lecturer is a ***-head!
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)
Remember when Apple was nearly bankrupt?
wikus said:
Remember when Apple was nearly bankrupt?
Funny how that works.
Since Apple stopped focusing exclusively on the Mac and OSX. the Mac and OSX are better, less expensive and are selling in higher volumes than ever before.
How can that be?
Hint: $80 B in cash generated primarily from mobile products.
Now that wasn't so hard to figure out was it?
Do you realize how much kids in college are paying for books these days?
My sons spend hundreds of dollars for just a few books. They count themselves very lucky if they can find one or two used books.
It is not like the old days.
iBooks for Windows, Mac, Android, any web browser. That is what I like about the Kindle reader in that it doesn't care what you use.
So you assume that just a few weeks after an Apple announcement the publishers would make all the textbooks that you need available for the iPad? Seriously?