It's a specific implementation of an LCD; "In Plane Switching" gives a wider view angle than cheaper TFT (Thin Film Transistor) displays.
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Apple's January Media Event to Involve Digital Textbooks and Education?
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It's a specific implementation of an LCD; "In Plane Switching" gives a wider view angle than cheaper TFT (Thin Film Transistor) displays.
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I agree. I think the time for still pages with images and text needs to go. While the world has done great with such things, for so long, we have the technology to move forward with even richer forms of media that can both entertain and educate more effectively.
/philosophical diatribe
This comment reminds me of Steve Balmer's reaction to both the iPhone and the iPad... So dead wrong...
Eye strain, as a general rule is caused by two factors.
1) Uncomfortably low refresh rates with CRT displays.
2) Attempting to focus at something too close for too long a period of time.
A distant third factor is:
3) Attempting to focus through intense screen reflections
E-paper has absolutely no impact on either of the first two, and taking even a modicum of care positioning your screen will drastically reduce (or even eliminate) the third, even if you have the world's most reflective display. (The ubiquitous move to LCD displays has gone a *long* way toward eliminating eye strain in the work environment.)
That's the DX. $400 a pop, for a dedicated eReader device. Or you could add a hundred bucks and get an iPad with the Kindle app, and have a multi-purpose device that will give you access to digital textbooks as an added bonus.
Reminds me of this thread circa 2002. iPod? That will never work. 1000 songs on one device? Thats stupid. People like their physical CD collections. If Jobs thinks this will save Apple then he hasnt got a clue.
Wikipedia is woefully inadequate except for rudimentary understanding on a topic. I agree that it's a useful tool, but certainly shouldn't be used exclusively and for degree-level content in particular it simply couldn't. I graduated in the summer with a degree in law, and there's no way I could have replaced the nuanced and sophisticated comments in a detailed textbook with Wikipedia content.
Textbooks have a lot of added value over and above basic statements of fact, and a number of textbooks may be required for even one subject area. Wikipedia's aim to be an unbiased, concise encyclopaedia does not fit with this.
The key will be the price. Some people are getting hung up on the resale issue, but I'd like to point out that there are many subject areas where there is virtually no resale value, due to new editions being spewed out every year. I hope Apple and the publishers can strike an attractive arrangement.
If you lay down under the sun to study, you may have two issues:
1. You may end up with skin cancer,
2. You may end up with lower grades opposite to studying in the library,
This from personal experience...
I'm working 5 days a week for 8-10 hours and i can't remember the last time ihad this thing called eye strain.
Reading paper books also can cause it, so there is no real difference between say IPS LCD and e-ink.
More like it's two steps forward, two steps back, and a jump off to the right somewhere. While I don't agree with Nerdal's somewhat hyperbolic stance that LCD displays absolutely suck for reading books (I've read novels on my iPhone), I do think eInk is better for long term usage.
You have to admit, a color eInk display with the same response time as your usual IPS screens would be a beautiful thing to behold. Unfortunately, we're still a few years away from that.
To expand upon your analogy, saying eInk sucks would be like people back in the 90's saying LCD sucked compared to CRT because you had to look directly at it to see anything, and the response time was so slow, your mouse cursor would smear across the screen every time you moved it.
In case you can't tell, LCD screens have kinda improved dramatically since then. So will eInk.
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People voted on Amazon, and most voted with their wallets for the Fire, which as you know, isn't E-ink. Few are pining for E-ink.
What was the last textbook you used that didn't have images? Having just completed my degree, I can tell you that the typical textbook these days has *many* full-color images and diagrams in it to help illustrate various concepts. Color E-ink just isn't there yet, and the ability to potentially show animations will allow some (but not all) concepts to be illustrated much more clearly and concisely.
Kindle Fire is a tablet. That's why it's not e-ink.
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Actually, Color E-ink is out already: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/08/technology/08ink.html
Do to education what iPod did to music industry
Any one who thinks that an announcement about academic textbooks is no big deal hasn't bought or read a textbook in years.
In fall 2011, over 49.4 million students will attend public elementary and secondary schools. Of these, 34.9 million will be in prekindergarten through 8th grade and 14.5 million will be in grades 9 through 12. An additional 6.0 million students are expected to attend private schools. http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372
That's a huge market ready to be transformed.
This announcement is probably not the roll out of a product. But it might announce the architecture and that will allow people to create the products.
Textbooks are crap. Students hate them, teachers hate them, even the publishing industry hates them, but they are all locked in to as system that prevents innovation. Sound familiar?
Read the posts by students who have to use (and carry) textbooks. ePublishing in education is ripe to explode but very few people have a good product out there. Just making an etext out of a textbook doesn't do anything or solve any problems, but making it multimedia, searchable and interactive, include links to thousands of related articles, embed it with a moodle, or other on-line learning system, and you have a game changer.
Imagine an App store for education.
Any one who thinks that an announcement about academic textbooks is no big deal hasn't bought or read a textbook in years.
In fall 2011, over 49.4 million students will attend public elementary and secondary schools. Of these, 34.9 million will be in prekindergarten through 8th grade and 14.5 million will be in grades 9 through 12. An additional 6.0 million students are expected to attend private schools. http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372
That's a huge market ready to be transformed.
This announcement is probably not the roll out of a product. But it might announce the architecture and that will allow people to create the products.
Textbooks are crap. Students hate them, teachers hate them, even the publishing industry hates them, but they are all locked in to as system that prevents innovation. Sound familiar?
Read the posts by students who have to use (and carry) textbooks. ePublishing in education is ripe to explode but very few people have a good product out there. Just making an etext out of a textbook doesn't do anything or solve any problems, but making it multimedia, searchable and interactive, include links to thousands of related articles, embed it with a moodle, or other on-line learning system, and you have a game changer.
Imagine an App store for education.
8 downvotes. Cute. My point was, it's an entire event devoted to what's rumored to be only about this. I'm not downplaying how important it is to individuals such as yourself. I'm merely questioning devoting an event to it.
This is something I'd sooner expect to see thrown into the random topics beore a larger announcement.
Sorry to hear that you are a teacher.
Wiki-free-pedia is good as a starting point (when appropriate), not the all-point or end point.
Agree 100% Better interactivity is key. Enhanced 3d animations, voice input/feedback, models of practical examples, etc.. IMO, reading 40pg chapters can only get you so far. Besides, visual learning is much more effective than memorization. It's been proven time and again and yet our society has a particularly hard time accepting this. For some reason, the perception is that "adult" textbooks should include more text and less illustrations.
Ok, think about this: you are questioning the wisdom of the most valuable tech company in the world, with 80 billion dollars in the bank... Your questioning of this event reflect what mnany other companies do: questioning, and then when success strikes, copy like mad...
In your world;
readers are E-ink,
only readers are appropriate for etextbooks;
hence, all etextbooks will be on readers, and any tablet with etextbooks on them will explode into a million tiny fragments from incompatibility.
This has been the case for the past 30 years or so, first with the 'computer', then with the 'internet'. Schools somehow always find a way.
Sorry, I wasn't clear there. I wasn't saying that color e-ink doesn't exist, I was saying that it currently has too many down-sides (color quality tends toward pastels, refresh rate is *slow*, etc). It exists, but it's just not *there* yet.