LOL.
You realise that every generation says that and - undoubtedly - I'll say it about "kids these days" when I'm older too
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CourseSmart Looks Ahead at eTextbooks on Apple's Tablet
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LOL.
You realise that every generation says that and - undoubtedly - I'll say it about "kids these days" when I'm older too
How did we live before the yellow highlighter? The ease of looking up a word by tapping and other conveniences will outweigh any inconvenience of adjustment.
You could probably scribble notes and take a pic to save it....whatever you have now will be available later - it may take a while to mature, but it will happen, saving shoulders and trees and fuel to ship etc....
Ray
"...so you can look at your comments even after your book expires..."
I remember photocopying (ask your parents) at least one textbook in 1990.
Now all i need to do is screengrab.....
I remember photocopying (ask your parents) at least one textbook in 1990.
Now all i need to do is screengrab.....
Can't argue with the environmental impact. Definitely important. But I think you should be asking "How did we live before the pencil?" You'd save a lot of trees if students could use this software/device instead of a pad of paper.
The real issue here is battery life, and Steve Jobs will surely skimp on the battery size to contort the device to a desirable format. That is where you get a huge benefit from electronic ink in current e-readers.
This is especially true for textbooks, where ... oops, you suddenly can't do your in-class assignment after the battery died because you were using it in class all day.
This is especially true for textbooks, where ... oops, you suddenly can't do your in-class assignment after the battery died because you were using it in class all day.
Real World Battery Life?
If actual battery life is under 5 hours, there had better be an aux power input, and there would be a significant secondary battery market. However, I'd guess that SJ will insist on 6-7 hours of real-world battery life.
Ray
If actual battery life is under 5 hours, there had better be an aux power input, and there would be a significant secondary battery market. However, I'd guess that SJ will insist on 6-7 hours of real-world battery life.
Ray
You are whining about the absence of functionality that will almost certainly be included. We can do all of these things now in many e-booksif they are in PDF format and if we have Adobe Acrobat Pro installed. A tablet computer would make this functionality much more intuitive. To lament its absence at this stage of the game is like being frightened of your own ghost story.
But I won't single you out. There is a lot of complete and utter nonsense posted here. College students today often wear nicer clothes, drive fancier cars, and live in nicer places than their professors. In my state and at public and private universities across this country is an amenities race to build the most luxurious student housing. Who pays for this? Parents pay for it in a lot of cases. However, the students themselves pay for it in a remarkably large number of cases. Through loans, scholarships, and off-campus jobs, they acquire enough money to support themselves in the style to which they have become accustomed.
The Apple electronic slate is now being reported as fact by such media as the Wall Street Journal and CNBC. We have only the slimmest clues what it will be, but there can be little doubt that itwhatever it may beis coming.
A sober assessment of the device will show that it will cause some unpleasant disruptions. In the main, it will be a dramatic leap forward. Having read more than 1000 posts on the subject, I recall none predicting that the slate will serve as a customer delivery system as opposed to a reception system. As an incoming freshman, walk into your college's bookstore, swipe your ID, and receive a new slate with all of the current semester's books and reading materials preloaded. The books need never be out of print and need never be out of stock. The student would pay for the slate as part of his fees. For universities with large enrollments of economically deprived students, there might be grants available to defray the cost.
A similar system would be a boon to the public schools. Public schools provide textbooks for their students. Paper textbooks need to be replaced because they wear out. Electronic textbooks do not wear out. The only reason to replace them is to accommodate new curricula. The savings to the taxpayers would be second only to the benefits to the children.
When Apple releases its new slate, we will create a new world. It will be a better place.
Agreed.
The issue with textbook publishing is that a student is told to buy a certain book and rarely can use an alternative. If you need a specific book for, say, science, a specific book will have to be purchased -- and that publisher has a complete monopoly. CourseSmart, therefore, will be limited in the discount it will be able to offer because the textbook publisher will force the price.
On the other hand, if you need to buy The Canterbury Tales for an English Lit class, you will be able to get a very low prices (or free) option for that.
I think there is a better chance that the iTunes model that works for music will work for books in areas like fiction and not textbooks. In the area of fiction there may be monopolies but the consumer may decide to choose one author over the other if the price difference is great.
The other thing that will determine whether books on mobile media will succeed is whether the user experience is not just the same as print, but better. Many people prefer their music on their phone or iPod now because of portability, etc.
If a tablet offers not just the same experience, but an enhanced experience, then that might just sway users to go with the tablet. Take for instance a history book: a book about WWII designed for the tablet might contain video of Pearl Harbor, audio of great speeches, etc. A cook book could contain not only recipes, but cooking demonstration videos, plus direct links to online ingredient retailers for easy purchasing of hard to find items. A separate option might give the buyer the audiobook version, only this time with graphics.
As usual, my take from the perspective of the media business here.
Which if someone used as their primary device all day, would still not be long enough.
Did you walk uphill both ways to school in the snow?
This generational bitching happens in every generation dating back to the dawn of man. "You whippersnappers have it so good. My life sucked. Blah Blah." While kids nowadays have a lot more resources than previous generations, one cannot neglect the fact that they face different/more pressures that older people never had to deal with. Each generation has its pluses and its minuses. Different doesn't equal better.
Did you walk uphill both ways to school in the snow?
This sort of generational equivocating is just a sad and intellectually bankrupt knee jerk reaction that happens in every generation dating back to the dawn of man. I know, I'm that old.
I'm wondering...
I'm wondering if this is the device Martha Stewart was referring to on Twitter when she asked her followers if they would read magazines in a highly interactive, rich color "reader" NOT the Kindle? Are major media companies getting a test run or something? She asked this back on Dec. 15th.
Nothing directly pointing to Apple's rumored tablet, really, but I thought, hey, wait, full color... tablet... reader...very interactive... where else would this come from if not from Apple?
Hey, 46% of her followers want it for sure!
I'm wondering if this is the device Martha Stewart was referring to on Twitter when she asked her followers if they would read magazines in a highly interactive, rich color "reader" NOT the Kindle? Are major media companies getting a test run or something? She asked this back on Dec. 15th.
Nothing directly pointing to Apple's rumored tablet, really, but I thought, hey, wait, full color... tablet... reader...very interactive... where else would this come from if not from Apple?
Hey, 46% of her followers want it for sure!
It's a lazy concept by the textbook publishers themselves, what are you frigging complaining about? This isn't even real, they are not even marketing firms.
Just relax and wait till real software companies develop the right apps. The best thing about the App store is that there are not just one choice for what you want to do on a tablet. The market will decide the best tools. Look at Stanza, Kindle for iPhone, Classics, and so many others. There will be students developing their own application to meet their needs and sell it.
If you disagree on that this is the wrong way, then develop your own application to fit how a textbook should work on the tablet.
Umm, I don't know about you, but in my 4 years of college, never had a room without power outlets. People actually bought their own power surge protectors with 6-12 outlets to make it easy for everybody to plug in since we had long ass tables with outlet on one end. It was funny seeing one of my professor bring in one as well as a wifi router to make the wifi faster in the room by using the ethernet port instead the floor's APs.
Agreed on the benefits and what can come out of the new "possible" slate revolutions but I seriously doubt Apple will be the remaining player in the end. Apple will be the seeder but they won't be the market, they are going to seed the next revolution just like they seeded the iPod/iTunes, iPhone/The Mobile Apps and so on. But don't let the hype fool anybody here, this isn't a sure thing, the slate or tablet or whatever can fail utterly.
Look at the iTunes U and the opensource textbooks that the colleges around the world are starting to get into. The textbook industry will not be the same very soon, the open source, cloud sourcing, wikipedia type of engineering tools in the near future will allow the academic world to publish free or cheap textbooks themselves for their students. They rather make money off their own students than to pay publishers for discounts/bulk orders or whatever.
The History Of The End Of Paper Textbooks Vol. 1
It is over for the publishers - writers, artists, and software developers will rule this thing.
It is over for the publishers - writers, artists, and software developers will rule this thing.
I have yet to meet a kindle owner.
Not to say its a bad device, I've just not bumped into anyone who has one.
OK Kool-Aid boy, I was referring to the software being demonstrated, not the Apple tablet. This posting was about an e-textbook program, not the Apple tablet. Go ahead and watch it again - there's no Apple tablet in the video. I won't single you out for being OT.
Wow, textbook publishers are going to be very generous and take a whole lot less money then? Come to think of it, probably not. If you didn't catch it in the video, the textbooks (in this software) "expire". You don't get any money from reselling it (for those that have to buy it), your older siblings can't pass it down to you, charities can't donate them to kids in need, and publishers have absolutely no incentive to make them cheaper - its a government contract. New editions of electronic textbooks will come out more frequently, and you better bet the publishers will charge for each and every revision. Keep living in that dreamworld where altruistic publishers can't wait to make less money with their new product.
Seriously WTF?
This was about a software demonstration of e-textbooks. There's no Apple tablet in that demo. Unless you think this "lazy concept by textbook publishers" has Steve's OK to demonstrate software running on the Apple tablet. More than likely they're happy with the attention they're getting from people who think they're seeing something Apple, whereas I, and many other posters, are commenting about the actual article about e-textbooks.
That's a direct quote from the president of the Coursesmart. Seems to me, he is focusing on the hardware, not the software.
Would you like cheese with that whine?
Who said that the textbook publishers would voluntarily take less money? To the contrary, I would expect them to make more money. This does not mean that their prices to the students or school boards or whoever purchases the books would not be less. I think that we can all agree that that adoption of e-books will kill the used book market. With the publisher's selling every copy used, it can sell each copy for less.
Electronic books have other advantages for the publisherand the customer. Every edition remains available. No title will ever go out of print. The variable costs associated with printing, binding, storage, and transportation are virtually eliminated. Some of the cost reduction can be passed on to the customer.
Don't think that these variable costs are inconsequential. They have motivated massive consolidation in the textbook publishing industry. With these costs gone, new players can enter the market and place additional downward pressure on prices.
The expiration of books is an issue with you. It is the considered opinion of my colleagues and I that students should keep their textbooks and use them to start and build their libraries. Suffice it to say, this cannot be done using ebooks with expiration dates. To the extent that ebook expiration is a problem, it can be resolved through negotiation between the universities and the epublishers. Or you can whine....
Whine on Silver Moon.
First, almost every school offers labs in which to write that odd essay or presentation. Second, you're assuming the student will pay out of pocket for the tablet. Not true. Since it's part of their textbook purchase, it will be covered by their student loans. I wouldn't be surprised if college bookstores started selling them even if they sell no other computer hardware.
Note that if your college/university requires you to purchase a computer (or a tablet to read your assigned texts), said machine's cost is included in your total cost of education figure and thus in your loan total. Cars, however, are not part of the total cost of education as calculated by financial aid officers.
Yes, students will go into more debt to purchase these devices -- but that debt is amortized out over the life of the student loan. And even at $1000, the cost of the tablet would be minimal compared to the total cost of tuition, room, and board for four years (about $136,000 at my institution -- and that's before we figure in text prices).
The texts I assign aren't part of this consortium (yet), but I foresee the day when the publishers are going to fully embrace this model -- and only this model. They get profits only off the first sale of any textbook, hence the almost constant issuance of new editions with little if any revision between them. It's a nasty cycle -- as text prices rise, students are more likely to buy used books but that in turn only drives publishers to charge even more and issue more frequent editions which in turn expands the desire for used books. Time-limited purchases are one way out of this cycle. And, yes, that's a shame -- my calculus and thermo- and fluid dynamics texts from my undergrad days two and a half decades ago still sit on the shelf near my econ and world history survey texts from that era.
CourseSmart Looks Ahead at eTextbooks on Apple's Tablet
I would buy used at GreenTextbooks.com - Saving the Planet One Textbook at a Time
GreenTextbooks.com is your online leader for finding used textbooks, DVDs, CDs. Buying used textbooks not only Saves You Money, it also Helps the Environment.
With GreenTextbooks.com you're not only saving trees, you are saving some green.
http://www.GreenTextbooks.com
I would buy used at GreenTextbooks.com - Saving the Planet One Textbook at a Time
GreenTextbooks.com is your online leader for finding used textbooks, DVDs, CDs. Buying used textbooks not only Saves You Money, it also Helps the Environment.
With GreenTextbooks.com you're not only saving trees, you are saving some green.
http://www.GreenTextbooks.com
