I love how Apple negotiating with a book company is presumed to mean that they are producing a kindle competitor. The tablet has been rumored since the 1990s... its quite possible that the device for reading these books will be iPhones/iPod Touches and Macintoshes!
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HarperCollins Negotiating With Apple Over e-Books on New Tablet Device?
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Chupa Chupa
macrumors G5
Sure, anything is possible, but likely? No. Reading a book on an iPod/iPhone or computer is a skill set only a small percentage of the population possess. Maybe you are one of these lucky people, but the vast public are not blessed with eyes capable of reading long term on a backlit LCD screen.
There are Kindle apps for the PC, Mac, and iPhone, but those compliment the Kindle, the primary intended hardware for reading the downloaded book.
Amazon hasn't gotten the price down. Amazon is the reason ebook prices are high. Amazon takes %50 of the revenue for selling a book. For smaller publishers they take more, %65 or even more.
This is why ebooks are more expensive than printed ones, even though the distribution costs should be cheaper-- the actual distribution costs are actually higher. Amazon is very greedy.
So, do you think Apple is going to release a $1,000 tablet with a black and white e-ink screen for "readability" that takes a second to refresh? Or do you think they're going to release it with some cutting edge OLED screen that is full color and can be refreshed fast, but isn't being manufactured in sizes larger than 4" diagonal and can't be read outdoors?
Just on the subject of e-books I'll be interested to see whether Apple can be as innovative with them as they have been with other content.
Personally speaking, I'm convinced that e-books will remain in the doldrums until something radical is done - eg how about a digital copy free when you buy the hardback, or downloads at paperback prices when the hardback is published.
I think the book buying public still yearn for something tangible on their shelves. Whilst I'd love to have e-books (and I read a lot and bought around 60 books in 2009) I cant accept them at their current prices.
Personally speaking, I'm convinced that e-books will remain in the doldrums until something radical is done - eg how about a digital copy free when you buy the hardback, or downloads at paperback prices when the hardback is published.
I think the book buying public still yearn for something tangible on their shelves. Whilst I'd love to have e-books (and I read a lot and bought around 60 books in 2009) I cant accept them at their current prices.
QEII Student IT
macrumors regular
I agree, I do IT work at a high school (profile name might give that away) where money is tight. A keyboard, mouse, screen, drawing tool and textbook in one is miles better than any MacBook. From an education point of view at least.
If you're right - and I hope you are - then that could herald the end of the publishing system as we know it. Just as some podcasts are just as good and have as many viewers as mainstream tv shows and just as some blogs have as many or more readers than newspaper columns, we might see self-produced books (especially textbooks) gaining a foothold and replacing some that are published by a big media corp.
Some of the functionality you mention might even be covered by an expected revamped iDVD-like app. Authoring DVDs, virtual LPs, and interactive books could be a similar and very intuitive process. Just choose a template, drag in text and images - done. The same way you do photobooks in iPhoto, flyers in Pages, birthday invitations in Mail.
Chupa Chupa
macrumors G5
I don't think the tablet is going to be $1,000, but I do think it will have to have a hybrid screen similar to the Qi3 screen if its going to be sold as having a legit e-reader function. And again, negotiating with publishers for use on anything but a tablet makes no business sense.
talkingnewmedia
macrumors regular
I know that many here would love Apple to bring something to the textbook market that would drive down prices for students but don't get your hopes up. Textbooks are the least competitive part of the book publishing business. Even though there are a number of publishers, each company holds a virtual monopoly in its area. That's why textbooks are ridiculously priced.
Any real innovation in the area of book publishing (and in newspapers and magazines, as well) will come where the competition is the most intense. Fiction is the best example: publishers hold monopolies on an individual book, maybe even an individual author, but not a whole category. A reader has choice. In textbooks there is no such thing as choice, if you need a particular book for your chemistry class you MUST get that book. The publisher will gouge you whether you want it in print or in e-book form. (That's why the big publishers love the mega-hit books, they are as close as they ever come to have a monopoly in the fiction category.)
That's why HarperCollins makes a good choice for Apple to work with. McGraw-Hill, Pearson, Wiley would not be as interested in new models. (Disclosure: I used to work for McGraw-Hill.)
What I want to see next week is not only a great tablet, but a demonstration of its use in e-publishing that is more than just a flip book, more than just fancy page turning. I would think Jobs could demonstrate an issue of a magazine like Wired that was specially designed for the tablet (there has been rumors that the Condé Nast magazine has been working with Apple since last fall). The demonstration would not only show the magazine like it appears in print, but also in a new layout (you can see several videos of magazine demos on my YouTube channel - the Bonnier one seems to capture the spirit of innovation the best), complete with embedded video and links, new content, the ability to link to and purchase advertised items right from the page, etc.
Any real innovation in the area of book publishing (and in newspapers and magazines, as well) will come where the competition is the most intense. Fiction is the best example: publishers hold monopolies on an individual book, maybe even an individual author, but not a whole category. A reader has choice. In textbooks there is no such thing as choice, if you need a particular book for your chemistry class you MUST get that book. The publisher will gouge you whether you want it in print or in e-book form. (That's why the big publishers love the mega-hit books, they are as close as they ever come to have a monopoly in the fiction category.)
That's why HarperCollins makes a good choice for Apple to work with. McGraw-Hill, Pearson, Wiley would not be as interested in new models. (Disclosure: I used to work for McGraw-Hill.)
What I want to see next week is not only a great tablet, but a demonstration of its use in e-publishing that is more than just a flip book, more than just fancy page turning. I would think Jobs could demonstrate an issue of a magazine like Wired that was specially designed for the tablet (there has been rumors that the Condé Nast magazine has been working with Apple since last fall). The demonstration would not only show the magazine like it appears in print, but also in a new layout (you can see several videos of magazine demos on my YouTube channel - the Bonnier one seems to capture the spirit of innovation the best), complete with embedded video and links, new content, the ability to link to and purchase advertised items right from the page, etc.
Nice heads up. The Bonnier Mag + concept is great. Looks very well thought out, I have to say with Apple-esque simplicity.
If Apple build this with a framework app I'll buy one.
That could also confirm the 'UI learning curve' that has been discussed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAZCr6canvw
This does have the potential to drive down text book prices in the same way that the app store has cheap programs
If its opened up to book writers as easily as it is to app writers. There are 100's of thousands of teachers and lecturers who produce materials, worksheets powerpoints and revision guides, for free atm. If they are allowed to electronically publish this material via itunes for a few or a few tens of dollars, then the flood gates open.
The large corporations will be forced to compete and text book prices will drop.
This could be a game changer.
Regards
John.
cmaier
Suspended
Except that professors get kickbacks and perks from the textbook companies in order to select the published textbooks, and a bunch of cheap textbooks are worthless if they are not what your professor assigns.
LagunaSol
macrumors 601
Why isn't anyone talking about the real way the iTablet could revolutionize education: with eLearning that finally lives up to its promise? There's the game changer for you.
Educational tablet computing has vastly more potential than merely serving as an electronic equivalent to the college textbook, historically the king of sleepy time.
Name one reason why educational tablet (with limited input capabilities, in a static environment - desk and a chair) is better than educational notebook?
cmaier
Suspended
The only thing I can think of is interactivity and linking. When I was an engineering student, for example, it would have been nice to click on an equation in a book and be able to dump it into matlab to play with it, graph it, etc. When I was a law student, it would have been nice to be able to click on a case cite and jump into westlaw to shephardize it, read case briefs, etc. I think in reality text search, less weight, etc. are marginal improvements.
There are many downsides, however (poor input capabilities- particularly for non-text things like equations, molecular diagrams, etc., slow sequential page access - much easier to thumb through a book, screen is smaller than most textbooks - particularly engineering textbooks, etc.)
LagunaSol
macrumors 601
I don't really understand the question (I was talking about textbooks, not notebooks), but there's little doubt our centuries-old educational format of sitting in classrooms and lecture halls squinting at blackboards/whiteboards and scribbling notes while listening to a droning professor, later supplemented by poring over mind-numbing textbooks and finishing it all off with an exam based on rote memorization (nod to AidenShaw's earlier argument) only to forget it all a week later is a dinosaur headed for extinction.
So you believe pencil on paper is the pinnacle of human note taking? There's no reason the input capabilities of an electronic device can't equal it. And will, someday.
As for flipping through a book, ditto - this will be replicated electronically. Someday. Perhaps on Jan. 27th? 😉
And hyperlinked, searchable information is far superior to the old print on paper paradigm. Hence the unimagined success of this thing we call the World Wide Web. 🙂
My point is that if we really wanted to get rid of text books and notepads the best substitution would be a laptop not an iPad
cmaier
Suspended
I believe it is possible to enable the type of notetaking to which I refer, but no one has done it yet, and since there are many independent technical specialties each with their own special formats, grammars, and symbols, it is unlikely Apple has done anything to enable notetaking to be desirable in very many of them. It's hard enough to get simple language recognition right; it's much harder to get mathematical expression recognition, circuit diagram recognition, logic diagram recognition, truth table recognition, boolean expression recognition, organic chemistry symbol recognition, etc. right. And if the only people who can use these things as textbooks are liberal arts majors, it isn't going to go very far. Someday, perhaps, but I predict a long time from now.
LagunaSol
macrumors 601
I disagree. A laptop is a kludge. Perhaps a kludge that will remain necessary for a few more years, but a kludge nonetheless. A well-executed tablet computer is the ideal.
How many laptops did you see them carrying around on Star Trek? 😛
cmaier
Suspended
I'd hardly set my idea of technical perfection based on a paradigm in which wearing a red shirt equals certain death.
LagunaSol
macrumors 601
KnightWRX
macrumors Pentium
Not really. I type much faster and much more legibly than I hand write. A laptop is a superior note taking device for the vast majority of people. Not to mention, you can do much better content creation on a laptop than any kind of tablet. I would much prefer have all my textbooks as ebooks on my laptop, along with my term paper which I could mark-up in LaTeX.
We just need some good note taking software that makes drawing diagrams and writing mathematical equations as fast and efficient as typing.
Not to mention TeX is already very good at Math :
http://web.ift.uib.no/Teori/KURS/WRK/TeX/symALL.html