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'iBooks Author' eBook Authoring App for Mac Now Available
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On a Mac, it's ok. Unless you have an older model that isn't supported by Lion, like a G5 Macbook...
But this tool should be available on Windows too. Think of it like iTunes which helped drive iPod sales. Underpaid teachers that prepare their stuff at home will not necessarily buy a Mac for this.
My 0.02$
It might be cheaper than buying 500 page 4lb texbook though for the whole school, every year. The cost of iPads might be covered by the school if they save money on not ordering and delivering actual books. It will take few years to get adapted to but I am sure Apple gives educational discount.
Holly crap! You have 3 other options: Windows, Linux and Google Chrome. No one is forcing you to buy Lion.
I've been playing around with this for about an hour. It's nice software. But there is one major, epic fail:
iBooks Author does not allow "references" or "endnotes". My .pages document has thousands of references. It just strips those right out, and there is nowhere to view or see or mark references in iBooks Author.
How the hell do you write a textbook without using references?
Wow.
iBooks Author does not allow "references" or "endnotes". My .pages document has thousands of references. It just strips those right out, and there is nowhere to view or see or mark references in iBooks Author.
How the hell do you write a textbook without using references?
Wow.
With a really big legal defense budget?
Yikes. That's a seriously impressive oversight on Apple's part.
Yeah, that whole freedom of speech and freedom of the press thing really sucks.
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If you've been following along for the past 12 years, every new version of OS X has been worse than the last, according to the peanut gallery. These people should just stick with 10.0 and be happy with that.
It is a for real limitation and limits anybody who wants to write a legitimate text book. If you want pretty graphics for kids, sure it's great. But you can't o anything academic in it without references. Boo!
I've got iBooks Author running on my Snow Leopard machine just fine. I followed the tutorial over at DigitalTweaker and worked like a charm. http://www.digitaltweaker.com/mac/m...o-install-ibooks-author-on-os-x-snow-leopard/
It might be labor intensive, but just replace superscript inline notations in the text with (1) etc. at the point of citation and then have all your notes under a chapter/section titled Citations at the end of the document. That was how I had to do it for my dissertation anyway.
Am I the only one who finds this self-publishing idea extremely scary. Think of the power someone can yield if they "publish" a book that contains morally reprehensible content and try to pass it off as a "textbook"? Is someone at Apple going to actually read these "textbooks" for erroneous information and other morally questionable content? And if so, what are their qualifications?
School children are going to be able go onto iTunes, go to the "textbook" section, and download some garbage? And remember, its not just "adult content" that I am scared of. There are much more damaging themes than making boobs jiggle. Just a glimpse through the App Store send shivers down my back. It's questionable if an individual makes an iPhone app with disinformation in it, but its a totally different ballgame if they label it a "textbook".
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Freedom of speech is fine with me, but do not label these creations as "textbook" that are aimed at children. Remember, today's presentation was geared towards the educational community. There are parents out there who go to the end of the world keeping their family's internet clean, now they will have to deal with a "textbook" section in iTunes.
Have you been on the internet before? The entire internet is filled with every sort of ridiculous misinformation. Probably 95% of the content of the whole internet is complete BS (just like the statistic I just made up.) I'm much more worried about websites promoting quackery like "craniosacral therapy" than I am a kid downloading a book saying the earth is 6,000 years old. They're already being told that garbage by their parents and church anyway.
They ARE textbooks, and legitimately so.
In this particular case, I happen to agree with you that the content is..."suspect"...but we could have been having the same conversation 60 years ago about geology textbooks and we would have been flat out dead wrong.
Knowledge is not static. We do not know what we do not know.
Is there a way to create these books for iPhone? I've been playing around with it, and I found where I can export the book, but when I put it back in iTunes, it'll only let me sync to my iPad.
Some of the things I want to do with this, it'll need to be accessible on iPhone/iPod Touch.
Some of the things I want to do with this, it'll need to be accessible on iPhone/iPod Touch.
I thought they said you could give these books away for free (not in iTunes) outside if the iBooks store, if that's the case, then it's likely the new iTunes will be the "sideloader".
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5071#7
If you had to put them in iTunes for free and for a charge, why would people buy....
Gary
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Having published 2 books already in the iBookstore, I'm happy to hear of this news. This will make my lifensonmuch easier as I will no longer have to rely on Lulu. Of course, I'm yet to try it out but hopefully this will be the answer for my problems.
I didn't see this mentioned yet but if you publish and sell a book in the iTunes store and charge a price, you have agree to not sell the book anywhere else.
If you offer the book for free on iTunes, you can then sell the book for a price anywhere else.
If you offer the book for free on iTunes, you can then sell the book for a price anywhere else.
An equation editor would require that Apple actually still employed iWork developers for OS X. There's little evidence that iWork '12 exists, as presumably they would have mentioned a few of its cool new features now. I saw no new Keynote builds or transitions, presumably because the keynote team are doing other things.
If only apple made millions off selling interactive whiteboards, Keynote would have all those cool new widgets now. Take note SMART: this is how you do non-fugly, intuitive, elegant interaction that doesn't look like Win 95.
