As someone who has dealed with walled gardens of many kinds it is definitely not heaven.
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McGraw-Hill CEO Credits Steve Jobs' Digital Textbook Vision Amid Evidence of Pre-iPad Interest
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He was also sucessful because Everyone THOUGHT they were HIS Ideas! As wie can See above the textbook idea wasn't his. Also the iPod wasn't his. He was apples boss, and therefore he might have been the driving force. But why do people believe he invented all of this? This is only part of a good marketing.
I am sad for all the real inventors, apples engineers who suggested things to jobs and he said 'yes' to them. I guess there are so many people in the background who's ideas are sold as jobs ideas like we can not imagine...
Ok -- I misunderstood. You can see how, right? His post wasn't very thorough. Like, at all... I'll get to that down below... however... about what he REALLY meant:
On the iPad, the Textbooks are sold through the iBooks App. Makes sense. Dedicated book app to buy, store and access all your books and PDFs. Cool. In the iPad,... a dedicated app is perfectly logical.
How can one reconcile the fact that regular eBooks are sold through iTunes on the computer. Textbooks are simply a subset or mainstream eBooks. Why a dedicated app? I can see why there's an App Store app and not through iTunes... those apps can't work on iOS devices so they need to be separated. But Textbooks are simply another book. By having your stuff all in the same store, iCloud and managing all your digital purchase seems like it would be a lot smoother.
I still don't get his rationale about a dedicated app for the computer. Why? Because he had an opinion but didn't explain why, how or wherefore. It's fine to have a different point of view, but one needs to explain why they're on that side of the fence...
Kind of like I just did.
Do you have any evidence for those assertions, because Steve Jobs' name occurs on 100s of patents.
And Jonathon Ive's name appears on hundreds more. Though Ive does not get the credit he deserves for all his work.
You realize one does not have to be involved in order to be labeled as the owner of a patent? Its not exactly uncommon that companies shift 'patent ownership' from an employee onto itself, partially or completely. Its often even part of the employment terms.
Microsoft Encarta was a digital multimedia encyclopedia published by Microsoft Corporation from 1993 to 2009. It handled pictures and illustrations, music, videos, searching, interactive content, dictionary, timelines and maps, along with having other academic/study tools (lots of useful templates for Word etc).
Used by many students in the 90s and earlier 2000. It was mainly particularly popular in the days of limited to no Internet and no Wikipedia.
It wasn't a textbook or a textbook system, but its content delivery system is hardly dissimilar to what Apple's digital Textbook can do.
On that topic - Encarta could probably be easily ported into a Textbook should Microsoft be willing to revive it. Most content already exists, it just needs to be formated for iOS.
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Yes. Even more reason to say it was Apple and not Jobs who did this. A lot of the Apple patents could have been Apple's work but in the contract they had to allow Jobs name and not theirs on the patent. Even though Jobs might have done little if any work on the patented idea/product.
I'm pretty sure Jobs didn't want his name to overtly overshadow Apple's future. He probably explicitly made that a point given his attention to details.
Also as an aside, from the biography, we knew this was coming, but the man's timing is unbelievable. He originally considered making the Macintosh touchscreen but shelved it because the technology wasn't ready.
I get it that you never saw the books in Harry Potter and never saw a Kindle or any other eBook reader before. I'm sure you also never saw one of the language courses that PONS published in the early 2000s (all written in Flash, by the way). You probably also never saw software for clinical trials in action.
Really, there were industries (plural) active in this market long before Apple even began designing the iPad - they only didn't have the right hardware for their software.
The iPad's greatest achievement is its working form factor. And the iPad's greatest disadvantage is its closed proprietary platform. Apple might have shown a way here (certainly not the way), but eventually, cheaper and more open platforms and offerings will dominate that market.
Heck, even the UN have already announced a tablet for less than 100 bucks. Their tablet really will help in the education sector - on a global scale. Apple's platform will just be a niche solution for the wealthy. Just like everything else that Apple sells, to sum it up. The company simply does not care for the majority of people, it only cares for those with thick wallets.
And their iBooks Author software is dead on arrival by definition: Its license locks the authors exclusively into the iBooks store, even if Apple decides to NOT publish the work, the authors will not be allowed to publish it anywhere else. Those terms are completely unacceptable, especially since the iBooks Store is not nearly as attractive as Amazon's Kindle Store and only reaches a fraction of the audience. That software is a desperate and unethical attempt at catching authors that don't read the fine print.
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So iBook's proprietary format will fail because everyone who hates proprietary formats will rush on over to use Amazon's proprietary format.
Right. Makes total sense.
That very link says:
The only notable device lacking integrated support for the EPUB format is the Amazon Kindle
Which was exactly my point. I'm not clear what I'm supposed to be trying harder at.
Interactive Quizzes
Like the concept but besides lots of immersive media where is the real educational value ? Do these books allow the students the opportunity to demonstrate what they have learnt? A few or a lot of interactive quizzes with output to databases or spreadsheets would be helpful. Does it enable teachers or instructors to monitor progress to identify underachievers or gifted students ? Do they promote team work ?
From an educators point of view, these are great toys, but do they offer real learning and the ability to demonstrate understanding ?
It's a promising start, but once the media snow storm has cleared, will schools be able to afford them with out some form of output to provide clear, hard evidence of increased learning and understanding.
Embedding Khan Academy videos, with supporting text and quizzes, would make an interesting e-textbook.
http://www.khanacademy.org/
Like the concept but besides lots of immersive media where is the real educational value ? Do these books allow the students the opportunity to demonstrate what they have learnt? A few or a lot of interactive quizzes with output to databases or spreadsheets would be helpful. Does it enable teachers or instructors to monitor progress to identify underachievers or gifted students ? Do they promote team work ?
From an educators point of view, these are great toys, but do they offer real learning and the ability to demonstrate understanding ?
It's a promising start, but once the media snow storm has cleared, will schools be able to afford them with out some form of output to provide clear, hard evidence of increased learning and understanding.
Embedding Khan Academy videos, with supporting text and quizzes, would make an interesting e-textbook.
http://www.khanacademy.org/
I downloaded samples of the available textbooks, and they have interactive quizzes in there. I agree it's a promising start and we are only scratching the surface of the potential that is available. There was an article, I forgot the link, where one of apple's 3 publishing partners saw a 20 point increase in performance by students using etextbooks. I would also love to see Khan academy videos as an etextbook.
At some point they ll have to do something though with this gargantuan monster that is itunes that is a big fat mess at managing content at this moment. A jukebox cum music store cum audiobook manager cum apps manager cum video manager cum book manager cum textbook manager.
At it's current stage it looks like something microsoft would make not apple.
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the students young backs btw dont need to be spared, I 've not met anyone who had a back problem at 16 because of their bag, on the other hand I 've met plenty who at age 26 put glasses on because of extended lcd usage.
Kids nowadays spent enormously more time than we (I am in my thirties) did in front of computer screens, I shudder to think that they would have to spent even more time in front of them. I would disallow my kids for sure to use and extra 5 hours a day an lcd screen, as any sane adult who is not a tech freak would, and I hope that at some point e-ink or any other reflective technology becomes viable, but I am afraid it's still way too early.
EDIT: cool feature to add the second post within the first one in consecutive posts, saves you from the trouble of having some ocd mod on your back, lol!!!
At it's current stage it looks like something microsoft would make not apple.
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the students young backs btw dont need to be spared, I 've not met anyone who had a back problem at 16 because of their bag, on the other hand I 've met plenty who at age 26 put glasses on because of extended lcd usage.
Kids nowadays spent enormously more time than we (I am in my thirties) did in front of computer screens, I shudder to think that they would have to spent even more time in front of them. I would disallow my kids for sure to use and extra 5 hours a day an lcd screen, as any sane adult who is not a tech freak would, and I hope that at some point e-ink or any other reflective technology becomes viable, but I am afraid it's still way too early.
EDIT: cool feature to add the second post within the first one in consecutive posts, saves you from the trouble of having some ocd mod on your back, lol!!!
Its doubtful these ereaders are capable of such interactivity, with a few exceptions such as the Kindle Fire, but even that has a limited capability as it has limited hardware.
Cheaper & more open platforms have been already here for several years. Its just not quite what the majority of people are looking for.
Whether you like it or not proprietary has its place as well as open source. If we relied solely on open source for everything we would be 50 years behind in technology from what we have today. Proprietary brings in the big money to push technology forward.
The iPad closed platform is both one of its greatest assets and does have disadvantages as well.
Even Google recognizes being too open does have its disadvantages. Making Google holding off releases of its Android OS until certain markets get it first.
Great for educating third world countries, not so great when trying to use these same tablets for business and personal use. When I see everybody onboard around the world carrying these $99.00 tablets for everyday use, then I might believe you.
They are free to publish their content where ever they like, even the same book, both in Apples iTunes store and other stores like amazon.
Obviously they cannot use Apples iBooks Author software in other markets, but it does not prevent them from publishing the same content elsewhere.
Nearly every service or software you use often requires you to read and accept to the terms of its use. Usually during installation and before using a companies service.
So its entirely the fault of the user if they decide not to read it or claim they had no idea.
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You don't have to be involved to *own* the patent (which is something I think is an error, but is beyond the scope of the discussion). You *do*, however, have to be involved to be named as a creator of said patent. Failure to name all of the parties involved, or to name *only* the parties involved can completely invalidate an entire patent. If Jobs is named as a creator on the patent, you can bet your sweet bippy that he was involved in developing the tech/process/object described by said patent.
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Nope. The license for iBooks Author only requires that its formatted *output* be exclusive to the iBook Store. And even then only if you're charging for it. You can take the same underlying work (the novel itself) and run it through any other formatter to create a Kindle version, or a Mobi version, or even a plain-text version and do whatever you want to with those.