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I read on a Mac all day and on an iPhone a hell of a lot but I admit I have never used an e-reader as such. On the Mac and iPhone my eyes are fine so i have to assume on an iPad they will be too. The negative comments like yours sound like the 'iPod will make you deaf' comments, it takes some common sense as with most things in life.

I never said the iPad will make you blind. Lighten up a little. It's just common sense like you said. Staring at a LCD screen for a long period of time with only a only white background and words is really hard on your eyes. Apparently the apple crowd never runs into the problem with the exception of me it seems.

Websites with pictures and media helps lighten the load. But imagine reading a word document for hours on end like you would with a book. It's incredibly hard on you eyes. Thats why e-ink is so popular with people who read books. It's easy on the eyes and works in direct sunlight.

I guess some people have the fortitude to read for long periods time on an LCD screen that way but it's not something I can do or interested in... and I'm only 31. Maybe I'm an old fart for my age or something I don't know.

All the power to you I guess.
 
Oxford and Cambridge are going to have to strike their own licensing deals. My guess is that there will be separate US and UK iBookstores.

Makes sense if they do. Educational systems are very different. In the UK and Europe you have to know the answers, here in the USA we just need help on learning how to guess the from answers A, B C or D. :rolleyes:

Re your footnote ... How about happy since 1984? Yes I use PCs and Macs.
 
I never said the iPad will make you blind. Lighten up a little. It's just common sense like you said. Staring at a LCD screen for a long period of time with only a only white background and words is really hard on your eyes. Apparently the apple crowd never runs into the problem with the exception of me it seems.

Websites with pictures and media helps lighten the load. But imagine reading a word document for hours on end like you would with a book. It's incredibly hard on you eyes. Thats why e-ink is so popular with people who read books. It's easy on the eyes and works in direct sunlight.

I guess some people have the fortitude to read for long periods time on an LCD screen that way but it's not something I can do or interested in... and I'm only 31. Maybe I'm an old fart for my age or something I don't know.

All the power to you I guess.

I also said I liked to listen to a Novel on my iPod but as far as research goes I do it all day on a computer screen and have for 30 years.
 
I don't know what you are going to school for, but MOST of my text books in College were in the $135-140 range back in 1995-99. I had several semesters in College where my book charge for the semester was almost to $700, Ipad bought and paid for!


as long as it's not still 150+ dollars per 'book' I'm in. Some semesters I could have paid for an ipad just in book costs

paul
http://www.paulparduephotography.com/
 
Jailbroken iPad means ebook's and textbooks will be cracked in no time. Publishers are going to go mad, poor college kids will pirate anything.
 
as long as it's not still 150+ dollars per 'book' I'm in. Some semesters I could have paid for an ipad just in book costs

paul
http://www.paulparduephotography.com/

i wondered about this a few days ago, so i went back and checked. I could have bought the entry lvl iPad once every 7 months with the money i spent on books.

Give me a way to highlight and annotate and the pad is a MUCH better deal.
 
As a few others noted, annotation will be important for this function. I'm hoping for a stylus accessory. Touching to highlight is cool, fiddling with an on screen keyboard to type the note might not be. We'll see though.
 
If you're in school, this thing isn't a completely useless POS. Maybe i should go back to school just to buy one and not feel like i bought a useless device.
 
Jailbroken iPad means ebook's and textbooks will be cracked in no time. Publishers are going to go mad, poor college kids will pirate anything.

Do you really think the only reason for the A4 is speed?
I'll wager good money that they've added anti-jailbreaking circuitry on it.
Hope they did.
 
Get ready for some serious eye strain...

I have an iPhone and a Macbook, and read 60% of my day. My wife has a kindle, 20% of my reading is still from paper, and i use the kindle. The eye strain is a myth, like going out in the cold causes colds, or watched pots never boil. I have never found a significant difference between any of them...

Now reading news and and politics vs meta-ethics and symbolic logic? Oh there is an eye strain difference there! Or at least a headache difference! :D
 
Do you really think the only reason for the A4 is speed?
I'll wager good money that they've added anti-jailbreaking circuitry on it.
Hope they did.

*insert not sure if serious jpg*

One thing that is gone is open-book exams. Good luck getting professors to condone those when students would have open access to IM and email.
 
Jailbroken iPad means ebook's and textbooks will be cracked in no time. Publishers are going to go mad, poor college kids will pirate anything.

As a poor college kid, my only defense is that what else are we to do? Most of us have no money, are thousands upon thousands of dollars in debt, and am expected to cough up $300-$900 a semester on books.

None of that includes being able to actually drink or do anything once we get there ....

So yeah, if it can be pirated, college kids will try it.
 
As a few others noted, annotation will be important for this function. I'm hoping for a stylus accessory. Touching to highlight is cool, fiddling with an on screen keyboard to type the note might not be. We'll see though.

Anything is possible. Developers can make you text book readers that annotate and way more, I suspect they'll link to databases for cross referencing ... you name it, you think of it, it will come about... this is going to be huge for education!
 
It's becoming painfully obvious people are going to have to hold the iPad in their hand before making decisions.

During the keynote Steve Jobs showed people how to highlight text in ANY document. The key to this is a layer within the iPhone OS that has system-wide menu driven "controls".
Think using the preview app with your finger.
 
As a poor college kid, my only defense is that what else are we to do? Most of us have no money, are thousands upon thousands of dollars in debt, and am expected to cough up $300-$900 a semester on books.

None of that includes being able to actually drink or do anything once we get there ....

So yeah, if it can be pirated, college kids will try it.

Don't give up on the drinking there buddy, it got me through the finals ;)
 
This would utterly suck. Imagine those beautiful, sunny Spring days, and you're stuck inside because your textbooks would wash out in the sunlight... because Apple didn't even put a transflective or Pixel Qi display on their magical device that is supposed to be such an awesome e-reader.

Major fail. I can only see kids getting this if their parents are rich enough to buy regular textbooks in addition.
 
one school book

Yes, all your school books carried in one thin easy to manage iPad. AWESOME! This is where the iPad is going to shine. As for the "it will hurt your eyes people", my wife reads on her touch and just inverts it. White letters on a black background. Works great for her.....
 
While the iPad works nicely with my downloaded PDF's I'm fine. I'm too poor to buy books legally.
 
Of course textbook publishers will love this. They have been trying to kill the textbook resale market for years. First they did "new" versions of textbooks every couple of years that were mostly just moving chapters around with minor updates to the content, then they started throwing in a totally useless CD to keep the campus bookstore from buying it back from you. Then they started doing online "enhanced" content that required a password from inside the textbook that expired 6 months after activation (although I did actually have one book once where this was a useful feature), and finally they had ebooks that also expired after a certain time period.

Once you factor in what you could have earned by reselling the textbook or the value of being able to reference a book you purchased several years later, I think you'll find that electronic textbooks aren't that much cheaper than physical textbooks. That fact that there are really only 2 or 3 textbook publishers in the US will keep those prices high. Publishers love themselves the profits.
 
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