When I worked with text books for college courses, I usually have a few books open and study them together. How will one do that with e-books on an iPad? May be Apple would allow opening multiple books at the same time, possibly in a split screen format?
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Textbook Publishers Strike Deals to Bring Content to iPad
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I love the idea. They'd really get a huge college audience that way, and can re-coup costs for future book, apps, and media sales. Of course, they could put a limit on the "free" like $250 worth of certain branded textbooks, so anything that goes over, Apple would start re-couping their costs. Plus students would probably want to buy the apple productivity software to go along with it and accessories...
Unlikely.
After 12 years of college, one thing I learned is that physical textbooks are themselves tools above and beyond their content. They are repositories for sticky notes and folded paper outlines, dog-eared pages, highlights, notes in margins, broken bindings that open to the most important pages, tabbed pages, resources for open book exams, props for looking important in the coffeeshop, visual reminders of how far the semester has progressed, collectibles, resources to be saved and put on your office shelf for occasional reference once you get a job, etc.
At best, an ebook reader will achieve only a few of these purposes.
Given the price range quoted for textbooks, why I should I treat this statement as anything but a joke? At 30% savings, iPad pays for itself in five quarters.
I bet there are a lot of students for whom an iPad and external keyboard are a good-enough substitute for a $999 macbook plus an $200 e-reader. If you fall into that category, $500 is pretty cheap.
Otherwise, yeah, you're better off buying used textbooks.
I'm glad Apple is getting serious again in the education market 
. I might pick up an iPad when I go to the States!
. I might pick up an iPad when I go to the States!No worries.
there's an app for that.
As long as it's an Apple-developed app, such that you can bring up both the eBook and the annotation app, side-by-side, and annotate on the fly.
I'm thinking that it could be either typing- or hand-writing-based. On the iPhone, they already have technology that takes your rather large finger press and turns it into a smaller region (say, for the iPhone keyboard). It's not too wild to expect that they'd use that same technology to take your finger press and bring it down to a point that can be used as the tip of a pen, with which you use to write your annotation.
Of course, it'd be nice if there were a multi-tap combination that mapped to "highlight this selection".
Assuming availability. I know for a lot of my classes there weren't used texts available. (Though being a senile old codger, perhaps things have changed and used texts are available for all classes these days....).
Concurrent Annotation?
How do you currently annotate? Can't the iPad just save the backpack from tons of books? You can use the iPad as a book...then annotate using a separate piece of paper and a real pen.
How do you currently annotate? Can't the iPad just save the backpack from tons of books? You can use the iPad as a book...then annotate using a separate piece of paper and a real pen.
It would seem Apple isn't a fan of other Dev's repeating function they already have. I mean why would they when you have small footprint device no point wasting space on the same code. Just as App's can control the play of music from your library, and all use the same camera API to access your Photo Library. It seem logical that Apple will support ePub as an API if that's the format they go with.
Developers could rely on the API when they won't to support their that viewing that format. It's not to much of Stretch to see they might allow full access to any books you have stored on the device. Even encoarage developers to value add by having all sorts of bookmarking, snippet views, annotation highlighting methods in the API.
I think what Apple learned from the touch is you release the tools and see which markets feed you money.
Because students are going to be pirating books, and they will never buy books every again. I spend about 300 dollars a quarter for books. If geohotz jailbreaks this thing, in less than 2 quarters, I will make my money back. It's going to be a big **** you to the textbook industry, and they will have to actually lower their prices.
I didn't read all the responses because this just came to me, but wouldn't the iPad also be a useful tool in medical fields? Just as the iPhone was attempting to do, the iPad could do it too, and better. Bigger screen for better viewing. More powerful CPU to do work faster. I'll be willing to bet it also has more RAM. Think super iPod touch. I find it quite interesting.
Sike!
People don't need to crack iTunes DRM for music, that's why it didn't happen quickly, people could just torrent albums. Think of it more like the App Store and how ridiculously easy it is to pirate 95% of the apps in the store. Trust me, in a 2-3 years, if apple is still doing this textbook thing... Millions of people will pirate textbooks, I certainly will be.
I read on my computer for hours a day and I'm perfectly fine. But thanks.
If i spend a day in front of the computer, i will feel uncomfortable and it will be very tired.
The ipad intro was really half baked. They are still putting this thing together. The best is yet to come. Here's hoping at least.
Sorry that Apple doesn't serve the commodity computer market.
I wouldn't hold my breath for a company to make a device that leverages so many unique software features, has access to so much content, all matched with quality hardware at such a low entry point.
One semester I spent $900 + on textbooks. My organic chemistry text was over $300 (granted we used it for 2 semesters).
This past semester I got off light, just over $600.
Jeez, what's your major? I was bio/english and I never had to pay more than $200, (except for chemistry a few semesters) and it was usually lower than $100. I'd buy the books cheaply from half.com/amazon, and then sell them back at the campus bookstore. Sometimes I made a profit!
You won't be able to do that with the iBookstore.
(Pro tip: Professors may tell you otherwise, but you usually can get away with buying the previous edition for faaaaaar cheaper at half.com. This obviously won't work for classes where you need to do problems in the textbook, but for certain classes you can save a great deal of money.)
Hahaha, I already spent that much on textbooks this semester (edit: I bought used, too). Why not just go for $1000 even while we’re at it?
Given well written software, an eBook reader could pretty much replicate everything that you listed, excluding bookshelf/café cred. OS X’s Preview already implements annotating, highlighting, bookmarks, notes, etc. As for the paper outlines, keep them somewhere else? I’m sure with a little more work even Preview itself could far surpass the usability of a physical textbook.
Honestly, nothing bothers me more than flipping back and forth between two pages, or continuously flipping to the index/glossary/dictionary or what have you at the end of the book. That, and I could actually take my books to class with me without breaking my back. And just think of all the possibilities for supplementary audio/visual media that can only be done on a screen. Or what about foreign language books where translations could appear inline when tapping a phrase? Or inline dictionaries (like OS X already does…)? The possibilities are endless.
No eyestrain or something similar. If you can look 8+ (in my case 12+) hours a day at screen you can doubtless read books on iPad to. Proper lighting is a must just when you read a textbook so it is on screens.
E-ink and eyestrain are just an excuses for an underwhelming piece of LCD.
