Apple issues invitations to March 7 iPad roll-out Apple has issued invitations for a March 7 event that will presumably – based on the iPad image that graces the email invite – introduce the oft-rumored iPad 3 with a "retina display", possibly with a resolution of 2048-by-1536 pixels. "We have something you really have to see. And touch," reads the invitation, hinting that …
"How schools are reacting to Apple’s entry into education"
http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/21/apple-textbook-public-private-schools/
"When Apple announced its textbook initiative on Thursday, there was a rush of excitement among educators. Textbooks from major publishers, which can cost $40 to $75 dollars in print, would be available as interactive e-books for $15 or less. The new iBooks Author application could turn anyone into a publisher, with its simple interactive e-book creation tools.
But then there was the small print: In order to buy and read these textbooks, each student will have to own an Apple iPad. No computer, off-brand tablet, or even iPhone or iPod touch will work. Books made with the new iBooks Author application are only viewable on iPads in the iBooks 2 app, can only be sold through Apple’s iBookstore (where the company takes its customary 30 percent of the sales cost), and cannot be exported as ePubs, the standard open format for all e-book files.
For the schools that can afford iPads, Apple’s new apps and partnerships are brimming with potential.
“We looked at each other after the announcement, and said ‘Apple must have been reading our minds. This is exactly what we’ve been talking about,’” said Eric Spross, director of technology at the private Menlo School in Atherton, Calif."
(((((((((( Part 1 of 2, due to 2000 char limitation... )))))))))))
And---------
"“Teachers in private schools can select their own textbooks. Public schools can’t. That’s a distinction that’s larger than having iPads or if they can afford the technology,” said Menlo School’s Spross. He pointed out that it’s not all bleak for public schools: “Some of the most compelling and innovative work has been in public schools, in very scientific, state-sponsored programs.”
The iPad restriction is odd for another reason: Tying a file to one piece of hardware (in this case, a textbook to an iPad) is a step backward for a company that knows the future lies with accessing your data from multiple devices. Toward that end, Apple was an early adopter of cloud storage for consumers. Steve Jobs unveiled the company’s iCloud service in June 2011, which enables you to store music, books, photos, contacts, calendars, and more in the cloud.
Cloud storage might make the difference for e-textbooks, too. Only when public schools can put $15 e-textbooks on donated laptops, inexpensive e-ink readers, smartphones, and whatever devices students may already own, can Apple’s textbook “reinvention” be taken seriously by public schools."
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The article says exporting to non-Apple formats was not permitted. Elsewhere, i read that Apple back-stepped, but there still is the *technical* inability to do so -- for the moment.
WOW!!!! The hate-bots are in full force today!
All I did was quote an investment site, and I get slammed. Doesn't even mean my posting is MY position. Frackin bots will shoot a messenger carrying a white flag, too, I suppose.
But, such is life. Some of these bots will assail just on the title or quoted content alone...
The good thing about Apple's support/move is in this case, it I hope will put in a severe crimp in the asses of the schools/universities purchase of paper books costing students $80 to $250 when the material is deliberately aged or set to go obsolete each semester or quarter, forcing students to sustain a given teacher's/professor's/school's relationship with a publisher.
Those books cost too damned much, and it is infuriating to have to pay for content that after courses are complete is only good for bragging rights or chasing down highlighted material. At least with digital content, it can be refreshed, although if compelled to "change or die", some publishers will try to "expire" the content to prevent students from appending and refreshing their own local data bank.
Imagine, though, if sensible publishers, reasonable teachers, and Apple or MS or Dell or HP/et al got together and streamlined the data repos and relevant government authorities said "THIS is the basic, minimum amount, and anything new or current and vetted can be added or tailored per schooling system, region of country, or ambition of the student, and this content must be linkable to vetted industry and research sources if a student chooses to engage in a "remote internship" arrangement.
But, that would eliminate much of the differentiation some publishers use to distinguish themselves and alienate/isolate/constrain certain districts.
Well, we'll see. If the content is tablet-agnostic (and, it SHOULD be... this can make or break a country's ability to produce educated and sensible not just "passed/graduated" students.
Here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/08/apple_ibooks_could_run_on_kindle/
(That one was closed for comments, so I happened to find this current one and consign my post to it. Obviously, it's taking a rash of scratchy thumbs now.... must've pissed off the marketing bots or others who find it an inconvenient post, although it seems I'm pissing of not only apple fans, but paper publishers, too. Maybe they'll suffer 9 hour flights next to someone who flatulates, has halitosis, eczema, dandruff, and a popping/jutting jaw problem. They need to get a life...)
"The Apple spokesperson pointed out that while free iBooks could "theoretically, yes" be read on other devices, that wasn't a current option: "iBooks app is exclusive to iOS. The point is that if you use iBooks to create your content then that file should only be sold on the iBookstore." ®"
By El Reg's Anna Leach...
My mistake on using the word "technical"; the story used "theoretically"...
I suspect the rationale behind the down votes is:
a) WTF has any of that got to do with a new iPad being launched
b) you appear to want to be posting on another story, can't, and have just grabbed the first vaguely on-topic article you can
c) you've copied and pasted a huuuuuge (and irrelevant) bunch of text instead of a link and your point and finally, crucially
d) TL;DR.
Another major contributing factor is that by not commenting at all on his cut-and-pasted article, "dssf" is tacitly supporting everything it says. Since the article in question is a puff piece in which Apple are praised to the skies for supplying cheap textbooks to schools that can afford a $500 iPad for every pupil while denying them to the cash-strapped schools that actually need cheap textbooks ... well, the prosecution rests, m'lud.
And as gizmodo rattles on about for 13 pages, front and back, it could possibly have no home button, based on the miriad of reasons they came up with the justify this idea.
This will actually be the new Apple iPadPhonePodMacAir and will have a version of Siri that reads your mind to show you what you want before you know you want it.
Etc.
I know all this is true because my mothers cousin has a friend who has a cousin who went to China once and saw a guy who is friends with someone that went to school with a guy who works at a recruitment agency that hired a guy for a job working at a place down the road from Foxconn and he's bumped into a guy from Foxconn at the local petrol station while buying lunch and while in the queue to pay for their sandwich & bottle of water & crisps meal deal the Foxconn guy was on the phone to his brother and spoke about all this in great detail in hushed tones just loud enough that the other guy could hear.
Had you all going again didn't they? Last years October letdown forgotten already, where what Android users would have considered a mere software update was released as an entirely new phone, and to take the piss even more not even the promised iPhone5 the sheep had been baaing for for so long?
ICS has been around four months now. The sad fact is that they changed so much in some areas that until hardware manufacturers release updated software for things like the camera (biggest hurdle) then we're stuck. Even the mighty CyanogenMod is stuck for the time being with that problem. I don't know what is required and who should be hassled whether it's Qualcomm, Samsung, HTC etc or Google. Newer phones are likely to be ready before older ones like my Desire HD due to having similar hardware to the Galaxy Nexus.
The high resolution rumour appears to be quite likely for my money — based on the fact that it has proliferated enough that Apple must be aware of it and they've released a flier that clearly shows a very high resolution screen. That'd give Apple the highest density display on the market by a significant margin, matching their position as the supplier with the highest density display in mobile phones (albeit by an increasingly slender margin, it being almost two years since they took the title).
The main difference between the 4S and the 4 was the move to a dual core processor with a faster and better specced GPU. So that was unambiguously a minor update but if your fictionally generalised "Android users" expect their CPU and GPU to change with every software update then I'd suggest they look up the difference between software and hardware.
In reality I'd suggest that (i) the users of different handsets aren't locked in the eternal combat you imagine; and (ii) nobody expects more than minor incremental improvements from anyone at this point in the technology lifecycle.
"Last years October letdown forgotten already"
They could have called it the iPhone 5 and got away with it... hardly a 'letdown'.
"where what Android users would have considered a mere software update"
So aside from the new OS (which is a software update), iCloud and Siri - how do you add a new processor and camera in software?
Well actually I tell a lie - a colleague has a Samsung Galaxy Note with a dual core processor but due to some 'software' issue it cannot use the second core - guess Samsung will fix that in software one day. For me I'd rather have a dual CPU phone that worked as a dual CPU phone.
Er, do you mean TVs? As in 1080HD?
Er, because it's a STANDARD
Computer monitors run in many different resolutions, relying upon the VIDEO GRAPHICS ARRAY to generate the output at one of many STANDARD resolutions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vector_Video_Standards2.svg
Now go away and don't ask stupid questions
"But then there was the small print: In order to buy and read these textbooks, each student will have to own an Apple iPad. No computer, off-brand tablet, or even iPhone or iPod touch will work."
Or you just buy the kindle or epub version of the same textbook, which won't have all the interactive bells and whistles, but that's hardly Apple's fault.
No one sells open books, they DRM protected books. If you have a problem with DRM your problem is with the entire digital publishing industry not Apple.
I just sold my iPad 1 on ebay for £250. Planning on getting whatever they present on the 7th. My logic was that from the 8th, I'll never get £250 on ebay for my iPad 1.
To be honest, iOS5 absolutely crippled the iPad1. Fifa12 is completely unplayable. I like Fifa12 on the iPad. The recommended solution to the crippling of the iPad 1 is not a software update but to buy a better iPad.
In a reflective drunk sort of manner (I am drubk,btw) [I may be rambling now] I wonder if I'm slowly turning into a fanboi. Lining up with my wallet open ready to swallow whatever kit they want to shove down my throat. Or have I made a cunning move and cashed in while I can and accepted that my iLife can continue without an iDevice for a few weeks??? Hmmmm gonna have to open another can and move onto another article
They've once again ensured that the world's press do their marketing for them. (Not a dig at the Reg)
I wonder if anyone has quantified how much money they save with the free advertising they receive, compared with their competitors? It has to be one of the key factors behind their startling profit margins.
iPad or not, I don’t care.
However, wasting public money on this highlights the depraved and corrupt in our society!
You don't need an iPad when an android tablet can do the same and more!
People only want an iPad in the hope it will increase their status.
I ensure that those people have a bite of reality, when I tell them that Apple owners generally require the most 'help' with the basics and their devices are just too "Leapfrog/Fisher Price" for me!
Spot on... The iPad is a nice device with a good ecosystem, but there is too much tie in and crippled connectivity.
There are similar products coming out which are superior (Asus Transformer line for example), but will not get the uptake they deserve purely because they dont come bundled with some look-at-me-you-can-tell-I-have-status-because-theyre-white headphones and a silver apple logo on them.
Frankly, if you spoke to me like that just because I was using an iPad rather than whatever alternative tablet you prefer, I wouldn't consider it a bite of reality, I'd consider you to be really rude.
I've got plenty of friends in senior IT positions who own iPads, none of them require any help with that or anything else technical, and none of them require any help with learning to read or with basic arithmetic.
Staggering generalisation based on your own opinion.
Consider that at our small company the hardware/system guy refuses to support Macs but does support the Dells running Windows or Ubuntu. However, he doesn't NEED to support the Macs because they're far more reliable and easy to keep updated. Plus, we're only ten blocks from an Apple store, so we can go there instead of having to deal with him and his ... quirks.
And you will find your experience echoed in a multitude of companies - large and small - across the UK and elsewhere.
So many IT managers seem to think that installing Macs is a threat to their own little empire, and anyway it's a similar outlook to the one I met so often in the early 1980's - "No-one ever got fired for buying IBM".
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