7 Reasons to Learn Apple iBooks Author Now
thejournal.comI’ve included three below. And before I get some Android/Anti-Apple nonsense in my Ask box:
iBooks Author allows PDF export if the book will be shared at no cost to the student (or end reader). It’s also arguably the easiest to use consumer-level program for creating interactive ebooks. Oh, and it’s free.
- Curate learning. For decades teachers have been able to supplement adopted curriculum materials with newspaper clippings, magazine articles, and video clips. However, until the development of online curation tools, such as wikis or web-based journals, there was not a simple mechanism for organizing these resources and making them available to students.
iBooks Author provides a powerful tool for teachers to use when curating instructional materials. Unlike many web-based resources, these materials can be organized into a book-like format while still incorporating interactive features, such as hyperlinks, video clips, presentations, 3-D objects, and photo galleries. iBooks Author is designed to make quick use of materials you already have, including text documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.- Publish easily. iBooks Author gives teachers and students a free and accessible tool for creating digital texts. iBooks Author could easily be used by students to publish a short story for their school site digital library or as a tool for creating a portfolio of all of their work over the school year. In addition, schools and districts have expressed a great deal of interest in publishing their own materials for staff for both professional development and information updates.
- Share for free. With iBooks Author, writers have multiple options for sharing their completed texts. Free and fee-based books can be shared directly with the world through the iBookstore. However, school districts and teachers who want to share their texts locally can choose two different export options: PDF and the .iBooks file format.
iBooks Author 1.01 out with updated EULA
tuaw.comNotes Megan Lavey-Heaton for TUAW:
The change is an important one though, clarifying that Apple has rights over the format a book is in, not the content.
And we have yet another bit of controversy to file away under: Apple Is Not Fucking Stupid.
I haven’t weighed in on the EULA hubbub for this exact reason. If Apple was actually trying to suggest that they own the content of all iBooks published via iBooks Author, then yes, obviously that’s bad. But get this: Apple is neither the devil nor are they fucking stupid — as we’ve seen before.
“I’m concerned that the act of creating a digital book for students will impede the learning benchmarks that are expected of them. Let me put it this way: When was the last time you saw a well-designed, engaging PowerPoint presentation, where the speaker did not read the words directly off of the slide, verbatim? This is my point. We have allowed everyone to become an instructional designer.”
—Do Apple’s design tools make it too easy to create textbooks and courses?iBooks Author vs. ePub Author
OS X Programmers/Companies: Read This
So, yesterday Apple launched the new iBooks Author application for the Mac. It looks great, produces fantastic dynamic content, and more than one person assumed that it was outputting ePub3 files. However, that was not the case, as is extensively documented by Daniel Glazman (co-chairman of the WC3 CSS working group) on his blog:
A wysiwyg EPUB3 editor will not be able to edit correctly an IBA document because of the different mimetype and the proprietary CSS extensions. iBooks Author is not able to reopen a iBook it exported in their pseudo-EPUB3 format because there is no Import mechanism! That means that on one hand EPUB3 readers cannot reuse a document created by iBooks Author because of its HTML/CSS/Namespaces extensions, and on the other iBooks Author cannot create an iBook from an existing EPUB3 document because it cannot import it.
In actuality, it even goes a little further than this.
“If this is a revolutionary announcement about reshaping textbooks and educational content, we must ask revolutionary for whom? For wealthy schools? For students who have iPads at home and parents willing to pay out of pocket for supplementary textbook materials? For publishers?”
—Audrey Watters on iBooks author, quoted in “Campus Reactions to Apple’s Entry Into E-Textbook Market” on the Chronicle’s website“If the desktop-publishing revolution had required every newspaper, magazine, and book publisher to write their own computer software in order to lay out pages, that revolution wouldn't have happened.”
—(explaining “why iBooks Author is a big deal for publishers”)
iBooks Author not “eBook Author”
daringfireball.netIt’s the difference between “What’s the best we can do within the constraints of the current ePub spec?” versus “What’s the best we can do given the constraints of our engineering talent?” — the difference between going as fast as the W3C standards body permits versus going as fast as Apple is capable.
Apple’s concern is not what’s best for the publishing industry, and it certainly isn’t about what’s best for the makers of (and users of) rival e-book reading devices.
Want a well-put, wrap-up analysis for the Apple’s new iBooks Author app? Look no more.
Tool with Potential
Today Apple released/debuted an updated version of iBooks, called iBooks 2, but more importantly a tool for creating interactive iBooks called iBooks Author. Both are free. The functionality and simplicity are impressive, especially iBooks Author.
Long story short the barrier to creating interactive and dynamic cookbooks for the iPad is pretty much non-existent now (for anyone with a Mac). Anyone can create and sell, or give away, an ebook for the ipad that can include video, audio, and images without any expensive or complicated software, or knowledge of epub or HTML is necessary.
I think in the coming months we are going to see more ebooks, similar to what Grant Achatz and his team are doing with the NEXT ebooks, except they will be better. The Paris 1906 ebook is good, but creating something similar in the drag and drop world that is iBooks Author will result in much more. More depth, more subtly, more sophistication. There are limits and draw backs, but since fixed layout ebooks have been the domain of the iPad for a while this is a great tool to have.
I think with a little thought restaurants, chefs, waiters, sommeliers, and bartenders can create some great stuff using their knowledge and experiences. They can create something of value for patrons and clients that can easily and quickly be available. They can also create come great internal tools for staff. Image a cheese guide or wine guide for the dining room team. Imagine a special menu or dinner captured or commemorated in a ebook with photos, recipes, technique explanations, and stories with hours or days of the event.
Home cooks now have a way to create something digital too. The box of recipes can be organized into something with more visual depth. Notes and ideas and photos can be pulled together to tell a story of a family recipe or event.
There is so much that can be done. There is so much that should be done.
iBooks Author is Pages on steroids
So I was rather close to my predictions of what Apple would release software-wise to support the new iBooks textbooks. I said before Apple should just update Pages (and didn’t say that I thought they should integrate some Keynote stuff for extra pizzazz). iBooks Author is what was ultimately released, but it’s not exactly new software built from the ground up.
Apple’s Roger Rosner, who is also still in charge of iWork with recently updated title Vice President of Productivity Applications, mentioned the familiar feel of iBooks Author to users of Pages and Keynote. Reports from all over the web are pouring in with similar assessments. My bet is they actually started with Pages as an awesome foundation and just added and changed things as necessary. Seriously, before the event if you were to show someone the above screenshot, they very very likely would have claimed it was Pages ‘12. That’s what it looks like and that’s what it acts like.
Pages already had most of the features iBooks Author has. Embedded media, marking headers and sections for table of contents, importing Word documents, exporting to ePUB, and more. It’s really just a beefed up Pages. And that’s exactly what it should be. I literally have never met anyone who has tried Pages who does not prefer it over Word for 90% of tasks. I don’t even have Office installed on my personal machine, only iWork.
Here’s to hoping for a real Pages ‘12 soon with some of iBooks Author’s new features ported over. Can’t wait.
2 New Platforms Offer Alternative to Apple's Textbook-Authoring Software
chronicle.comThe first, Booktype, is free and open-source. Once the platform is installed on a Web server, teams of authors can work together in their browsers to write sections of books and chat with each other in real time about revisions. Entire chapters can be imported and moved around by dragging and dropping. The finished product can be published in minutes on e-readers and tablets, or exported for on-demand printing. Booktype also comes with community features that let authors create profiles, join groups, and track books through editing.
Thank You, And Good Night
Seems iBA has been updated with a clearer EULA with this at the top:
IMPORTANT NOTE:
If you want to charge a fee for a work that includes files in the .ibooks format generated using iBooks Author, you may only sell or distribute such work through Apple, and such distribution will be subject to a separate agreement with Apple. This restriction does not apply to the content of such works when distributed in a form that does not include files in the .ibooks format.
Thank you, and good night. I’ll be over here, radiating smug.
Apple Clarifies Restrictions on Sale of Content Created with iBooks Author
Just saw an updated version of iBooks Author on the Mac App Store with the following release notes:
This release provides an updated version of the End User License Agreement
It turns out that the new EULA not only has 4 new pages, but also changes this note at the beginning:
If you charge a fee for any book or other work you generate using this software (a “Work”), you may only sell or distribute such Work through Apple (e.g., through the iBookstore) and such distribution will be subject to a separate agreement with Apple.
To this:
If you want to charge a fee for a work that includes files in the .ibooks format generated using iBooks Author, you may only sell or distribute such work through Apple, and such distribution will be subject to a separate agreement with Apple. This restriction does not apply to the content of such works when distributed in a form that does not include files in the .ibooks format.
That’s right. They added the sentence: “This restriction does not apply to the content of such works when distributed in a form that does not include files in the .ibooks format.”
Does this remind anyone else of the famous Liebeck v. McDonald’s Restaurants case?
