Apple & Textbooks

[Renegade]

Does anyone think this is a good idea?

[Deozaan]

Does anyone think this is a good idea?

[barney]

@Renegade:  no.

@Deozaan:  yes.

[Stoic Joker]

I'm to tired to come up with something witty. So...

@Renegade:  no.

@Doezaan:  yes.

+1  

[KynloStephen66515]

It might be a good idea, but then again, it might not.  Its hard to come to a definitave decision on such matters without further research into the implementation and design aspects of the topic of discussion  

[Stoic Joker]

It might be a good idea, but then again, it might not.  Its hard to come to a definitave decision on such matters without further research into the implementation and design aspects of the topic of discussion 

I don't need further research ... I'm fine with the same snap decision I made after viewing a news cast about one of the Florida schools going to this nonsense.

They decided that buying iPads for all the kids in the school was going to be cheaper than getting dead tree editions of the text books - 'cause electronic copies are free ya know... - And then pass the cost of a replacement on to the parents if/when the kids iPad got lost/stolen/broken. Brilliant right?? ...Not!

[Renegade]

And every kid will be charged $15 for every textbook... No more reusing textbooks... So, a $30 text that you'd use for 10 years for 20 classes of students ends up costing $300 instead.

Face it -- math doesn't really change all that much when you're 12 years old...

[JavaJones]

The price of text books *is* insane, even used ones, even after you factor in the money you can recoup from reselling used ones back to the store. It's all pretty crazy. But Apple and forcing the purchase of $600+ hardware just to view vendor-proprietary text books is also not a solution. Unfortunately schools are so desperate for a magic bullet they'll try anything now, especially if it's from that darling of educational technology called Apple.

- Oshyan

[xtabber]

The real problem with this is that textbooks published through this system can only be sold through Apple's retail distribution system  - iTunes or whatever parallel system they set up for the educational market.  See here for a discussion of the iBooks EULA.

Big publishers who can afford multiple product lines may like this because it eliminates used textbook reselling and it's efficient for them to pay Apple 30% to handle everything, but it has the potential to really screw small publishers and authors by locking them into Apple and out of the rest of the educational market.

[Renegade]

The real problem with this is that textbooks published through this system can only be sold through Apple's retail distribution system  - iTunes or whatever parallel system they set up for the educational market.  See here for a discussion of the iBooks EULA.

Big publishers who can afford multiple product lines may like this because it eliminates used textbook reselling and it's efficient for them to pay Apple 30% to handle everything, but it has the potential to really screw small publishers and authors by locking them into Apple and out of the rest of the educational market.

They're going to get screwed. They being everyone except Apple.

Ahem...

Such... a... capitally... stupid... idea...

AHEM!

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

Does this not ring a bell with anyone? This is what evil looks like.

[wraith808]

Report: Apple sees 350,000 textbook downloads within three days after iBooks 2 debut

The students are speaking, unfortunately... that $15 price tag is too good to ignore.  Though this electronic textbook thing has been going on a while, the price point is what makes this attractive.  My wife had to pay the same amount as a textbook through her college for access to an electronic one- that was worse than anything Apple has done here IMO.  And by the forerunners being so greedy (vitalsource bookshelf was the one her college used), they've opened the way for Apple's more 'reasoned' approach- even if it will be worse in the long run.

[urlwolf]

I have a problem with licensing.

Ed Bott says:

Over the years, I have read hundreds of license agreements, looking for little gotchas and clear descriptions of rights. But I have never, ever seen a legal document like the one Apple has attached to its new iBooks Author program.

Dan Wineman:
Apple, in this EULA, is claiming a right not just to its software, but to its software’s output. It’s akin to Microsoft trying to restrict what people can do with Word documents, or Adobe declaring that if you use Photoshop to export a JPEG, you can’t freely sell it to Getty. As far as I know, in the consumer software industry, this practice is unprecedented.

Exactly: Imagine if Microsoft said you had to pay them 30% of your speaking fees if you used a PowerPoint deck in a speech.

[worstje]

I spoke to a couple of folk who are familiar with the e-publishing biz, and apparently most of this is (sadly) par for the course! Even when using the tools Amazon and co supply for ebook authoring (read: converter), you end up with shafted deals like these. There's not much 'authoring' to these tools, and as such is closer to a wav->mp3 sort of things, or how iTunes is only for apple products.. and where Palm was not allowed to sync with it. (If this is common knowledge; I apologize... I was under the impression at first that this was a MS Word-like program, and that whatever you typed in there would be subject to these terms... but thankfully it's not _THAT_ bad just yet.)

There's only a few small differences. For one, this converter Apple makes available can do some extra stuff, and is better at a .epub conversion than many other programs, especially for the less tech savvy ebook author(wannabe)s. People don't care about the extra ibook-only stuff, but they are upset they can't get to use it for the epub converting stuff. Finally, there's the matter how you don't get to see the EULA till well into the program.. while you already agree to it the moment you start the application, which is pretty sleazy as well.

In the end, it is Apple being horribly greedy Apple, trying to lock people in on their platform once again like how they did for the iPuddle and IPhiddle. They basically supply a free tool that woos everyone (especially the fanboys drinking the koolaid), get people to using it, lock them in, and do everything to restrict the user... like many other big companies out there.

[fenixproductions]

<trolling_mode="on">
I wonder when will it be known that Apple invented books (rectangular objects with covers and letters which may be read)…
</trolling_mode>

[Carol Haynes]

<trolling_mode="on">
I wonder when will it be known that Apple invented books (rectangular objects with covers and letters which may be read)…
</trolling_mode>

Apple have a patent on the rectangle so they will protect their 'intellectual' rights through the courts. (stands to reason since they have already won cases on the basis of nested rectangles) Better make sure all printed books are round from now on and burn everything you own that is rectangular just in case.