Apple Introduces Textbooks, iBooks 2 and iTunes U

If Apple Inc. has its way, the days of students carrying big and heavy textbooks around in their book bags, to and from school, are over. Apple on Thursday launched its attempt to make the iPad a replacement for a satchel full of textbooks by starting to sell electronic versions of a handful of standard high-school books.

The electronic textbooks, which include "Biology" and "Environmental Science" from Pearson and "Algebra 1" and "Chemistry" from McGraw-Hill, contain videos and other interactive elements.

Major textbook publishers have been making electronic versions of their products for years, but until recently, there hasn't been any hardware suitable to display them. PCs are too expensive and cumbersome to be good e-book machines for students. The new textbooks are legible with a new version of the free iBooks application.

The textbooks will cost $15 or less, said Phil Schiller, Apple's head of marketing. He unveiled the books at an event at New York's Guggenheim Museum. Schools will be able to buy the books for its students and issue redemption codes to them, he said.

The tech icon also released an app for iTunes U, which lets teachers plan their curriculum and easily share it with students, and iBook Author...an application for Macs that lets people create electronic textbooks. All of the products run on Apple's widely-popular iPad, which start at $499, and are free downloads in the iTunes store.

According to biographer Walter Isaacson, reforming the textbook market was a pet project of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, even in the last year of his life. At a dinner in early 2011, Jobs told
News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch that the paper textbooks could be made obsolete by the iPad. Jobs wanted to circumvent the state certification process for textbook sales by having Apple release textbooks for free on the tablet computer. Jobs died in October after a long battle with cancer.

Apple believes the education geared apps says benefits students because they lowers the price of textbooks, since they're all digital, and saves them from carrying around all those books. But critics say if the new products catch on, it could give Apple too much control over educational content.

Get hands on with iTunes U http://www.imore.com/2012/01/19/hands-itunes-ipad/