Techsloth

Apple wants to revolutionize the textbook

Ausgestellt am 19. Januar 2012 vom Techsloth in App, Apple, geeky

No, I have not forgotten about it. Today was the Apple Education Event in New York’s Guggenheim Museum. Apple had once again something, in their eyes, Revolutionary to presented.Apple wants to revolutionize the textbooks. Idea: With digital books, blinking text, photos, and many built-in videos, studying will be twice the fun… yeah sure.

But enough of the banter, I can find some positive points:

It saves weight. Not bad. 1 iPad instead of 5 books
These things should be cheaper than real books. This will have to show
iBooks will be always up-to-date. Great, if it will be true and free of charge
Perhaps there really are more learning effects through playfulness.

And who writes these books? No problem. Apple is offering a free program so that everybody will be able to write iBooks…yeah…great…quantity…no I mean quality for the win…

The only downside so far: If you look look at the data size of the current textbooks:

E.O. Wilson’s Life On Earth – 965MB
McGraw Hill’s Algebra 1 – 1.09GB
Pearson’s Biology – 2.77GB
McGraw Hill’s Biology – 1.49GB
National’s Chemistry – 959MB
Pearson’s Environmental Science – 793MB
McGraw Hill’s Geometry – 1.22GB
McGraw Hill’s Physics – 1.25GB

That´s no good for a basic 16Gb iPad. Especially if you want to use it for something else than just books. Or perhaps the trend is indeed leading to a second iPad? ;o)