Apple’s New iBooks Author
Apple may have done it yet again.
The iBooks system launched today puts a powerful but easy-to-use authoring system into the hands of anyone who wants it, presaging the publication of dynamic ebooks by the millions—texts that will, of course, range in quality from the wretched to the superb—and, I should add, from the free to the expensive. Apple, being Apple, has tied this software in pretty tightly to its own iPad: books made by iBooks Author are made to be viewed on an iPad and may only be sold on Apple’s iTunes Store. (There is also an ability to export a book from Author into PDF or TXT format, though how much functionality survives the transition to PDF I haven’t yet discovered.)
Apple’s video ad for this system—”Apple in Education,” because the system is aimed ostensibly at writers of textbooks — gives you a decent sense of what’s possible, once you get past the somewhat saccharine and trite testimonials about teaching.
At first glance, which is all I’ve given it, iBook Author seems to offer a great deal of promise. It looks about as easy to use as Keynote or PowerPoint, though I imagine some of the more dynamic elements will take a bit of getting used to; and the business of designing for touch instead of mouse clicks will require practice.
I see a big future here for the use of iBook Author in law firms as a creator of teaching / reference tools, and, indeed, to make promotional and explanatory material for clients. Of course, everyone will need to have an iPad. Which is the plan.
Pleasantly, Apple chose to continue using the ePub standard, which can be read by almost everything, and created fairly easily. What they’ve added is real ease-of-use, which will probably sell a lot of iPads and Macs.
–dave
Hi David
It may not be so clear that Author uses the official epub standard: http://www.macrumors.com/2012/01/19/new-ibooks-not-technically-in-epub-format/
Curious in a way that Apple hasn’t fully address interoperability.
My smarter colleagues suggests this is an improper superset of epub 3.0, as their tools mostly work on it, with some exceptions that look like they were stolen from HTML 5 (:-))
–dave
Since this is a law blog, too –
a tidbit from something worth reading. There are other evil empires.
here
Those of us here, with the right background, know that once upon a time a famous legal name wrote about supposedly dead laws that they nonetheless ruled from their graves.
DC
I should have included the perfect visual (?) byte from the Ed Bott Report
And Mr. Bott’s summation:
Not everyone is so steamed about this; it’s not a big departure from what Apple does respecting apps created (using any means) for the iPhone, after all: must go through the App Store, paying Apple a tariff.
Respecting the iBook material, the content remains yours to do with as you please and to sell anywhere in other formats. And if you’re giving a book created with the iBook Author away, you can give it free of any Apple claim. So the only crimp here is if you choose to use their tool to format it for sale for the iPad; there are other tools you could use to create for the iPad if 30% is too high for you.
Granted, but I suppose that’s part of Bott’s point:
another tech writer not happy with Apple’s approach
the author suggests Apple’s exclusivity attempt is a response to a Kindle/Amazon 90 day exclusivity arrangement which
He concludes