iBooks, iTunesU and Authors

I'm blogging again, using an app that allows me to just get my thoughts down. I find it all too easy to get distracted. I think of something that would make a good blog post, then I don't write it down there and then. A few minutes later my brain has moved on to something else, and I have completely forgotten what I was thinking about with no hope of being able to remember.

The stunningly simple, but in a way very deep and clever app that I now use is called 'PlainText' But this post isn't about that, so I'll leave that for another day.

Apple (yes my favourite tech company and all things iMaker) has released a revolutionary new offering to the education market in a triumvirate of apps and an ecosystem update. There is an updated version of iBooks which takes advantage of very rich multimedia books and textbooks. A new mobile version of the superb free educational podcast section of iTunes called iTunesU, which allows full lesson plans and courses to be constructed. This brings together all the elements of study, together with a new (Mac only) app called iBooks Author which allows you to create amazing multimedia interactive experiences.

All of these things are completely free!

So what makes this a revolution? Surely we've had books before, whats so revolutionary about electronic books? Well apart from being able to carry every single book from every course on your iPad instead of breaking your back carrying around lots of very expensive bits of dead tree, they are linked to your courseware including teacher notes delivered through iTunesU, they are searchable and include dictionary definitions for those whose first language is not English, your notes exist forever and get synced to iCloud, and as you study flashcards are created automatically for revision. There is a lot more, I am literally just skimming the surface.

In all honesty, the real revolution is that now anyone can create very rich mobile media experiences. It is no longer limited to big companies, with big budgets, and big apps. The revolution is what people will do with it.

Some have criticised Apple for having a special tool that creates a special book that can only be viewed in all its glory on an iPad. I'm sorry but I fail to see the problem, the way a book designer works won't change. They currently write the text for a book in a text editor, they paint in a paint package, they edit video in a video editing package, all the while building up a folder full of assets. They currently then drag and drop those assets into the software they use to create electronic books for Amazon Kindle and PDFs. So iBooks Author is just another tool that electronic book makers can drag and drop their assets into.

Now think of an electronic book that is 1,000 times better, including HD video, interactive elements of HTML, simple keynote presentation elements allowing anyone to introduce interactivity into their electronic books without any coding knowledge needed, and even interactive 3D objects using an industry standard file format. What's not to like?

Apple have also been criticised for their licence agreement, although this has since been reworded. It simply states that if you want to sell your book and therefore have Apple give you money you have to sell the iBook in the iBooks store. Where else would you sell an iBook? Apple will give you 70% of the proceeds, you'd be lucky to get 18% from Amazon.  If you want to give your book away, you can do whatever you like with it. If you want to sell an iBook in the iBooks store and a PDF version in another books store, go for it.

Already there are jobs appearing asking for skills building digital assets for electronic books, including skills using Google Sketchup which is the favourite tool used to create 3D objects for interactive iBooks.

Apple uses a modified version of the open ePub3 standard which they have submitted back to the maintainers. The books can already be output in enhanced ePub3, PDF, and the assets used to create the book in ePub2 using Pages and a free ePub template (available on Apple's website) that can be altered to your hearts content. This then covers every electronic book format and device available.

Putting these tools in the hands of the ordinary person is the revolution!