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This is a great little accessory for travel—it has four USB ports (for the one it uses), so you should have room for any USB device you need to plug in.
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Rarely will you hear about Apple’s success without the mention of Steve Jobs’ meticulous business practices, his unrelenting need for perfection, and his…
I have a bunch of chores this weekend. Grace broke the snowblower, so I have to fix or replace that and I have some other indoor projects to do. And, I hear there is some football on, too!
It is great to be back in Vermont!
Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!
Your Kibbles & Bytes team,
Don, Kali & Seth
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_Dear Friends,_
Whew…I am back in the Green Mountains again after a whirlwind trip that took me to California for meetings at Apple, Las Vegas for meetings at the Consumer Electronics Show and then on to New York City for meetings and the NRF’s Retail BIG show. I also visited our friends at Tekserve in Manhattan and the newest Apple store at Grand Central Station.
My visit to Cupertino was very interesting as I attended meeting of the Apple Reseller Advisory Board, of which I am very proud to be a member. Then, Hapy met me in Cupertino so that we could present our 2011 Business Review to some of the Apple folks. The projector died just as we started our presentation, so Hapy and I had to do a little song and dance before we told them about our successes, challenges and plans for 2012. It was a great opportunity to give the presentation and answer the questions, but it was also a worthwhile exercise for us to put together the concise Keynote presentation. Jan and Stephanie did a great job in putting that together for us.
One impression I left with from my visit to the Apple Campus was that Apple is bustling! I have never seen such a beehive of activity in all of my visits to Cupertino. There is a lot of work going on and I am very bullish on the future of Apple!
CES was the Apple show even though Apple was not there. If it wasn’t accessories for Apple products, it was copies of Apple products or it was copies of Apple’s approach to products. For a company that does not exhibit at CES, the show was completely dominated by Apple. Some of the highlights for me were the super thin OLED displays, seemingly paper thin and with brilliant colors, the international pavilion overflowing with vendors from overseas and an amazing assortment of products straight out of the science fiction books of my youth.
The show in NYC was all about retail and we talked with vendors about software, hardware, security and training. Our friends at Tekserve were gracious in showing us around. I was very impressed at how great their store looks and the level of expertise and enthusiasm at one of the original, biggest and most successful Apple Specialists. What is simply amazing is that Tekserve is thriving despite being surrounded by five Apple stores including the big one at Grand Central Station. I was not that impressed with that Apple store, which while it was crowded, seemed broken up with a lot of dead-ends.
It is cold here in Vermont but it sure beats living out of a suitcase!
At yesterday’s Education Event at the Guggenheim Museum in NYC, Apple, via Phil Schiller, senior vice president of marketing, announced some new apps centered around the use of iPad in schools. The move is not really a surprise, as Apple has been rumored to have some plans in the works to take on the use of standard textbooks.
Working with top textbook companies, including Pearson, McGraw-Hill and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Apple debuted “*iBooks 2*”:http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=19XpSnZWhPI&offerid=146261&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&RD_PARM1=http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ibooks/id364709193?mt=8%2526uo%253D6%2526partnerId%253D30 and “*iBooks Author,*”:http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=19XpSnZWhPI&offerid=146261&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&RD_PARM1=http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ibooks-author/id490152466?mt=12%2526uo%253D6%2526partnerId%253D30 part of a newly-revamped “*iTunes U.*”:http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=19XpSnZWhPI&offerid=146261&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&RD_PARM1=http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/itunes-u/id490217893?mt=8%2526uo%253D6%2526partnerId%253D30 iBooks 2 and iTunes U are available for download now in the iTunes Store and iBooks Author is available now in the Mac App Store.
iBooks 2 features textbooks available for download for $14.99 or less.
From Apple:
bq. “The iBookstore offers high school textbooks on topics such as algebra, biology, chemistry, and geometry from McGraw-Hill and Pearson to customers in the United States. Textbooks from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt are coming soon. Students will experience gorgeous full-screen textbooks on their iPads that feature text as well as interactive animations, diagrams, photos, videos, 3D objects, and more. With iBook textbooks, students can highlight text, take notes, search for content, use study cards, and find glossary definitions.”
With the iTunes U app, users have access to “complete courses from leading universities” and can take classes online. With the iBooks Author app, one can now create “stunning textbooks, history books and more” for iPad.
bq. “iBooks Author features Apple-designed templates with a wide variety of layouts. It’s easy to add photo galleries, videos, 3D objects, Keynote presentations, lesson reviews, and more. Preview your book on iPad before submitting it to the iBookstore for purchase or as a free download.”
To get started with iBooks Author, you must do the following:
* Create an iBookstore seller account.
* Download iTunes Producer, the application that submits your book to the iBookstore.
* Have an active contract. For more information, sign in to iTunes Connect and go to Contracts, Tax, and Banking.
* Create a sample book.
Then, you can publish your book to the iBookstore for all to see.
For more information, visit the product pages or click through to the apps above.
“*iBooks 2*”:http://www.apple.com/education/ibooks-textbooks/
“*iBooks Author*”:http://www.apple.com/ibooks-author/
“*iTunes U*”:http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/
Apple declared that it is officially in the ring regarding educational material—notably digital textbooks and an expansion of online class offerings—and the media is buzzing about what this means for the future of school resources as we know them.
With iBooks 2, iTunes U and perhaps most significantly, iBooks Author, Apple wants to shift the educational landscape from analog books and physical classrooms to the digital world of interactive learning and online classes. (For the record, online classes and resources in iTunes U aren’t new, but the app has been updated and will benefit greatly from resources created in iBooks Author.)
So what are people saying about all of this? Well, the potential is huge, and reactions have varied, since it’s still early. These are the responses I found most insightful and indicative of what this transition could mean to society and education as a whole:
“Apple’s product is big on promise and will, in the end, kill the sale of paper textbooks … How long it takes is the million dollar question today, but knowing the speed at which Apple forces the paradigm to shift, I doubt the textbook publishers will survive much longer just selling dead tree product.” -John Biggs, TechCrunch
“I was able to recreate a feature spread from the January issue of Macworld in iBooks Author in less than an hour.” -Serenity Caldwell, Macworld
“Giving the teacher an Apple just got a whole new meaning.” -Jason Gilbert, Huffington Post
“It has the potential of doing to the publishing industry what Apple did to the music industry. Although Apple did not invent the MP3 player, they re-invented it and then created the iTunes store, which with the iPod, became the #1 vehicle for digital music distribution … Now Apple has a chance to re-invent eBooks by delivering a complete eco system of hardware, software development tools for creating next generation interactive eBooks, a publishing and distribution medium and a powerful hardware device for delivering this optimized content.” -Tim Bajarin, Tech.pinions
“iBooks 2 is no doubt a powerful tool—I wish I had it in college. This isn’t a luddite rant against the cotton gin, as I fully appreciate the positive impact that digital textbooks could have on learning. But I’m more fearful that the amount of pure learning and knowledge retention will be replaced by flashy videos and loud graphics.” -Matt Burns, TechCrunch
“Movies load quickly, page turns are smooth, and embedded animations work without a hitch. Images are particularly engaging, as most go full-screen with a tap, and also contain a number of other related images to swipe through as well.” -Nathan Ingraham, The Verge
“Make no mistake, this is a game changer. The real effects may take time to realize but Apple has just made it easy for anyone to publish. Before iBooks 2, you needed to find or generate content and then develop your own app, now all you need is the content.” -Jeff Cohen, The Textbook Guru
“I was with him in June this past year, and we were talking about some of the benchmarks, and some of the things that we were trying to do together … This was his vision, this was his idea, and it all had to do with the iPad.” -Terry McGraw, CEO, McGraw-Hill via c|net
What are your thoughts on what all of this means? Is it too crazy to think that an iPad would replace a physical textbook? Is it time for us to take our luddite thinking and move into the 21st century? Tell us on our blog!