Apple's new iBooks Author aims to simplify e-book creation

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  • Reply 21 of 34
    auxioauxio Posts: 2,717member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by KazKam View Post


    So there's still no way to just view these interactive (text)books on OS X?



    Doesn't it seem odd that you can (actually, have to) create a book for iBooks on OS X, but to view it on OS X you have to export it to a PDF (and lose the interactivity), or open it in iBooks Author?



    Did I miss the announcement of iBooks, the reader, not the authoring tool, for OS X?



    Bingo! This is my biggest annoyance, not being able to read books on _all_ of my Apple devices.



    Not having a reader app for Windows I can understand, but not having one for Mac OS X is inexcusable.
  • Reply 22 of 34
    auxioauxio Posts: 2,717member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


    They want you to buy an iPad. Desktop computers have been the same since 1983. That's not the future. It's a dead end.



    I'd imagine Apple will never release an iBooks for OS X. OS XI, sure, but not OS X.



    Got it. They can't lock down content on Mac OS X quite as well as they can iOS, so the spin is now that it's a dead end.
  • Reply 23 of 34
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by auxio View Post


    Got it. They can't lock down content on Mac OS X quite as well as they can iOS, so the spin is now that it's a dead end.



    Spin? You really think you'll be using a mouse in five years? Physical keyboard maybe, but mouse? Ha! Multitouch is the future. Period.
  • Reply 24 of 34
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


    Spin? You really think you'll be using a mouse in five years? Physical keyboard maybe, but mouse? Ha! Multitouch is the future. Period.



    not sure quite what the conclusion to draw from this is, my macbook trackpad allows multitouch, heck even my mouse supports two finger swipes etc now, not that hard to extend multitouch but retain a "desktop device" format, without getting my fingers all over the screen
  • Reply 25 of 34
    auxioauxio Posts: 2,717member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


    Spin? You really think you'll be using a mouse in five years? Physical keyboard maybe, but mouse? Ha! Multitouch is the future. Period.



    It's just as easy to swipe my finger across the trackpad of my MacBook Pro as it is across my iPad. Or pinch zoom, etc. There's absolutely no reason iBooks can't work with a trackpad. Or a magic mouse.



    This has to do with content control, plain and simple. No way to screen share in iBooks on iOS, no way to read it on Mac OS X, means you can only see it on an iOS device screen.
  • Reply 26 of 34
    envirogenvirog Posts: 188member
    Amazing!!!
  • Reply 27 of 34
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by EnviroG View Post


    Amazing!!!



    Yes really amazing. Yet again Apple have introduced innovative disruptive technology which yet again initially underwhelms much of the media and Wall Street, who as usual completely misunderstand, fail to grasp and underestimate the possible market and long term financial benefits for Apple.



    Apple have transformed education and the market is potentially billions of units! There is a global market of more than 2 billion under 25s! There are already over 1,000 Universities involved in iTunes U, publishing content, Soon every University and higher education colleges (globally 10s of thousands) will have to be involved or fall way behind their competitors. Similarly most schools will have to be involved - hundreds of thousands, if not millions globally. iBooks Author provides them all with easy to use tools to produce their own content.



    Every student who owns an iPad will enjoy huge advantages over those that don't as well as having a more enjoyable and fulfilling educational experience. This will drive rapid adoption across the globe



    With iBooks Author Apple are also creating a completely new market, democratising publishing, making it available to every aspiring author, poet, magazine publisher and creative designer in the same way that the internet democratised journalism allowing anybody to publish their own blogs.



    This is the greatest advance in publishing since the invention of printing 500 years ago!



    This is as big and significant for education, books, magazines and publishing as iTunes was/is for music.
  • Reply 28 of 34
    nvidia2008nvidia2008 Posts: 9,262member
    I've spent some time ruminating at the beach and just got back after a bite to eat. This is massive. The textbook stuff is just the "hook" for Apple to push the iPad... Which is of course great, but... this is



    Hypercard for iPad



    This is massive. I haven't felt this way since I first saw Authorware and Macromedia Director in action.



    This is huge.



    Books? You ain't seen nothing yet. Publishing? Yeah, if you would like to call the Sistine Chapel just a church.



    The next App/Book/Whatever iGold Rush has begun. And I am f***ng not going to miss it this time. No. Bl**dy. Way.



    But I also remember the fable of the turtle and the hare. Or, "May The Best Pet Win" in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.



    Buckle up people, it's iPad all the way through to 2015. With Retina Display, there will be no more doubt of it's reading benefits.
  • Reply 29 of 34
    nvidia2008nvidia2008 Posts: 9,262member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by auxio View Post


    It's just as easy to swipe my finger across the trackpad of my MacBook Pro as it is across my iPad. Or pinch zoom, etc. There's absolutely no reason iBooks can't work with a trackpad. Or a magic mouse.



    This has to do with content control, plain and simple. No way to screen share in iBooks on iOS, no way to read it on Mac OS X, means you can only see it on an iOS device screen.



    Apple sells 3x as many iPads as Macs. Obviously Apple wants to sell as many iPads as possible. It's not a charity, after all. But also, they want to eject the legacy baggage of the Mac.



    But in this way. Macs --> Content Creation, iPad --> Content Consumption & Creation, iPhone --> OSX Everywhere?



    World domination, by their measure.
  • Reply 30 of 34
    sirozhasirozha Posts: 801member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SSquirrel View Post


    So open the book in iBooks Author to read it on the Mac. The app is free. Really they just need to add support for iBooks to Preview and have done.



    You can't open an ePub book in iBooks Author. You can't even export into ePub from iBooks Author. You can insert text from Pages or MS Word into iBooks Author (good luck on preserving the formatting) and then export into the new format (.ibooks). You can also save it in the iBooks Author native format (.iba). So, for authors who have a feature book as plain text, this would work. For those who are going to write their entire book in iBook Author, this would work as well. For those who want to convert their existing document into ePub, iBooks Author is the wrong tool - it simply does not support ePub as the source or the destination.



    Unfortunately, even though iBooks Author can export into the .ibooks format, it cannot import from the .ibooks or read the .ibooks format. You could possibly convert of your MS Word files into the .iba format and then save another copy as the export to .ibooks (to be readable on the iPad), but this is a very convoluted solution.



    All of the above means to me that I will stick with the ePub format. I am going to use the following tools: Calibre for converting other formats into ePub, Sigil for editing ePub files and saving them as ePub. Either Calibre or Sigil for reading ePub documents on my Mac. And finally, I will use iBooks 2 for reading these ePub documents on the iPad.
  • Reply 31 of 34
    sirozhasirozha Posts: 801member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by darrynlowe View Post


    Are you kidding me? EPUB has more support than any other platform. However Apple is using the latest version just like they started using the latest version of MPEG with version 4 and their competitors had to play catch up.



    Apple leads the way not goes status quo with crappy formats.



    There is no ePub support in iBooks Author.
  • Reply 32 of 34
    auxioauxio Posts: 2,717member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by nvidia2008 View Post


    Apple sells 3x as many iPads as Macs. Obviously Apple wants to sell as many iPads as possible. It's not a charity, after all. But also, they want to eject the legacy baggage of the Mac.



    And this is the problem for me. I can listen to my music and watch my videos on both my iOS device and my Mac, but I can't read my book on both. Apple has made money off of me on both devices, yet they artificially limit what I can do on one of them.
  • Reply 33 of 34
    sirozhasirozha Posts: 801member
    I'm posting a link to a good write-up on the new Apple's iBooks 2 format (.ibooks). It appears that even though it is based on ePub 3, it has so many proprietary extensions that it is basically a new proprietary format. Perhaps, ePub 3 is not up to the task of interactive books, but at least, iBooks 2 (the app) should be made compatible with ePub 3, and iBooks Author should have an option to create ePub 3 books. Then again, this means that people would be able to create eBooks in ePub 3 and distribute them outside of the Apple iBooks store as well as it would allow people to read these documents on non-Apple devices. So, I understand the business decision behind omitting ePub from iBooks Author, but I also realize that iBooks Author is not the tool that many people expected Apple would release. Authors who want to publish in the ePub 3 format will have to go with another title by another vendor.



    Perhaps, the new iBooks 2 format that Apple has developed (.ibooks) will one day become an industry standard, and Apple would be able to protect their profits by publishing books in the iBooks 2 format with DRM. However, this is wishful thinking at this point. What we have witnessed is a major step by Apple to break away from a standardized format and introduce a proprietary format. Whether it's a good step for the industry or not is up to your own judgment.



    http://www.baldurbjarnason.com/notes...xtbook-format/
  • Reply 34 of 34
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by auxio View Post


    And this is the problem for me. I can listen to my music and watch my videos on both my iOS device and my Mac, but I can't read my book on both. Apple has made money off of me on both devices, yet they artificially limit what I can do on one of them.



    No, you can read ePub and PDF files on your Mac. You can't read the ones from the iBooks Store, but you can read any Kindle or un-DRM'd file in both places.



    It's just like how you can buy and listen to WMA music on the Mac but not the iPad.



    I'm not saying that Apple SHOULD keep preventing reading, I'm saying that your point isn't valid as written. I want Apple to throw rich-content, pretty UI iBook support into Preview as much as the next guy.
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