I was a big fan of iWeb. Made building modest websites fun and easy. .
Funny you mentioned iWeb. That is the first thing that came to mind when I got the email from Apple today.
I use iBooks Author since it came out in 2012 and published 28 books, with the exception of one, all in the Enhanced iBook format.
I can't believe that Apple is doing this messed-up decision again. Who is running the show? Remember the debacle with Final Cut Pro X that cost Apple the lead in the video editing? The disaster upgrade of Pages, when they downgraded the app and took five years to come close to a feature parity of the old Pages 4? And yes, same thing with iWeb. A great Apple product that was just canceled with no replacement.
Now the same disaster with iBooks Author. Pretending that Pages will be a substitute is a joke. No mention of the interactive features or the Enhanced iBooks format at all.
Even if a future Pages will have some features, what is the rush? That makes no sense. Why not release the new Pages with the updated features and announce then the demise of iBooks Author. What happened to the Apple policy of not talking about future products or updates. The announcement and the support page doesn't say anything about the interactive features, nothing. No encouraging word, not a single word (that I could find) to the authors and publishers that this feature will still be possible. Maybe some marketing genius figured out to release that strange information now so people can let off their steam based on speculation, and when the final hammer comes down, it will not be that big of PR disaster.
I'm afraid, this announcement from today is just a smokescreen to hide the bigger, more painful decision.
Apple seems to discontinue the Enhanced iBooks format.
The article title should more accurately say Apple is transitioning these products to Pages and Apple Classrooms, respectively. So it’s not a fail - but a change.
Very much agree. IMO, this is incompetent messaging on Apple’s part. That AppleInsider chose to convey the changes as a discontinuance as opposed to a migration of capabilities (I’m not blaming AI for this) says it all. It’s a negative storyline that doesn’t have to be.
The iBooks Author narrative could have been, “We are moving full authoring and publishing capability to Pages. Authors will now have all the capabilities of Pages and book authoring in one convenient and familiar tool.” The change could have been portrayed in a positive manner. But no. 🤦♂️
Nope.
The Apple support document is called:
Transition from iBooks Author to Pages
The fact that AI decided to spin it as something else is hardly Apple’s fault.
The article title should more accurately say Apple is transitioning these products to Pages and Apple Classrooms, respectively. So it’s not a fail - but a change.
Very much agree. IMO, this is incompetent messaging on Apple’s part. That AppleInsider chose to convey the changes as a discontinuance as opposed to a migration of capabilities (I’m not blaming AI for this) says it all. It’s a negative storyline that doesn’t have to be.
The iBooks Author narrative could have been, “We are moving full authoring and publishing capability to Pages. Authors will now have all the capabilities of Pages and book authoring in one convenient and familiar tool.” The change could have been portrayed in a positive manner. But no. 🤦♂️
Nope.
The Apple support document is called:
Transition from iBooks Author to Pages
The fact that AI decided to spin it as something else is hardly Apple’s fault.
No. It's a fail. Apple cannot say we are moving full authoring and publishing capability to Pages because they are not. That claim makes as much sense as Adobe saying we are ending the availability of InDesign as you can use Microsoft Word in future to do you book publishing.
iBooks Author is a sophisticated multi-media authoring program, not a consumer-level word processing program that is yet to fully recover from being drastically gutted several years ago so it could work on iPads.
Just one example of the capability in iBooks Author that is not in Pages – glossary entries. This is a major interactive feature of iBooks Author. Another, is the inbuilt proofing to iPad before publishing.
In the email I received from Apple the best they can claim for Pages is that I can work on an iPad, (sure - multiple programs open including photo manipulation, text file sources etc that require two screens on a desktop Mac), collaborate on a shared book (not a professional design approach), and use an Apple Pencil (to do what?). As a professional book designer (i.e. one who makes a living from that activity) those are consumer electronic user features.
For professional users of iBooks Author this is a replay of the Aperture 'discontinuation'. Apple's pitch then was Transition from Aperture to Photos. It really was – as a professional user of Aperture I got an email from Apple to that end? That made just as much sense as their 'Transition from iBooks Author to Pages' page does today.
At best we might see the 'professional' elements of iBooks Author added to Pages over the next year or two making this a replay of the Final Cut Pro fiasco, at worst it is a replay of the Aperture 'discontinuation'.
Regardless it is just another example of Apple's ineptitude in dealing with its professional user base.
The article title should more accurately say Apple is transitioning these products to Pages and Apple Classrooms, respectively. So it’s not a fail - but a change.
Very much agree. IMO, this is incompetent messaging on Apple’s part. That AppleInsider chose to convey the changes as a discontinuance as opposed to a migration of capabilities (I’m not blaming AI for this) says it all. It’s a negative storyline that doesn’t have to be.
The iBooks Author narrative could have been, “We are moving full authoring and publishing capability to Pages. Authors will now have all the capabilities of Pages and book authoring in one convenient and familiar tool.” The change could have been portrayed in a positive manner. But no. ߤ榺wj;♂️
Nope.
The Apple support document is called:
Transition from iBooks Author to Pages
The fact that AI decided to spin it as something else is hardly Apple’s fault.
No. It's a fail. Apple cannot say we are moving full authoring and publishing capability to Pages because they are not. That claim makes as much sense as Adobe saying we are ending the availability of InDesign as you can use Microsoft Word in future to do you book publishing.
iBooks Author is a sophisticated multi-media authoring program, not a consumer-level word processing program that is yet to fully recover from being drastically gutted several years ago so it could work on iPads.
Just one example of the capability in iBooks Author that is not in Pages – glossary entries. This is a major interactive feature of iBooks Author. Another, is the inbuilt proofing to iPad before publishing.
In the email I received from Apple the best they can claim for Pages is that I can work on an iPad, (sure - multiple programs open including photo manipulation, text file sources etc that require two screens on a desktop Mac), collaborate on a shared book (not a professional design approach), and use an Apple Pencil (to do what?). As a professional book designer (i.e. one who makes a living from that activity) those are consumer electronic user features.
For professional users of iBooks Author this is a replay of the Aperture 'discontinuation'. Apple's pitch then was Transition from Aperture to Photos. It really was – as a professional user of Aperture I got an email from Apple to that end? That made just as much sense as their 'Transition from iBooks Author to Pages' page does today.
At best we might see the 'professional' elements of iBooks Author added to Pages over the next year or two making this a replay of the Final Cut Pro fiasco, at worst it is a replay of the Aperture 'discontinuation'.
Regardless it is just another example of Apple's ineptitude in dealing with its professional user base.
I confess I miss many Apple applications that have come and gone. I went as far as creating VMs of every Mac OSX based set up I ever had as I moved on to a new Mac, complete with all the installed software. So I can load up a Mac I had many years ago as a VM on my iMac 5K 27" and time steps back. I am in Sierra and can run iWeb and iWebsite and have such fun ... except, it is pure nostalgia and of no practical use. Same with Aperture, I loved it but compared to Capture One 20 it is utterly useless by comparison. Of course, that doesn't mean Aperture could not have continued on to become as good or better than Capture One 20 (which has many issues itself). Or that iWeb could not have progressed also. It's hard to know. Still, I suspect Google has abandoned far more than Apple and don't get me started on Adobe's various web development applications they abandoned. The FCP 'fiasco' is a complex issue, FCP wasn't abandoned but changed drastically and that ended up being improved dramatically over time but for a while, your adjective stands. I was creating national TV shows at the time and yes it was a shock.
I was a big fan of iWeb. Made building modest websites fun and easy. Push a button and Apple hosted. As a teacher this made the online portion of my teaching super easy. Then they abandoned it. Published my first book last year using iBooks Author. Bingo, thanks for playing. At he very least they could have spun these off as they did other products. One of the biggest selling points of Apple over others has always been that its fun and easy to do stuff that’s complicated outside the walled garden. Wish they’d not leave that behind.
Yep I built two sites in iWeb. It was pretty basic, but if you tried hard enough you could make it your own. I’ve been hoping ever since that they’d bring it back; it had lots of promise. Could have borrowed a lot from keynote and been really kickass. Maybe someday they’ll make us all very happy and bring back comparable products... and WiFi routers.. it just seems like if you’re going to have a text editor, a number cruncher, a presentation maker, why not continue to round it all out? With their cloud storage options always growing seems like an obvious play. But I guess that’s why I’m not a CEO.
I was a big fan of iWeb. Made building modest websites fun and easy. .
Funny you mentioned iWeb. That is the first thing that came to mind when I got the email from Apple today.
I use iBooks Author since it came out in 2012 and published 28 books, with the exception of one, all in the Enhanced iBook format.
I can't believe that Apple is doing this messed-up decision again. Who is running the show? Remember the debacle with Final Cut Pro X that cost Apple the lead in the video editing? The disaster upgrade of Pages, when they downgraded the app and took five years to come close to a feature parity of the old Pages 4? And yes, same thing with iWeb. A great Apple product that was just canceled with no replacement.
Now the same disaster with iBooks Author. Pretending that Pages will be a substitute is a joke. No mention of the interactive features or the Enhanced iBooks format at all.
Even if a future Pages will have some features, what is the rush? That makes no sense. Why not release the new Pages with the updated features and announce then the demise of iBooks Author. What happened to the Apple policy of not talking about future products or updates. The announcement and the support page doesn't say anything about the interactive features, nothing. No encouraging word, not a single word (that I could find) to the authors and publishers that this feature will still be possible. Maybe some marketing genius figured out to release that strange information now so people can let off their steam based on speculation, and when the final hammer comes down, it will not be that big of PR disaster.
I'm afraid, this announcement from today is just a smokescreen to hide the bigger, more painful decision.
Apple seems to discontinue the Enhanced iBooks format.
I get the consternation that this causes for users of iBooks Author because having a tool that you use hit end of live always sucks. The painful reality is that this is happening because its usage doesn’t warrant the resources needed for development. If it had some massive user base then it would very much keep going. There is no PR disaster here, I’m guessing post people were surprised to find out iBooks Author wasn’t already canceled or surprised to find out that it even existed.
I wonder if this means that WWDC will see a big update to Pages to add the features from iBooks Author. As someone who is on Pages all the time I would love to see that.
What killed iBooks Author was actually pretty straightforward: it was aimed at teachers who wanted to create their own textbooks (originally), but beyond that you explicitly couldn't use it to produce a book sellable on Kindle. The "fix" for this might arrive in Pages, but I suspect Vellum will continue to be the self-pub-authors-who-want-to-get-paid's platform of choice.
Teachers would love to write their own textbooks, but that idea never caught fire because of the incredible level of bureaucracy schools have.
As for iTunes U, I took a couple of courses from it and appreciated it as a lifelong learner, but for reasons I don't know about it failed to catch on (insert snarky comment about how many people have become fact/learning-resistant these days ... here!). Classroom will probably be a better place for iTunes U, but public access to it was nice to have even if only occasionally used. I hope Podcasts and other online learning outlets like YouTube will continue to be great resources for people who still want to learn stuff they weren't taught in schools.
As for the moron who suggested "Apple can't do services" -- it's only the single most-profitable source of income for the company, and second only to the iPhone in terms of overall revenue. People who can't see past the end of their own nose are the worst.
The vast majority of that income and revenue is derived from App Store downloads, followed by Apple Music subscriptions. The contribution of the remaining services are miniscule.
Comments
I use iBooks Author since it came out in 2012 and published 28 books, with the exception of one, all in the Enhanced iBook format.
I can't believe that Apple is doing this messed-up decision again. Who is running the show? Remember the debacle with Final Cut Pro X that cost Apple the lead in the video editing? The disaster upgrade of Pages, when they downgraded the app and took five years to come close to a feature parity of the old Pages 4? And yes, same thing with iWeb. A great Apple product that was just canceled with no replacement.
Now the same disaster with iBooks Author. Pretending that Pages will be a substitute is a joke. No mention of the interactive features or the Enhanced iBooks format at all.
Even if a future Pages will have some features, what is the rush? That makes no sense. Why not release the new Pages with the updated features and announce then the demise of iBooks Author. What happened to the Apple policy of not talking about future products or updates. The announcement and the support page doesn't say anything about the interactive features, nothing. No encouraging word, not a single word (that I could find) to the authors and publishers that this feature will still be possible. Maybe some marketing genius figured out to release that strange information now so people can let off their steam based on speculation, and when the final hammer comes down, it will not be that big of PR disaster.
I'm afraid, this announcement from today is just a smokescreen to hide the bigger, more painful decision.
Apple seems to discontinue the Enhanced iBooks format.
Transition from iBooks Author to Pages