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Apple to discontinue iBooks Author in July, plans the same for iTunes U in 2021
Rayz2016 said:
Nope.JWSC said:
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.Fatman said: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.
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. 🤦♂️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.
