Apple unveils iBooks 2 for digital textbooks, self-pub app

From CNET News.com: Apple unveiled today iBooks 2, a "new textbook experience" for the iPad and the company's attempt to bury traditional schoolbooks.

"Clearly, no printed textbook can compete," Roger Rosner, an Apple vice president, said during a press event this morning in New York's Guggenheim Museum.

The company also announced iBooks Author, a free app for self-publishing e-books, and improvements to the iTunes U app that puts entire courses online and help instructors post syllabi and messages for students.

Before unveiling the plan, Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, noted the sad state of current textbooks. They aren't portable, searchable, current, or interactive, he said.

"We want to reinvent the textbook," Schiller said. He also noted that more than 20,000 educational apps are already available for the iPad and that more than 1.5 million iPads are already in use in schools of all sorts.

Rosner showed off some of the potential improvements: text with embedded movies... rich, engaging layouts...portrait/landscape mode switches for more or fewer graphics....the ability to tap on glossary terms...searching for keywords throughout a text...review questions with immediate feedback...highlighting with your finger...pop-up spaces for note taking...instant study cards.

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