The big news this week was Apple taking a big step into the eduction sector by releasing a new updated version of iBooks that supports interactive digital textbooks on the iPad.

Apple also introduced iBooks Author, a new app for Mac for creating and publishing those fancy new digital textbooks, along with cookbooks, picture books, and other interactive books.

Filed under: Apple iPad | Tags: etextbooks, ibooks | 1 Comment »

Up until July 1st, Canada Day ironically (aka Dominion Day for all you anti-conformists out there), the Apple iBookstore was available for download in Canada, but the selection of books was limited to free classic ebooks in the public domain.

Now, several major publishers are selling titles in Canada on the iBookstore, including Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster.

Simon and Schuster has ebooks from authors like Stephen King, Jodi Picoult, Robin Sharma, Kathy Reichs, and Cassandra Clare.

Titles from HarperCollins include Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes and Any Known Blood; Tish Cohen’s The Truth about Delilah Blue; Gail Vaz-Oxlade’s Debt-Free Forever; a special edition of Katherine Govier’s The Ghost Brush; General Rick Hillier’s A Soldier First; Theo Fleury’s Playing with Fire and Shilpi Somaya Gowda’s Secret Daught.

The ebooks generally run between $12 and $18. Some initial reports from Canadians suggest that the same exact books cost less on the Kindle iPad app. If you live in Canada and have an Apple iPad handy, please post a comment to confirm or condemn any pricing difference between Kindle books and iBooks.

Filed under: Apple iPad, News | Tags: canada, ibooks, ipad | 1 Comment »

There’s an interesting article over at TUAW about how Apple lists features for the PDF support of iBooks that it doesn’t have, like highlighting and being able to flip pages like with ebooks.

There are some other features lacking in iBooks PDF support as well: you can’t add notes or use the built-in dictionary to look up words; you can’t copy and paste text; there’s bugs causing some images and tables to display incorrectly; a lot of folks are reporting problems with syncing PDFs with iTunes; and you can only view one PDF page at a time.

Overall the iBooks PDF support definitely seems rushed; iBooks treats PDFs as if they are images instead of ebooks. For the time being, it looks like other PDF programs like Goodreader are still the best option for displaying PDF files on the iPad.

An interesting fact about all of this is that TUAW has a screenshot of the sentence they are referencing from the iBooks description page that corroborates the missing features they point out.

But the funny thing is, less than 1 full day after the TUAW article was published, Apple updated the information to remove the words “highlighting” and “flip” on the iBooks description page.

I found the same article plagiarized on two other sites, so I guess an employee of Apple had plenty of opportunity to come across it and update the iBooks page. But stilll . . . They fixed that fast!

Filed under: Apple iPad | Tags: apps, ibooks, PDF | 2 Comments »

Version 1.1 of iBooks is now available for download from the iTunes store, and now works for any iPhone or iPod running the new iOS 4.

The iBooks app has been out since April when the iPad first launched. And until now it was exclusive to the Apple iPad; you couldn’t even see what ebooks they had to offer using a web browser, you had to use an iPad to access the iBookstore.

The 1.1 update also adds some new features to the iBooks application, giving it the ability to open and read PDF files, and add them to the virtual bookshelf.

Apple also took a lot of the good features from the other ebook reading apps and included them in the update, such as adding notes, bookmarking multiple pages, highlighting selected passages, and changing the background color. And now that iPhones and iPods are supproted by iBooks, the app will automatically synchronize your ebook library across those devices.

Here’s the complete list of feature improvements for the new version of iBooks from the iTunes’ description:

• In addition to iPad, iBooks is now available on any iPhone or iPod with iOS 4.
• Open and read PDF documents from Mail. PDF documents will be added to your library and appear on the PDF bookshelf. You can even search PDFs for words or phrases and bookmark your favorite pages.
• Take advantage of new ways to bookmark. In addition to highlighting a word or a passage, you can now also add notes or bookmark an entire page with the new page ribbon.
• Keep your bookmarks, notes, and your current page wirelessly in sync between iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch with the new automatic bookmark syncing feature.
• See your book pages in a new font, called Georgia.
• Read your books on white or sepia colored pages.
• Choose left or fully justified text layout from Settings.
• Read pages with greater ease by increasing to even larger font sizes.
• Enjoy greater stability and better performance.

Click here to check out our hands-on iBooks App Review for the Apple iPad.

Filed under: Apple iPad, News | Tags: apps, ibooks, ipad | 1 Comment »

The iBooks app for the iPad is Apple's new ebook reader. Read a review of its features, view screenshots, watch a video, and learn about the iBookstore.

Filed under: Apple iPad, Reviews | Tags: apps, ibooks | No Comments »