“Apple Inc. is expected Thursday morning to unveil a new digital-textbook service at an event in New York,” Jessica E. Vascellaro reports for The Wall Street Journal.
“The announcement is expected to focus on tools for building digital textbooks, people familiar with the matter have said, as Apple aims to spur the creation of content tailored to iPads,” Vascellaro reports. “The Cupertino, Calif., company is expected to target a broad range of schools and publishers with the offering.”
Vascellaro reports, “Apple co-founder Steve Jobs had long complained about the grip that incumbent educational publishers had on learning. He argued that the system could be improved by developing cheaper education materials… An Apple senior vice president, Eddy Cue, its frontman on media matters, is expected to be on stage during Thursday’s [10am ET] event at the Guggenheim Museum.”
Read more in the full article here.
Hopefully via Pages ’12 (with iWork ’12), along with mac iWork + iCloud integration…..
I would love to see iWork iCloud integration. One caveat I see however is the limited feature set on the iOS apps. I am not necessarily hoping that the iOS versions exactly match the OS X ones, but the problem is that if you create a document on the Mac taking advantage of formatting options and port it to your iPad, it will remove non-compatible formatting. This could cause some frustration, as it did for many at the launch of the iOS apps.
Two ways I see around it: 1) if not total compatibility, then a way (through versions or something) to recognize a document having been created on a Mac, edited on an iPad/iPhone, and formatting restored on the Mac. Seems impossible to me.
2) A folder, like iPhoto has photo stream, call it “document stream” which is specifically for documents intended to be worked on in both iOS and Mac. These documents would have only the iOS editing capabilities as long as they were in that folder, and only that folder would automatically sync. That way there would be no surprises when switching platforms and no lost work. At the project’s end, I’d you want to do something on the Mac that was not available, you just select the “move out of document stream” option. Otherwise, you create the look yiu want with the options available (including the limited font set), and select print.
Complexity has never been Apple’s watchword. So what you’ll get is a watered down version of iWork on iOS with limited formatting compatibility. You’re not going to get the full deck in iOS.
As for editing documents over the web, there’s not a chance in hell that’ll happen as it’ll be contrary to iCloud sync which pushes changes to documents to all devices simultaneously.
I never really thought we’d see the full iWork on iOS. And I certainly don’t expect online editing either. That was the problem with the web apps idea from the start, they’re only good when you have internet access. That’s why the PUSH system is so great.
What would be workable is a folder or selection of iOS compatible Pages, Numbers and Keynote documents on the Mac that is synced with iCloud automatically, but as a result is subject to the watered-down restrictions of the iPad — even when working on the Mac. That way, when you get up from your desk, walk to the car with the iPad, pick it up in the waiting room, you will find the exact document you were working on with no alterations in iOS.
The convoluted way you have to move documents between Pages for Mac and Pages for iOS now is a tad frustrating: the iTunes method is ridiculous. Emailing it to yourself… REALLY?!? Uploading/Downloading via iCloud.com is… eh, but so passé. Something more elegant HAS to be possible.
I sure hope it’s more than just some event for a glorified Pages feature. Apple better put that damn reserve cash to some good use if it’s not going to give it to shareholders. Maybe institute some educational discounts to help get more iPads into schools and into students hands. Apple has got such an opportunity as a first mover and I hope they don’t screw it up.
I’m really hoping for good authoring tools. There is *nothing* out there available for creating interactive scientific etexts that doesn’t require a team of tech specialists.