July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Apple is widely expected to reveal a new iOS7 on June 10 at its Worldwide Developer Conference. And there are some big changes in store.

Scott Forstall and his love of user interface elements that mimic the “real world” is long gone. Jony Ive, the design genius behind the iMac, iPhone, iPad, and pretty much everything Apple in the last decade, was appointed to overhaul and comprehensively redo Apple’s most important crown jewel in October of last year.

Now, it appears, he’s close to complete.

Ive has been leading a thorough revamp of the iPhone UI in preparation for the upcoming iOS 7 release, and according to 9to5 Mac, he’s also most done. The changes are significant, described as “black, white, and flat all over.”

That’s a massive change from the original colorful, shiny, semi-transparent iOS development language, which tries hard to make virtual controls and objects look and feel and act like real controls and objects. You see that today in the drop shadows behind icons, the compass interface of Find My iPhone, and the physical button-like Apple toggle controls:

Source: John Koetsier

iPhone UI design

Forstall, the former iPhone chief who was cut from the Apple team after refusing to apologize for the Apple Maps disaster, was a big fan of skeuomorphic design: design that connects the new to the old with decorative but — some might say — unnecessary elements.

Those “some” would include Ive.

Apple’s Notes app is an example of skeuomorphic design, with faux leather at the top and the virtual remnants of virtual torn-off pages at the top. On iPhone, iBooks, Find My Friends, and Newstand are examples, with with fake bookshelves, fake stitching, fake leather, and fake shadows.

For a designer like Jony Ive, who has spent his life stripping away excess, simplifying relentlessly, there is something inherently dishonest about skeuomorphic design. It’s something of a lie … because there is no wood in your iPhone, no dead animal skin on the screen, and no paper to be torn off. And, he’s been quoted as saying that software designs built with physical metaphors do not stand the test of time.

There are design elements in the iPhone’s user interface language that are already trending away from the original color and connection to material controls.

Safari and Mail, for instance, have no parchment, no leather, no torn-off page remnants:

There are no images yet of iOS7, which will be one of Apple’s most closely-guarded secrets up to WWDC. Changes reportedly include dropping the textured, cloth-like background of Notifications Center in favor of a flat grey, and the shiny, transparent lock screen will lose its luster for a flatter, less evocative interface. You would have to think that a detail-oriented design-obsessed Ive will have comprehensively altered the appearance of almost everything in the iOS design language, but we’ll know more on June 10 when Apple reveals it.

In all this rush to get rid of skeuomorphic design, there’s one thing to remember.

Perhaps the iPhone was so transformative, so new, and so different, that skeuomorphism was a necessary first step in the evolution of its design language. And perhaps the virtual has now become so real … that now we don’t need it anymore.

photo credit: marcopako  via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Apple and U.S. book publishers conspired to limit e-book competition and break Amazon’s hold on the digital book market, the U.S. Department of Justice says.

The case, which was filed in April 2012, is finally coming to trial in June. And in new documents that the government filed, the attorney general paints Apple as the ringmaster. All of the other original codefendants, including Harper Collins, the Penguin Group, and Simon & Schuster, have already settled with the government, leaving Apple as the sole defendant.

As the saying goes, them’s fightin’ words. And Apple is fighting back.

“Apple has not ‘conspired’ with anyone, was not aware of any alleged ‘conspiracy’ by others, and never fixed prices,” the company stated in a reply to the suit last year.

The trial is set to begin on June 3.

Source: Dean Takahashi/VentureBeat

Apple CEO Tim Cook and iBooks

The DOJ is pointing to an email from Steve Jobs, in which he told Rupert Murdoch of News Corp to “throw in with Apple and see if we can all make a go of this to create a real mainstream e-books market at $12.99 and $14.99” as evidence to the contrary.

But Apple says that it was simply establishing the currently accepted agency model of pricing, in which publishers set the price and e-book stores simply sell at that price. That contrasts with the wholesale method of publishing, in which retailers buy books from publishers at whatever price they can negotiate and then sell the books to consumers at whatever price they wish. That is, of course, the model Amazon prefers.

Legal experts such as antitrust author and University of Hartford professor emeritus Dominick Armentano have said that Apple is likely to prevail, since the seller in an agency model market does not actual set any prices. In other words, if there was price-fixing in the agency model, it would have to be undertaken by the publishers themselves.

The bigger question here for Apple and its fans is how Apple used its power in mobile apps to strong-arm publishers such as Random House into agreeing with the deal. According to the DOJ filing, Apple blocked approval of an e-book app from Random House in 2010 until the publisher signed the agency deal.

That’s clearly dirty pool, and using power in what was then an almost all-powerful Apple smartphone ecosystem to influence — or compel — partner behavior in the ebook market.

Image credit (Tim Cook): Dean Takahashi/VentureBeat

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Guy Kawasaki is perhaps the consummate entrepreneur.

He’s built and sold three companies, invested in dozens more as a venture capitalist, still runs a few startups fairly actively, and worked for Apple in the early breakout years of its 1984-style fight against Big Brother (aka IBM). But he’s also a prolific writer, with books like The Art of the Start and Rules for Revolutionaries that have been must-reads for founders and intrapreneurs for years.

Put the two together, and you’ve got someone who budding authors should listen to about what it means to write  books in 2013. Especially if you actually want to sell any.

Kawasaki put all that entrepreneurial and authorial perspective into his latest book, Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur: How to Publish Your Book. APE came out recently on Kindle and is launching in dead tree format tomorrow. I’m about two-thirds of the way through the book, and spent some time chatting yesterday with Kawasaki about the changes he’s seeing in writing and publishing.

Short version? We ain’t in Kansas anymore.

VentureBeat: What’s your main reading modality today?

Kawasaki: I use a Nexus 7, with the actual books in Kindle Reader. For me the 7″ format is the largest format that when I fall asleep and it hits my face, it doesn’t hurt. Full-size tablets … not so much.

VentureBeat: Talk to me about the timing of the book … author, publisher, entrepreneur. There’s something going on here that’s new.

Kawasaki: I had a very bad experience … I recently self-published a book called What the Plus. I had this idea that self-publishing was easy — bring your Word file to Kindle and you’re done – but, especially if you’re writing nonfiction and have tables, bullets, lists, images … it’s extremely non-trivial.

So I thought that if I, with with my background in technology, was having a hard time, others would too. And I wanted to help.

VentureBeat: Of course, it’s not just the technical bits … you’ve got three parts there — author, publisher, and entrepreneur. Is the entrepreneur piece the toughest for most authors?

Kawasaki: For a novelist the publishing is not hard. For nonfiction it is, but even then you can find someone who can do it.

But the marketing part … I guess you could hire someone, but it takes nine to twelve months of concerted effort to build a platform. Which means having lots of followers, and fans, and subscribers … and that has to be started the moment the you begin.

VentureBeat: And on the publishing part …

Kawasaki: I really want authors to understand that traditional publishers used to provide two to three main sources of benefit:

First, they were a filter of what was good. Someone smart and talented picked what was good from what was crap, so the best stuff came to market. (I no longer believe that’s true, by the way. Now people go to Amazon, see 4 stars, click, and the book is bought.)

Second, they were very good at getting dead trees to retailers. The only problem is, there are far fewer retailers now.

So for an author today, you have to question whether it’s worthwhile to go through this rigamarole of finding a publisher — which takes maybe six months — and then be forced to wait another 12 months while your book winds its slow way through the massive publishing machine.

Now, maybe plan A is to find a traditional publisher, get a big advance, and and editor, and write the book. Almost no-one can do that. Plan B is to write it, upload it to Amazon, and make $2 out of every $3 the book takes in.

Plan C — which is a great plan, by the way — is to do plan B, and then, when your book is successful and being downloaded, go to plan A.

VentureBeat: You’ve done all three. What are you seeing with sales of your own books … digital vs paper?

Kawasaki: I’ve written 12 books now, and the best data I have is with Enchantment, where the ratio of print to ebooks is two to one.

There is a myth that more ebooks are sold than paper books, but generally speaking the total U.S. market for books is about $25B, and roughly 10 percent is ebooks. The place where ebooks really dominate is adult fiction.

I think that it will be 90 percent ebooks someday … but that’s not true today.

Venturebeat: Amazon is so dominant in digital publishing. Should you just focus on Amazon?

Kawasaki: For a novice author, the answer is probably yes: Amazon is roughly 80 percent of the action. The Nook, Apple’s iBooks store, and Kobo is the rest.

Plus, you do get some significant benefits if you go exclusive with Amazon, like the Kindle Direct Publishing program. It’s much simpler … if you’re successful, then go to the other platforms.

VentureBeat: About print … it seems sometimes that the book is the artifact, the souvenir, while authors are making much more revenue around it in terms of speaking, consulting … is that a good reason to write a book?

Kawasaki: I say it’s bad reason because it’s unlikely that most authors will make significant money.

I also believe that it’s bad karma. A book is an end in itself … if you think of a book as a means to an end, I just think that’s bad karma. For example, in a marketing sense, if you pretend you are on Amazon, and you’re seeing books by famous authors and you see your book — the Shmoe Way by Joe Shmoe from Schmoe Publishing — you have to ask why should anyone give a shiitake about my book?

No-one wakes up in the morning and says I’m going to give Joe more money, more business, more speaking opportunities. They don’t buy it to help you.

So the only way the book is successful if it’s helpful.

VentureBeat: One of the problems authors face when they publish themselves is pricing … how much is my baby, the book I’ve been working on for so many months, worth?

Kawasaki: Well, first you have to understand that pricing is witchcraft, not science. But there are some guidelines.

If you’re a novice novelist, go $0.99. After you’ve built some track record, you can bump it to $2.99.

For a non-fiction book, the sweet spot is $9.99. A hardcover would be $26, and you have to be lower to make people feel they’re getting a good deal when buying digital. But anything less, and people start thinking: how could it be worthwhile?

But there are some exceptions — if you’re an iOS developer and you write a book that’s going to help someone build the next Instagram … that book can cost $99.

(Laughing)

Try that the traditional route: go to a New York publisher and tell them you have a $50 iOS book … and then it takes 12 months to get it out, and it’s out of date before it’s ever published. Not going to work.

VentureBeat: Is today the best time ever to be an author?

Kawasaki: I don’t know if it’s the best ever in financial sense … but I would make the case that it’s the best ever in terms of independence. Today, publishing is pretty democratized.

photo credit: striatic via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Apple shook up its executive team yesterday, and one of the clear casualties is Scott Forstall (yes, of Maps and Siri fame). But there’s another reason Forstall is gone, and the clue is in the appointment of Jony Ive to a design position overseeing both software and hardware.

It all has to do with skeuomorphic design.

I’m guessing most of us didn’t have a clue what that was yesterday, but very likely many of us have encountered it and wondered about it in Apple products.

Skeuomorphic design is design that connects the new to the old with decorative but unnecessary elements. An example is Apple’s iCal app, which includes a faux-leather header with vestiges of ripped-off paper immediately below, as if we were all ripping paper pages off our computer monitors:

A similar example is Apple’s Notes app, with a little less leather but a little more rip:

One problem with skeuomorphic design is that it doesn’t fit Apple’s design aesthetic in so many other apps. For instance, Safari or Mail don’t have any leather or ripped off pages. For Safari, that could be understood, as there are no pre-technological antecedents: no-one had a web browser before the personal computer became ubiquitous. But mail had been invented … and yet Apple’s Mail app showed no design cues of parchment or inkwells and the like.

The overall experience led to a strange dichotomy of design, where sleek, functional apps such as Safari and QuickTime were matched side-by-side with frankly old-fashioned-looking apps. That was confusing from Apple, supposedly the high priest of design.

iPhoto, for instance, bears no resemblance to a old-fashioned photo album:

The other, more philosophical, and arguably bigger issue is that skeuomorphic design is inherently distasteful to many designers. It is decorative, not functional. It is excess, bigger in size and heavier in cognitive load than a user interface that is slimmed down to its bare essentials. And yes, if that sounds like a certain Apple design guru, Jony Ive hated it.

Of course, Scott Forstall didn’t oversee all design at Apple. However, he was in charge of iOS, and iOS is by far Apple’s most popular operating system, and the operating system of its cash cow (OS X is found in products accounting for under 20 percent of Apple’s revenue). Forstall was a fan of skeuomorphic design — as, it must be admitted, was Steve Jobs to a degree — and the results can be found in Apple apps.

iBooks, Find My Friends, and Newstand are only a few of the examples. Wood and leather show up in copious quantities on the high-res glass screen of one of the most modern digital artifacts ever created:

Again, the effect is inconsistent with other Apple apps such as Mail and is oddly jarring as the user is taken from a super-modern, clean, simple user interface into one with a lot of extra weight, detail, and effect.

To a designer like Jony Ive, who has spent his life and career removing excess, trimming away unneeded detail, and simplifying, there is something inherently dishonest about skeuomorphic design. It’s something of a lie … there is no wood in your iPhone, no dead animal skin, and there’s no paper on your laptop screen to be torn off.

As such, we can expect big visual changes in the next versions of Apple apps in iOS and OS X. And, if all goes well, we can thank Scott Forstall’s departure for the simplification or, perhaps, consolidation of Apple’s design language.

Image credits: Top, Wikipedia, all others, John Koetsier

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

I’m sitting down in my hotel room. It’s evening, and I’m taking a deep breath.

Today we had one of the biggest Apple events I can remember. Between hardware and software, Apple announced at least six new products today, seven if you include Apple Fusion Drive, and a whopping 23 new products if you include different models and build configurations.

Here’s the full list:

• New iBooks software
• New retina 13″ Macbook Pro (two build configurations)
• Mac Mini (three build configurations)
• iMac (at least two sizes, each probably with at least two build configurations)
• Apple Fusion Drive (not a standalone product, but very cool, and an orderable option)
• 4th-generation iPad (six main models)
• iPad mini (six models)

Tim Cook spoke to the huge number of new products — and his team’s effort — at the end of the event.

“We told you we’d deliver amazing innovation this year,” Cook said, “and I hope you’ll agree we did.”

Added to the list announced today, Cook mentioned iOS 6 with hundreds of new features, OS X Mountain Lion, which works with iOS like hand and glove — which is one of iOS’s great advantages over Android — the new iPods recently announced, the new iPhone 5, and the previously announced retina-screen MacBook 15″.

“It’s been an incredible year … a truly prolific year of innovation for Apple,” he said. “We hope you love these products as much as we’ve loved creating them.”

It is a staggering list.

When you look at Apple as a product company, it doesn’t have a huge number of SKUs … four main product families (Mac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad), perhaps 15 total products within those, and then some 50 or so versions of those products.

Any way you slice it, Apple has refreshed a massive proportion of its product line today. In addition, Apple has done something that it rarely does: Osborn a product. The announced new iMac product line won’t be available until November — the 21.5″ model — and December, for the 27″ version.

It’s impressive chutzpah, based on the capabilities of possibly the most sophisticated supply chain in the business. And it’s an impressive line-up for the holiday shopping season.

At the end, Cook thanked the teams at Apple, “the most talented and innovative people I know.” They’ve done their job. Now it’s time to see how the other titans of the industry — Microsoft and Google — will answer.

We won’t have to wait for long.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Apple debuted a new version of its e-book application iBooks today, which features improved iCloud and social sharing support and more customization over how you consume your e-books.

If you hate having to flick the touch screen to turn a page, then this version of iBooks is for you. Apple has added a continuous scrolling feature that makes the reading experience much more like a long article via a web browser.

The company also added various page “filters” that alter the way a book’s pages look when you’re reading them. You can choose from a sepia-toned (old, yellowed paper) view, a view with a black background and white text, and a handful of others.

IBooks’ is also getting more social. The company has added greater support for iCloud and additional social tools for sharing on Facebook and Twitter.

Apple chief executive officer Tim Cook said the company now has over 1.5 million books in its iBooks store, and customers have downloaded more than 400 million books since the app first launched.

We first heard rumors about a new version of iBooks over the weekend, which hinted that Apple would create a more visually stimulating version of the app.

Photo by Dean Takahashi/VentureBeat

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Apple may have just “a little more to show” us, but this week’s Apple event in San Jose is turning into perhaps more than just a little more. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, it’s potentially turning into a lot.

While only a technology journalist might be foolish enough to think that everything rumored for an Apple event is actually going to happen, there’s a lot of smoke about Tuesday.

Here are all the rumors we’re hearing about what Tim Cook might show us on Tuesday:

iPad Mini

The big kahuna, of course, is iPad Mini — potentially 16 different versions priced from $250 to $650. From 8GB to 64GB, black and white, WiFi and/or cellular.

Likelihood: extremely high. There have just been too many rumors, pictures, and whispers. And with the Microsoft Surface coming out very soon, Apple needs to give consumers a big reason to say no, even if it comes in a little package.

Refreshed full-size iPad with Lightning connector

This is a more recent rumor, but it’s both widespread and includes credible photos. There aren’t a lot of details about what it might or might not include, but the new Lightning connector is a gimme. Pricing will probably stay the same, but it’s possible that LTE could provider some faster cellular networking, and it’s possible that the retina screen will get a small update.

This would also be an opportunity for Apple to push the spec versus Microsoft’s new Surface tablets. Could we see any other upgrades?

Likelihood: high. Not due to the number or frequency of rumors, but it just seems to make sense.

Retina 13″ Macbook Pro

Half of Apple’s Macbook Pro line got the amazing new retina screen in June of this year. Now it may be time for the other half. The 13″ laptops look to be getting the same retina screen as the 15″ Pros, possibly for a $1,700 price tag. If so, Apple may also feature-bump the 13″ just a little bit.

Which would, of course, leave the Apple faithful eagerly panting for a 13″ retina Macbook Air.

Likelihood: medium. Reasonable, but definitely not guaranteed. Macbook sales have been extremely strong for Apple in the last quarter; this would juice them even more.

iBooks 3 (and other assorted software bumps)

You’re almost guaranteed to get some software updates at an Apple event, and it looks like iBooks 3 might be one of the announcements this coming week.

Likelihood: medium. It’s likely that Apple’s new iPad Mini will have a strong media, particularly reading-focused marketing message to compete with Kindles and other mid-sized tablets and e-readers. As such, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to expect some new software for said literary material …

Refreshed iMac, Mac Mini

There have been some reports of a refreshed iMac with an almost-invisibly-thin side profile, a new type of display (though probably not retina), and larger memory options. Similarly, rumors have surfaced about the Mac Mini.

Likelihood: medium. The iMac’s last update was 538 days ago, which is almost double the average time between refreshes, so a change is coming soon. And the Mac Mini was last updated 460 days ago. Whether either will be announced this week … we’ll see.

And … one more thing

Steve Jobs’ trademark — although he did not always use it — was the “one more thing” that was sometimes amazing enough to warrant an event of its own. The only items seemingly in that class would be announcements on a new Apple TV even a new Apple TV screen.

Likelihood: low. This seems to be an update event, not a shake-the-world event. And all reports on Apple’s efforts in television have it nowhere near where it needs to be yet. Wouldn’t it be fun though?

VentureBeat will be on scene live-reporting on October 23.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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While Apple’s forthcoming Oct. 23 event is dominated by speculation of new iPads, new information suggests that the company might also unveil an update to its native ebook application iBooks.

The news comes from French Apple blog iGen.fr, which noticed that some books are now referencing iBooks 3.0 as a requirement in Apple’s digital book store. One example of this is in the sidebar description of French graphic novel Largo Winch.

Apple does give developers and media publishers some control over what is said about their products in the iTunes store, but as The Next Web points out, the general requirements section is auto-generated and cannot be altered. That means its less likely that the reference to “iBooks 3.0″ was a typo — especially given the proximity to next week’s Apple event.

As for what the next version of iBooks will bring, I’m guessing it’s probably much more visually oriented, which would make sense given Apple’s sale strategy. Apple added a Graphic Novels section to the iBooks store back in February. And if the success of ComiXology is any indication, I’m guessing the section has performed well. The company also wants to increase the number of textbooks sold through iBooks.

I scanned through the descriptions of other graphic novels in the iBooks store and didn’t find the same reference to iBooks 3.0, but that doesn’t mean a new version isn’t coming. Of course, we won’t know officially until Apple’s event next week.

Apple may be making improvements to its online store, but only for its education customers.

The company recently posted a notice on its K-12 educators website explaining that a new e-commerce store is in the works, according to a report from Apple Insider. The notice, which is stamped with a blue “coming soon” sign, states that the online store will allow teachers to create & view proposals and access order statuses. Also, the overall interface of the store will be getting an uplift.

Apple says it will be sending education customers “more information about the store’s features, benefits, and launch date” soon.

While these changes are sectioned off for educators, it could be a sign of things to come for the broader Apple store. Theoretically, the company could be trying out this new user interface on a subset of customers first before rolling it out to the public.

This isn’t the first effort Apple has made to help the education industry, which sees a growing number of teachers introducing iPads and other Apple products into the classroom. Recently, the company announced its iBooks 2 initiative, which takes physical textbooks and translates them into digital content for the iPad.  iBooks Author, announced at the same time, allows people to create these interactive textbooks using drag and drop templates, hopefully making it a more attractive solution to the traditional printed paper versions.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Marvel Entertainment is now offering a collection of its graphic novels in Apple’s iBookstore for the first time, the company announced yesterday.

Previously, the selection of graphic fiction on iBooks was limited to a handful of titles that you couldn’t easily find due to the lack of a proper category. However, with Marvel’s introduction that seems to have changed. The new category features over 1,500 graphic novels that you can sort via a featured home screen or release date. Pricing is lower than traditional retail stores and comparable to discounted physical graphic novels on Amazon. To view the graphic novels you’ll need to have upgraded to at least iBooks 1.2 and running iOS 4.2 on your mobile device.

Initially, Marvel is only releasing 80 graphic novels that include stories about Spider-Man, X-Men, Captain America, Iron Man, and others. Yet, the company did say it’s planning to release more in the future. The iBookstore isn’t the only place Marvel is selling digital comics. The company makes its single issue comics available on other platforms like iVerse, Graphicly, and Comixology as well as through its own iOS application.

In addition to the Marvel stuff, Apple has also featured other graphic novels like The Walking Dead, A Game of Thrones, Dilbert, and children-friendly titles from Disney. Noticeably absent are familiar titles from DC Comics (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman) and Dark Horse (Star Wars, Buffy the Vampire Slayer).

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Apple recently announced iBooks 2 for iPad, which it promises will reinvent the textbook. Some even speculate that it will ignite a revolution in education.

Why? Because iBooks are sleeker, smarter, and equipped with a seemingly endless amount of innovative features, like animation, full screen photos, and videos. It’s no wonder that schools and students are jumping on the iBooks bandwagon (Apple sold nearly 350,000 textbooks in the first three days). iBooks is certainly inventive — but the improvements are evolutionary. Reinventing is a long way from revolutionizing.

The revolution is already at hand, and fortunately for the students of tomorrow, it isn’t iBooks.

By definition, revolutionary ideas throw out the old standard instead of merely reinventing it. iBooks digitizes textbooks, mixing in some rich media, simple quizzes, and a nifty note-tracking system. You can even search! It’s certainly a big improvement over print. But the essence of a textbook remains: a linear, monolithic body of knowledge.

Contrast this with Khan Academy, an online video library that is taking the educational world by storm. Its goal: to provide a world-class, free education to anyone, anywhere, anytime. It launched out of founder Salman Khan’s converted closet. Now, it has delivered more than 115 million lessons to students around the world via short video segments taught by “Sal” himself. While its presentation is engaging, the real impact stems from its ability to organize information into a truly individual experience where you can choose your own learning adventure.

It’s a model that has proven as effective as it is unorthodox: a school without walls, without a curriculum, and without textbooks. It is education unbound. And students are flocking to it.

Khan describes his videos like this:

I teach the way that I wish I was taught. The lectures are coming from me, an actual human being who is fascinated by the world around him… I felt like fascinating and INTUITIVE concepts were almost intentionally being butchered into pages and pages of sleep-inducing text and monotonic, scripted lectures. I saw otherwise intelligent peers memorizing steps and formulas for the next exam without any sense of the intuition or big picture, only to forget everything within a matter of weeks.

While textbooks are part of the problem, they are not the problem. It is education itself that is broken.

The prevailing system breaks the world’s knowledge into linear sections and static formulas. But the way we think isn’t linear—it’s associative. We jump from concept to concept, our brains naturally latching onto the next most interesting idea. The path to knowledge is best approached organically, not prescriptively. Any linear, chapter-based textbook format — even one as snazzy and as engaging as iBooks — is an anachronism.

Sir Ken Robinson, well known for his famous series of TED lectures on education, is critical of what he considers to be our grossly outdated, 19th century model of education. Instead of throwing our efforts into education reform, Robinson advocates that we “disenthrall” ourselves from relics of the past. We need to stop doing things that we have always done, just because we have always done it.

“Reform is no use anymore, because that’s simply improving a broken model . . . What we need is not an evolution; we need a revolution,” he says.

Visionaries like Khan and Robinson have shown the path forward: an education system that treats students like individuals. The future of education will be organic, associative, and explorative. It’s distinctly un-bookish, which means it is also distinctly un-iBookish.

Apple’s iBooks promises that all those “gorgeous” features will make students excited to learn about the solar system. But Apple already (as the saying goes) has an app for that: Star Walk for iPad. It’s an educational astronomy app that, like Khan Academy, promotes learning that is not segmented into parts and bound between two covers (even if they are virtual covers); it is education unbound. That’s the real revolution.

Sal Khan and Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia are empowering millions to learn without using a single textbook. They are promoting this learning revolution through self-service and knowledge portals, which lets users pursue the topics that most intrigue them. This sort of divergent thinking about education is the wave of the future, and more organizations should embrace a format that really facilitates long-term learning.

My company’s technical documentation software, Dozuki, is designed to teach people to do the things they want to do, when they want to do it. With iFixit (which runs on Dozuki), we don’t walk people through an entire repair curriculum before we teach them how to fix an iPod. We provide just enough information at the point of need, and give inspired individuals a path to learn more.

Here’s the real key to effective education: Give people the most intuitive, direct path to understanding what they really want. That approach has helped us teach 15 million amateurs to fix complex electronics, and it’s how Salman Khan is systematically revolutionizing education.

Textbooks are a broken form of knowledge acquisition, and it’s not because they’re made of paper. iBooks could have been so much more. Perhaps some day it will be.

Kyle Wiens is the cofounder of iFixit, the online repair manual. He’s currently starting a new technical documentation software company, Dozuki, with the goal of reinventing how companies make their customers awesome.

Top photo by Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

When Apple announced its textbook initiative on Thursday, there was a rush of excitement among educators. Textbooks from major publishers, which can cost $40 to $75 dollars in print, would be available as interactive e-books for $15 or less. The new iBooks Author application could turn anyone into a publisher, with its simple interactive e-book creation tools.

But then there was the small print: In order to buy and read these textbooks, each student will have to own an Apple iPad. No computer, off-brand tablet, or even iPhone or iPod touch will work. Books made with the new iBooks Author application are only viewable on iPads in the iBooks 2 app, can only be sold through Apple’s iBookstore (where the company takes its customary 30 percent of the sales cost), and cannot be exported as ePubs, the standard open format for all e-book files.

For the schools that can afford iPads, Apple’s new apps and partnerships are brimming with potential.

“We looked at each other after the announcement, and said ‘Apple must have been reading our minds. This is exactly what we’ve been talking about,’” said Eric Spross, director of technology at the private Menlo School in Atherton, Calif.

Menlo School’s iPad pilot program has been in place for more than a year. All eighth and tenth graders are given an iPad for the school year, and though the school owns the tablets, the kids have full custody and can take them home.

“We felt that laptops and desktops focus students too much on the technology and not enough on the content or communication with another human,” said Spross. “We choose iPads because they’re lightweight, portable, have a long battery life, and are self-service. They’re easier to support.”

Apple’s education announcement was the missing piece in a puzzle for Menlo School. Even though it already had the iPad program, its devices hadn’t made the leap to being e-readers due to a dearth of e-textbooks. Apple’s new partnerships with publishers Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill, and Pearson will fix that.

Teachers were streaming some iTunes U content, but not much since publishing was limited to university-level courses. Now iTunes U is open to high schools, and a new iTunes U iOS app makes the content accessible from anywhere. Interestingly, Spross said teachers were also eager for a way to create and share their own lessons and books, which they can do on iBooks Author (as soon as they upgrade to Lion).

Tuition for Menlo School is $34,900 year. The school purchased all the iPads at full price from its own technology budget.

Not every school is so fortunate.

“We don’t really have a technology budget,” said Maria De La Vega, superintendent of the Ravenswood public school district in East Palo Alto, Calif. (not far from Menlo School, and a mre 30 minute drive from Apple HQ). “Most of what we’ve been able to acquire has been through donations and leftovers from offices closing down.” HP donated a number of small laptops to the district, so there’s now one computer for every sixth to eighth grade student. But those devices will be unable to read the new digital textbooks or any content created with iBooks Author.

The iPad is currently the most expensive consumer tablet on the market, starting at $499. While Apple is bringing down the prices of iPad-only textbooks, the company does not offer any known discounts on its iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch hardware to educational institutions, even for bulk orders.

“I’ve heard of the Kindle and the Kindle Fire, and I understand that they’re not as expensive. But I don’t know if they’re compatible,” said De La Vega optimistically (they’re not). While she thinks e-textbooks are a great idea for saving money, she is realistic about the challenges of making the switch.

“We’d have a lot of questions about how they would work, like security and what grade level they’d be most successful with. We’d need to make sure our staff is well trained, to utilize and make the most out of the program,” De La Vega said.

The nearly 100,000 U.S. public schools face restraints beyond money. They are also bound by state and federal regulations that dictate what books they use and what they can spend money on. Unless the full, approved list of school textbooks are made available on the iPad, these schools wouldn’t be able to use textbooks based on the Apple tablets even if they could save money that way.

“Teachers in private schools can select their own textbooks. Public schools can’t. That’s a distinction that’s larger than having iPads or if they can afford the technology,” said Menlo School’s Spross. He pointed out that it’s not all bleak for public schools: “Some of the most compelling and innovative work has been in public schools, in very scientific, state-sponsored programs.”

The iPad restriction is odd for another reason: Tying a file to one piece of hardware (in this case, a textbook to an iPad) is a step backward for a company that knows the future lies with accessing your data from multiple devices. Toward that end, Apple was an early adopter of cloud storage for consumers. Steve Jobs unveiled the company’s iCloud service in June 2011, which enables you to store music, books, photos, contacts, calendars, and more in the cloud.

Cloud storage might make the difference for e-textbooks, too. Only when public schools can put $15 e-textbooks on donated laptops, inexpensive e-ink readers, smartphones, and whatever devices students may already own, can Apple’s textbook “reinvention” be taken seriously by public schools.

Additionally, Apple should update its iBook Author application export to the more universal ePub 3 format and rewrite the iBooks Author end user license agreement so that books made with the application can be sold anywhere. (Can you imagine if music made in Garage Band could only be sold in iTunes?)

Until then, there are other great projects successfully using technology to bring affordable and free education to kids who wouldn’t normally have access to it. The One Laptop Per Child organization unveiled its sub-$100 X0-3 tablet at CES this month. The Khan Academy has more than 2,700 free online video classes on everything from Michelangelo to microeconomics. In India, the government has created the $35 Aakash tablet which will be used to educate underprivileged kids. And Apple of course offers iTunes U, a huge collection of free lectures and courses from top universities.

At Menlo School, Spross is already busy figuring out how to best use the new Apple products, which were the missing piece in the school’s technology puzzle. “Without this last piece it was, ‘Wow, great gizmo with a lot of potential, but does it mean anything?’”

But for most public schools, the iPad will continue to be a missing piece.

Photo via Barrett.Discovery/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Apple apparently has a big event in store for New York City this month — though it’s not the announcement of the iPad 3, or the rumored Apple television set.

Most likely, the event will center on a media-related announcement since Apple SVP of Internet Software and Interactive Services Eddy Cue is said to be involved, reports All Things D’s Kara Swisher. Cue, who was Apple CEO Tim Cook’s first major appointment as SVP, spearheads Apple’s media properties, including iTunes, iCloud, the App Store, and iAd.

Update: TechCrunch’s Alexia Tsotsis reports that the event will focus on improvements to iBooks, as well as additional publishing-related announcements.

Prior to the TechCrunch report, I assumed the event would have something to do with iAd, Apple’s struggling mobile advertising solution. The company purchased the mobile ad firm Quattro Wireless for $275 million in 2010, which was then refashioned into iAd, but never quite caught on with publishers.

Given that most of the buzz around iAd has been negative over the past year, Apple certainly needs to shine a good light on the mobile advertising service. It could be announcing new major publisher deals, or changes to iAd that will be more tempting to ad buyers. The departure of former Quattro head Andy Miller from Apple in August was yet another blow for iAd, which still lacks direct a replacement for Miller.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Apple is once again in hot water with the European Commission, this time over its pricing strategies with e-book publishers.

The EC announced today that it has begun formal antitrust investigations into Apple and five major book publishers —  Hachette Livre, Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster, Penguin, and Macmillan owner Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holzbrinck — to determine how they arranged e-book prices.

“The Commission will in particular investigate whether these publishing groups and Apple have engaged in illegal agreements or practices that would have the object or the effect of restricting competition in the EU or in the EEA,” the EC wrote in a statement today. “The Commission is also examining the character and terms of the agency agreements entered into by the above named five publishers and retailers for the sale of e-books. The Commission has concerns, that these practices may breach EU antitrust rules that prohibit cartels and restrictive business practices.”

The investigation likely sparks from a coordinated effort years ago between Apple and publishers to abolish Amazon’s then-typical $9.99 e-book pricing, Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt notes. Now, new e-books are often priced between $12 and $15 — with high-demand titles, like the recent Steve Jobs biography, selling for around $17 at launch (very close to its hardcover price).

Apple and the five publishers are already facing a class action lawsuit in California over the pricing change, which claims that they were “terrified” by Amazon’s low e-book pricing. Apple was a particularly useful co-conspirator because it was launching its iBooks store at the time. According to the suit, the publishers agreed to an “agency model” deal with Apple, which let them determine e-book pricing while Apple took a small cut. They also allegedly agreed not to sell e-books at prices lower than what Apple offered.

I’m not a legal expert, but it seems clear that something fishy went down with the launch of the iBooks store and the sudden emergence of more expensive e-books. If the EC’s investigation is successful, there’s hope that further exploration will occur in the U.S. and that someday we may finally see the return of cheap e-books.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Apple may be interested in purchasing the book giant Barnes & Noble, a flimsy source tells the mobile site Boy Genius Report.

The news itself seems ridiculous and is most likely false, but it’s an interesting thought experiment. Let’s take a look at the wisdom and stupidity of Apple purchasing B&N, and feel free to weigh in with your own thoughts in our poll below.

Apple has $76.2 billion in cash, the company reported last week in its third quarter earnings. So it could conceivably purchase Barnes & Noble, which has a market cap of $1.06 billion, without feeling a big dent in its pocketbook. But the move would be highly unusual for Apple, since it has so far focused on smaller and strategic acquisitions.

Apple’s biggest acquisition so far was its 1997 purchase of Steve Jobs’ NeXT for $400 million. That’s followed up by Apple’s 2008 purchase of P.A. Semi for $278 million, and the $275 million purchase of Quattro Wireless in 2010. All of those acquisitions had clear goals: Acquiring NeXT helped Apple to build OS X; nabbing P.A. Semi gave Apple the engineering talent it needed for its custom iPhone and iPad chips; and the Quattro purchase gave Apple a leg up in mobile advertising with iAds.

It’s far less clear what acquiring Barnes & Noble would do for Apple. BGR argues that Barnes & Noble’s digital library of books and magazines could be useful to Apple’s iBooks store, but that library consists of licensing deals that Apple is already in the process of scoring. There’s also the obvious advantage of nabbing more retail space, but at the moment it doesn’t seem like Apple needs much more. The company has also prided itself on making its stores seem different from traditional retail outlets, so B&N locations would need a significant overhaul to look the part.

“I don’t think B&N would be a great acquisition for Apple as it probably could replicate the e-books licenses fairly quickly and likely on good terms for its iTunes holdings,” Jack Gold, the founder and principal analyst of J. Gold Associates, told VentureBeat. “And B&N really wouldn’t make Apple all that much more competitive against Amazon’s threats, given Amazon’s diverse array of businesses. So would this be a good idea? Not in my opinion. I actually think B&N would be a better fit for Google than for Apple.”

There’s also the question of what would happen to Barnes & Noble’s Nook e-readers, which last year earned a healthy second place spot against Amazon’s Kindle. Having cheap e-reading devices (the latest Nooks start at $139) could help Apple to drive more sales to its iBooks store, and it would be a useful alternative to the $499 iPad for many consumers who just want to read. But Barnes & Noble’s $249 Android-powered Nook Color, which has found success as an inexpensive tablet, would likely be killed off by Apple.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

During Apple’s press event for the iPad 2 today, Apple CEO Steve Jobs revealed some impressive new statistics: Apple has sold 100 million iPhone as of last week, users have downloaded 100 million ebooks via its iBooks store, and it just recently surpassed $2 billion paid to app developers through its App Store.

The news means Apple sold around 30 million iPhones since the end of the fourth quarter of 2010, when Apple sold a total of around 73.5 million iPhones. As for the iBooks numbers, it’s certainly impressive, but Apple was clear to point out that it’s referring to download numbers, and not sales. Given that Apple offers free ebooks from Project Gutenberg, they could easily have accounted for a good number of those downloads.

Apple’s $2 billion payout to developers is also significant. Not too long before Apple’s event, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata shared his thoughts on the gaming industry’s problems at the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco. He criticized the huge development process for many console games today, which he said has led to a loss of the finer details in game creation. Meanwhile, Apple is finding success with small and focused mobile games, and mobile developers are reaping huge paychecks from it.

Jobs also announced that book publisher Random House will be bringing over 17,000 books to iBooks. Apple now has over 2,500 publishers in its iBooks store.

Another interesting number worth considering: Jobs said that Apple just recently crossed 200 million Apple ID accounts across its three stores, iTunes, iBooks and the App Store. “Now Amazon doesn’t publish their numbers, but it’s likely this is the most accounts with credit cards anywhere on the Internet,” Jobs said.