Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography of Steve Jobs hit the iBookstore earlier this week, and after a few hours, I wondered why it had such a low star rating. I read some of the reviews to discover that many users have had formatting issues, which made some pages of the book illegible. Apple has now issued an update to the book and begun instructing customers on how to get the new version.
Want another example of how Apple’s masterful use of design fuels sales? Like the empty iPod that just screams out for you to buy music, the empty shelves of recently-unveiled iOS 5 Newstand begs to be filled with magazine and newspaper subscriptions.
Apple unveiled the @AppStore Twitter account back in January. The account tweets prominent apps in the App Store to its 460,000+ followers.
Today, Apple has created another account for the iBookstore. Following @iBookstore on Twitter will give you updates from the US iBookstore, including exclusive offers and featured titles.
Have you noticed the prices of iBooks increasing? It’s not a mystery that publishers now view electronic versions of their hardcover editions as a way to save money. Turns out publishers are adopting Apple’s “agency pricing” model, a move making cheap iBooks on your iPad or iPhone as rare as dime store novels.
Thanks to the continued growth of Apple’s iOS devices, the iTunes platform that includes the App Store and the iBookstore is set to grow at a rate of 39% over the next three years and rake in a whopping $13 billion in revenue during 2013.
The most impressive ebooks on the iPad aren’t ebooks at all, but dedicated iOS apps. With the power of HTML5, CSS3, Javascript and ePUB3, though, there’s no reason that has to be the case at all: you can put together a truly interactive, animated ebook right within iBooks.
Check out this awesome look at the iBook put together by Walrus Books for the upcoming Lovecraftian tome Kadath: The Guide To The Unknown City. Not only does it feature interactive maps, embedded fonts, integrated pop-ups and more, but it even has its own in-book meta game and version of in-app purchases.
This is super cool. I wish we saw more iBooks like this, but unfortunately, it seems like most publishers design their ebooks for the lowest common denominator platform — the Kindle.
Apple released an update to iBooks today that incorporates a new feature called read-along plus the usual improvements and bug fixes we typically expect from Apple.
It took a little while longer than we had anticipated, but Apple has now made iTunes 10.3 available to download. Here’s what’s new!
Illustration student Rachel Walsh was assigned a seemingly impossible design task by her professor: explain the concept of the Amazon Kindle to Charles Dickens. Her solution is ingenious, and applies just as well to iBooks, but just imagine if she’d been asked to explain the iPad to Dickens instead.
The latest update to PwnageTool from the iPhone Dev-Team is now available to download, and version 4.2 brings with it untethered jailbreaking for devices running iOS 4.2.1 and fixes the recently discovered iBooks issue that prevents a user opening an iBookstore purchase on their jailbroken device.
PwnageTool uses the “feedface” untether developed by the Chronic Dev Team to allow for untethered jailbreaking in the latest release, and supports all 4.2.1 devices other than the iPod touch 2G. Another issue fixed in this version is the Wi-Fi problem that some users had with the second-generation AppleTV.
If you’ve already jailbroken your device and you’re desperate to gain access to your iBookstore purchases, don’t think you need to restore and jailbreak again with the latest version of PwnageTool. On their blog, the iPhone Dev-Team have stated that fixes for both the iBooks issue, and the Wi-Fi issue for AppleTV, will be available in an upcoming Cydia package that you’ll simply be able to download and install on your device.
Once again that’s iOS jailbreakers 1, Apple nil.
Over the weekend, some iPad-specific and resolution-doubled icons found in iBooks Version 1.1 made everyone speculate that the iPad 2 would have a 2048 x 1536 display. Not quite Retina, but close enough.
Unfortunately, the speculation breaks down upon closer examination. Not only are the pixel-quadrupled iBook icons old news, but there’s a conflicting mention of a 1536×800 pixel resolution in the same build.
In fact, Apple’s been suggesting that developers provide a double resolution icon for each iPad app since June. This is just Apple thinking forward: yes, they’d like to have the same pixel density in the iPad as in the iPhone and iPod Touch, but that doesn’t make a 10.1-inch Retina Display economically feasible this generation.
In other words, this resolution-doubled iPad icon business? Much ado about nothing. The iPad 2 might have a Retina Display, but not because of a couple of higher res icons.
Apple’s passing out Christmas gifts early for Mac and iOS developers. The company is offering six development books covering Mac OS X and iOS development — for free.
The new eBooks aren’t really new, but they haven’t been available in the iBookstore until today. Previously developers could either read them online or download PDF versions to read later via developer.apple.com.
The six titles include: Cocoa Fundamental’s Guide, The Objective-C Programming Language, iOS Application Programming Guide, Object Oriented Programming With Objective-C, iOS Technology Overview, and iOS Human Interface Guidelines.
You can download these books to your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad from the iBookstore.
Apple has released an updated version of iBooks, version 1.2, introduces PDF printing and Collections. Collections allow you to organize your books and PDFs.
The app is now able to provide better graphics support for children’s books and there is even an option that will allow you to display more words per page for devices with smaller screens like the iPhone and iPod touch.
It’s available now, for iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad via updates in the iTunes App Store app or grab a copy here.
Check out the iPhone 4 screen shots after the jump.
There is a persistent — and perhaps understandable — fear on the part of some Canadians that viral American culture is overwhelming Canada’s own cultural heritage, but a recent decision by Canada’s Privacy Council Office to probe Apple’s iBookstore seems like it borders on paranoia.
The order, first issued on August 20th, puts Apple and iBooks under scrutiny to make sure that the large e-bookstore “aids Canadian culture,” a vague responsibility to be sure. The authority comes from section 15 of the Investment Canada Act, which allows the government to review any investment that “is related to Canada’s cultural heritage or national identity.”
A probe is just a probe, and it seems, for right now, like Canada wants to make sure of Apple’s plans before they allow the full launch of the iBookstore to go through. It seems strange, however, that Apple would be put up the standard of being “of direct cultural benefit to Canada.” How can the widespread proliferation of millions of books be suspected of being a detriment to culture? At least twenty or thirty of those books have to be written by Canadians, right?
Apple has released an update to its iBooks application for the iOS and the latest version brings with it a few nice new features.
As well as the ability to now choose between 6 different fonts for your books, you can also double-tap images to see them in greater detail; and experience books that include audio and video.
In addition to new features, we also get welcome bug fixes, or, “stability and performance improvements.” I’ve lost count of the number of errors I get when opening a book in iBooks, so I’m hoping these issues are now fixed. So far, so good.
The full list of features from the app’s description is as follows:
• Double-tap an image within a book to view it in greater detail.
• Experience books that include audio and video.
• Enjoy substantial performance improvements when reading PDFs.
• Look-up definitions to English words inside books without a specified language.
• Addresses an issue that may have caused some book downloads to not complete.
• Includes many stability and performance improvements.
You can download the update through iTunes or the App Store on your device, or grab iBooks from the App Store for free if you don’t already have it.
Apple has issued an update to its MobileMe iDisk application today and version 1.2 brings some welcome improvements. As well as support for multitasking and fast app switching, iDisk is now a universal application and works natively on the iPad.
What’s more, iPad users can now export documents from iDisk in to iBooks or office applications like Apple’s own Pages, Numbers & Keynote offerings.
Another big improvement is the ability to listen to music from within the iDisk application – this means you can save space on your device by uploading your tracks to an iDisk folder and then listening to them from there. Obviously this will require a data connection to your iDisk, however.
The full list of improvements is as follows:
iDisk is the last of Apple’s MobileMe apps to be updated for multitasking and iOS 4. All we’re waiting on now is the MobileMe Gallery app improvements and iPad support!
Download MobileMe iDisk for your device from the App Store here.