Are Textbooks On The iPad A Good Idea?
All Things Consider — By Daniel Strauss on February 4, 2010 at 7:26 pm
Keyana Stevens at the excellent NYU Local notices that book publishers are getting on board the iPad:
Several textbook publishers (including heavy hitters McGraw-Hill and Houghton Mifflin) have just announced that they will start working with developers to make textbook applications for Apple’s iPad. Because of the iPad’s touch-screen interface, the new applications could be interactive, with extra study guides and practice tests.
Couple this announcement with the recent sparring between Macmillan and Amazon over Kindle pricing, and it seems the clear indication is that publishers are set to abandon the Kindle in favor of the iPad as the preferred e-book platform.
I think there are some fair objections to the e-textbook but I also don’t think making textbooks available on an iPad would be completely bad. For one thing, that means backpacks will be lighter. For another, paper will be saved.
There’s also the legitimate argument that it ruins the used textbook market. This is true but does it have to be one or the other? Isn’t it possible to have a world where some people buy textbooks on the iPad and some do it the old fashioned way? I don’t see why such a world couldn’t (or won’t) exist. There are, after all, people who listen to music but don’t have an iPod.
–Daniel Strauss
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2 Comments
The idea of textbooks on pdf’s (or other textbook file) has been around for a long time and is nothing new.
Honestly, I think textbook companies are just too greedy to consider this an option. Why make it available online when you can’t see the profits of it directly?
In my opinion, 95% of information on the overpriced and poorly written textbooks can be found through common knowledge sources, unfortunately, there seems to a vice-grip monopoly on taking the prices down from $200 a pop.
Oh this is very true. That’s why students use Wikipedia.