Looking at Apple’s education announcement and the later statements by McGraw-Hill CEO Terry McGraw that; 1.  school boards would have to pay the $14.99USD “pilot pricing” per year per student and. 2.a paper text book costs $75.00USD per book and is replaced once every five years or so, and that Mr. McGraw expected to make money on “volume”, I had to wonder how Apple was going to knife the publishers? There has to be a plan to take out the publishers, because it is in Apple’s corporate DNA to screw the old school content providers. They almost have to, because the scheme as presented has absolutely no cost savings to cash strapped American school boards, and the prospect of a huge investment into the Apple ecosystem.Here is how I think it is going to play out.  In the US, publicly funded schools are generally overseen by the various states and each county and or city has its own school board that is for the most part funded by local taxes. Apple is going to point out to the state oversight school boards (if the states don’t figure it out on their own) that they can create their OWN textbooks using their own state university resources (ie graduate students) Essentially, once the primary texts are done, its just  a mater of updating and revisions.  For example, the American State of Tennessee has 971,524 students enrolled in K-12. (Think of it as Grades 1-13) The cost of one Apple iTextbook at say $15.00 USD would be $14,572,680. Admittedly, the number includes the entire group of K-12, but, I could see using iPads in kindergarten even if they were not issued to students below 3rd or 4th grade. Assuming 6 courses per student per year and figure 6 textbooks (at least-don’t forget lab books in upper forms)per student, per year, doing the  iMath comes to at least $90USD a year. per student, not counting the cost of the iPads.  However, if the schools create their own content, even at market cost there is about a five year break even for the cost of an iPad. Over, $14 million  US dollars would pay for a lot of work study time to do the basic research and writing of the texts All that has really stopped many state school boards from doing their own textbooks was the economies of scale for for publication.Take out the printing costs and its a whole new match. One the textbook publishers are likely to lose.

Commentators have mentioned that nothing was said about university level textbooks. I suspect not only that was deliberate on Apple’s part, it is where textbook publishers will start feeling the heat. Uni professors love to inset their own spin on the texts they use, even to almost writing their own. In the US, college textbooks are hitting $200USD a book in many subjects. Whilst UK textbook costs are usually 20-50% lower in the US, everyone is looking to cut costs.  Not to mention the potential savings on classes where you get a lecturer who almost never uses the book, but often has other material to read.  In the college setting, an iPad based textbook ecosystem could pay for itself in the FIRST TERM.  The idea of updated content is particularly appealing for technical subjects. From  the university’s perspective, there would not be any real need to issue iPads, students would be expected to buy them.

Where is Apple in all this? Selling a lot of iPads. Where are the textbook publishers? Trying to steal the pudding of the record companies at the home for obsolete business models.

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Is this Apple’s plan for the textbook market?

Thursday, Apple announced the release of iBooks2  and iBooks Author; new and free textbook reading  and authoring tools.  Apple also revealed a partnership to create and sell low cost interactive textbooks with the big three textbook publishers that account for 90% of the sales of textbooks to the first 13 grades of American schools, known as K-12. Finally, Apple expanded its iTunes U uni lecture series to the K-12 market.   Missing from the announcement was any price break for the beleaguered American school system and that it was a closed Apple hardware only system. Also absent was the fact that if you create content with iBooks Author, you have to sell it in the Apple store.

Apple has not indicated any similar arrangement with UK publishers, but as I mention here, that may not be Apple’s scheme in any case. Stay tuned, there may be a bit more to this story as it plays out.

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Apple announces iBook 2 for US schools. Will the UK follow?

The iOS 5 update went live about 1:00 PM -5 GMT.  Users are reporting all over the world that they are having multiple issues with the download and Apple has confirmed that the problem is on their end.  Making matters worse, there are reports that aborting the update is duplicating the contacts list and one user who had set up mail in Mac preferences is getting this message:

The word from Apple is to wait a couple of hours and try again. For those of you with mail issues the link to Apple message boards can be found here.   The smart money is on the iCloud servers being overwhelmed. That said, the Apple iCloud engineers are going to have their work cut out getting ready to activate about three million iPhones in a couple of days not to mention the iCloud music roll out at the end of the month.

Might be some iTerminations come the first of November, but we hope not.

Thanks to crimonsonsky76 for the tip!

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iOS5 install problems-Its Apple’s Fault

The worldwide press is saturating all media with the death of Steve Jobs, who passed away Wednesday from complications of pancreatic cancer. Rather than repeat all the typical reporting of his passing, it is better to focus on a celebration of his life and his many, many accomplishments that has shaped and changed the world everyone lives in today.  The list is long, the Apple I, the Apple II, the Macintosh, the Lisa during his first stint at Apple. During his time away from Apple he founded NeXT Computing and created Pixar out of pieces that he bought from LucasFilms. Pixar under Jobs became the gold standard for animated films, and is widely credited as revitalizing the genre and the fortunes of Walt Disney Studios when Disney subsequently purchased Pixar for almost ten billion dollars.

All this seemed to be only a prologue for the return of Mr. Jobs and what was arguably his and his teams greatest contributions to the way the world consumed its music, media, and used its phones. Starting with the iMac, Mr. Jobs and the people he surrounded himself with, went on to revolutionize the way we consume music, the iPod and the Apple Music Store.  Starting in 2001, the iPod completely changed the music industry and in all likely hood stated the death spiral of music CDs.  Moving from that the iPhone in 2005, and then the iPad in 2009. It is easy to forget that Apple did not found any of those product categories. Music players, smart phones and tablets all came about well before Apple entered the scene. The tribute that should be rendered to Steve Jobs and his team was that in each product area, Apple came along and arguably perfected the category.

What are your thoughts of your experience of Apple and thoughts on Steve Jobs?

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A Celebration of the Life of Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs  today informed the Apple Board of Directors that he was resigning as Chief
Executive Officer effective at once and recommended to the board that Tim Cook,
Apple’s Chief Operating Office be named as has successor. According to an Apple
press release issued at the same time as Mr. Jobs letter, the Apple board not
only named Tim Cook as Apple CEO, but also named Steve Jobs as the new chairman
of the board of Apple.

In the  letter, addressed not only to the Board of Directors but the “Apple Community”,
Mr Jobs stated:

I have always said if there ever came a daywhen I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know.Unfortunately, that day has come.

I hereby resign as CEO
of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the
Board, director and Apple employee.

No reason was given for Jobs stepping down.  While there has been recurring rumors of
declining health since his transplant surgery in 2009, it is equally possible
that he has simply elected to leave the day to day operation to others. Not
only was Mr. Jobs a co-founder of Apple,  but he also has led Apple from the shambles
the iconic co-founder found upon his return in 1997 to create perhaps the most dominant
tech company in the world today. Further, it seems clear that he will still be
playing an active role as Chairman.

Tim Cook has been with Apple for the last thirteen
years and stepped in to run day to day operations during Mr. Job’s prior leave
of absence when dealing with his illness. With his elevation to CEO, Mr. Cook
also will be joining the Apple board.

Source: Apple via
Tech Meme

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Letter from Steve Jobs

Apple is always busy this time of year, recently we had the iMac changes, then iPhone 4 and iPhone OS 4.0. Now the Mac Mini has got a makeover too and has appeared on the Apple website and is available to buy now. Originally these were the space saving, money saving alternative to an iMac or Macbook, for internet surfing and other basic computing tasks but now the price has been bumped up slightly and with the extra power inside the capabilities of it have also improved.

The first main change is the box itself. A mere 1.4” thin It’s now made from the single Aluminium sheet the Macbook Pro sports but also alongside it’s DisplayPort it now has HDMI out to connect it to any HDTV. The second big change is obviously what’s in the machine.

Lower spec Mac mini – £649

• 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor
• 2GB of memory
• 320GB HDD
• NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics
• Mac OS X Snow Leopard
• 8x double-layer SuperDrive

There’s also another more expensive model with Snow Leopard Server

• 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
• 4GB memory
• Dual 500GB 7200-rpm hard drives¹
• NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics
• Mac OS X Server Snow Leopard

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New Mac Mini revamp

As the unveiling has passed for another year from Apple and as we all knew and expected another year of new iPods. Now obviously I’m all for new technology and gadgets(hence why i write on a blog about them) but I’m getting to a stage of frustration where every year Apple bring out a new set of iPods that aren’t really much better than the last generation. Well this year they haven’t disappointed with only slight changes, but the nano seems to get the major upgrade. Click on for all the info

Well its pretty much the same again, no real change to the way the iPods look this time just spec changes really. As we’ve already touched on the touch with its capacity increase and CPU improvement, the classic sticks to the same look but gets a hefty capacity increase to 160GB……………………. That’s it. The shuffle sticks with the buttonless design that came out not too long ago but now comes in a variety of colours

The Nano is the only one to get any real change, well quite a bit really. Firstly its aesthetics stay the same in the size department but now have a glossy paint finish. Its also still available in 8GB and 16GB. It now also sports a video camera, microphone, voice recorder, FM radio, the voiceover technology found in the shuffle, a pedometer and Nike+ extras. Apple have compared the camera to that of a Flip Video camera but state the nano has extra features and larger capacity than your bog standard flip cam. Video taken on the nano will also be very easy to place up into YouTube once plugged into your Mac. Price should pretty much stay the same as the last generation too.

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Continuing on iPods

With the conference been and gone, we gave you some snippets of news. The lower priced MacBook excited me personally, but with so much going on we’ll give you a summary of everything else.

• iPhone 3G
  With the iPhone 3GS on the horizon what’s going to happen to the now “old” 3G. Well it’s getting a price cut in the US which we’re still waiting to find out what it’ll be in the UK, plus there’s the iPhone 3.0 OS update.This free update for your iPhone is packed with new features, like the 3GS one’s you’d have hoped would have been there from the beginning. Copy and paste, movies direct to your iPhone(to buy/rent), MMS(oh my god, about time), Find my iPhone(counter theft application) , tethering (connect your iPhone to your computer, use its internet connection) and HTTP streaming (improving web streaming of audio and video),  and better, faster Javascript for better browsing.
• Snow Leopard
  OS X Snow Leopard – Apple’s latest version of its operating system – was also unveiled at the conference. Now using 6GB of hard drive space less after install, its faster and more efficient improving general performance of things like the included mail application and web browsing. It also includes the final version of Safari 4. Apple’s OSX boss Bertrand Serlet claimed: “It offers unsurpassed speed… the scale is multiples of IE8’s speed.”. All with a reduced price tag, Snow Leopard will cost just $29.
• TOM TOM for iPhone

TomTom has unveiled its app for iPhone alongside a car holder for the iPhone. It was obviously going to appear at some point and now with iPhone OS 3.0, but its now officially been unveiled at the conference. It generaly works in the same way as other TomTom SatNavs with large icons and little text with the standard style maps that show your planned route. The Car kit has a holder(to erm…. hold it) but also recharges your iPhone through your car. It can be positioned to be shown portrait or in landscape depending on how you want to look at it. Unfortunately though it wasn’t unveiled as to when its being released.

 

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WWDC : Summary of Apple’s Conference news.

World Of Apple has posted some screenshots and a video detailing UI changes in the upcoming Snow Leopard.

You can now navigate the the folder structure in Stacks (view video below)

More images after jump

Stacks The new Put Back feature allows deleted files to be returned to the folder they were deleted from

  The majority of running processes are now Intel (64 bit)  Mail has a significantly smaller application footprint than in Leopard. Also note the option to open applications in 32 bit mode

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New Screenshots of Snow Leopard