New Apple Lust Objects

xp obv the ui has to improve... enter apple

eh but whatever ive got to get back to work turning a printed book into an ebook

youve got it backwards - the ebook market is one of the reasons why apple is going into the tablet business

ebooks, yes, textbooks. . . i dunno. let me put my librarian hat on for second. i work for lots of users young and old. people who are on facebook and old folks who can barely send an email. we have a lot of treatises online. And we have the same books on the shelf in old fashioned physical form.

when they need to do research on a new topic, almost everyone across the board, prefers a hardcover book over electronic access. it's harder to read on a screen, it's easier to use the index on a physical book. now for treatises/areas of the law they know, sometimes people are more comforatble with a print out of a section, it just depends. but i think for serious reading and learning, there isn't an electronic device that can match a book. yet.

i think the main market for this imaginary hardware apple is not developing is games/web/video rather than e-books

Online searching is easier than physical searching IMO, just because it can point you towards sections that may not stand out in an index. HOWEVER, reading/annotating is much easier in physical format.

yeah i use online searching to look through treatises and then i go to the shelf and flip around and use the index

there are like a million problems w/ the idea that colleges/college kids are going to adopt ereaders en masse starting w/ cost but also w/ the fact that most of us grow up reading on paper and in particular learning how to read for school and take notes on paper and 90% of college kids i know who right now have access to the same basic ereader functions--ie texts on laptop & ability to take notes there--still print out.

Let alone the glacial pace at which academic institutions move and the wholesale paradigm shift that would have to happen in order for the infrastructure to be in place to distribute all course materials electronically in ebook format.

everyone is welcome to print out whenever they like - but the ui will improve and people will get used to it - ebooks on a reader will not at all be the same experience as pdfs on a laptop - and the cost + other motives i mentioned upthread will drive the switch - and textbooks are the gateway drug for ebooks as a whole - for better or for worse \(O_O)/

eh $$$ is a good motivator xp

The coordination of the publishers with academic institutions will take upwards of 3-5 years in and of itself; you combine that with the amount of time it will take to iterate an ereader that also lets you annotate, take notes, perform calculations, generate graphs and reports, and write papers that will be affordable by the students/universities and I don't think you have any widescale early adopters until 2015.

plus touchscreens will become as sensitive as wacom tablets...they'll be as "usable" as paper.

and nerds are weak, can't carry many books, etc.

If all my textbooks in college came with ctrl + f I'd have been so happy

given the stories my gf (librarian at a college where the students are talented but not shall we say mostly academically savvy) tells me about how stunningly tech-nonfunctional incoming students are, i think this has a lot of hurdles to overcome. just because you are comfortable w/teh facepages doesn't mean you've got kids that are ready to move all their studying over to a digital format.

(oh btw sorry about my iphone freakout up there, worst timing leads to NERD RAGE)

although tbf I owned like a total of 2 textbooks in college...lol humanities major

hope your dad is ok jj

thx. yeah it was business related, not health related, so its all cool now. finding a payphone in modern urban america is pretty lolworthy tho

no way payphone usage was up like 500% last year

hahaha

Let alone the glacial pace at which academic institutions move and the wholesale paradigm shift that would have to happen in order for the infrastructure to be in place to distribute all course materials electronically in ebook format.

― Four-TEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN! (HI DERE), Tuesday, 28 July 2009 10:12 (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Course materials are now, by and large, electronic. Look at the all conquering Blackboard.

Not in my experience fwiw

I don't know if that's true at all institutions now, but it's been true at every institution I've worked at in the past seven years. And the problem isn't that the students aren't savvy enough to use it. The problem is the old one: how do you get students to read? But that's our problem as instructors, not a tech problem. And it won't prevent Apple from printing money if they can get the UI on such a device right.

Not in my experience fwiw

Not in my wife's either, or at least in terms of a unified data format; she ends up having to piece together data from a lot of disparate heterogeneous sources and convert the resulting melange into PDFs.

I get the impression that Blackboard, etc. tend to be a bigger deal at universities with significant mature student/distance learner populations. But my understanding of the research (which is restricted to astronomy education) is that those universities that use them are still struggling to get the same results out of them. There is still significant resistance to relying on them pedagogically or for testing at univs. worldwide, especially at the "elite" ones. At those places they seem to be simply course websites with PDFs that students are asked to print (or read however they prefer -- of course those that actually read them all print them).

Textbook piracy is an interesting issue here too.

I have used them as a student, but have never used them when given the opportunity as a teacher. I get further by printing that stuff out for them and placing them in their hands.

(This is with the best-resourced and nominally best-motivated students in the UK. Given that the UI today for reading on screen is vile, I can't help feeling your disenfranchising students without access to printing if you rely on that as your info. delivery system.)

I'm just talking about pdf reading; as far as I know very few of my students print them, but certainly many of them download the files (as I can tell from the instructor-side of the software). We're not given guidance from the university as to how to use these in reading, though we did receive a note earlier this summer saying that the US congress is beginning to investigate textbook pricing and so we ought to think creatively of how to cope with restrictions on the kinds of texts we're allowed to assign.

We don't have the resources to print every paper we assign for every student, so it's a decision between requiring them to buy a print-out, and letting them make a decision as to whether they print it out or read it online (or neither of course).

As you've presumably found there's a tendency to download and forget (or hoard, or psychologically think stuff you've downloaded -- or even printed -- is "read"). Difficult to get around, but web-based delivery makes the struggle hardest imo.

This is v. intreresting to me, but re: topic of this thread, I think we're overestimating the economic importance of the education market here. The main reason the fact that college students all use Macs is interesting is that they will likely remain Mac users for the rest of their lives, not because they or their parents spend a lot on Apple hardware while in college. That single use mode everyone raises about tablets (note-taking in lectures) is completely illusory from a profit POV.

(Similar things go for science users: we punch above our weight in terms of our influence on other users, but Apple would be crazy to go after us in particular and I don't think they were when they adopted BSD.)

psychologically think stuff you've downloaded -- or even printed -- is "read"

i have this problem btw.

I don't really have a problem reading PDFs rather than books---thank goodness, as all my books save one are 6000 miles from me for at least the next year. But thanks to my scanner + the net, I'm in good shape.

When it comes to teaching, I've learned how to teach a text while assuming that none of my students have read it. If some have, they'll get even more out of class. And if class goes well, maybe a few who haven't will go back and read it later.

But you're right that the ed market isn't the main reason I think this is a gold mine for Apple, should they seize it. There are many others, like the silver foxes alluded to earlier, who will find such a product desirable (assuming it's done very well, like the iPhone).

When it comes to teaching, I've learned how to teach a text while assuming that none of my students have read it.

Depressing Post is Depressing

that is one of many reasons why I am not suited to be a teacher

because u hav not read the text

"Today: The Bible, By Me."

It was depressing until I figured out that class could still actually be good under those conditions. It helps that my classes can fruitfully be almost entirely discussion (yay philosophy).

Apple Claims New iPhone Only Visible To Most Loyal Of Customers

not very funny, though

ya it is basically "emperor's new phone lol"

oh weird i didnt get it thanks for explaining the joke

hahaha

I bought something from an Apple retail store today, and when I got home I found they had e-mailed me my receipt. HOW DID IT KNOW?

one day the world will be taken over by SKYNET a neural network of iPhones

did they ask you for your email address?

This happened to me when I got my ipod last Christmas ... the receipt thing.

yeah, they always ask me for my email address.

Nope...but I did swipe my credit card.

Come to think of it...it's probably the same credit card I have linked to my iTunes account.

But obviously I'm not going to be satisfied with any answer other than "It knows." said in a really severe and fearmongering manner.

http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/universities-turn-to-kindle-sometimes-to-save-paper