Today Apple made some major education announcements with the release of iBooks 2, iBooks Author, and iTunes U. Everything sounds fine and dandy until you realize the Canadian iBookstore does not have the ‘Textbook’ category. Either the category is coming soon in a magical update, or it’s not coming at all. You’re probably thinking “oh here we go again!”
Dear Apple,
Where is the Textbooks category in iBooks 2?
Sincerely,
Canada
If you have a US iTunes account, you can easily login and see the Textbooks category.
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I do hope their content deals with all the major publisher extends outside US
The leader in this space, for Canada at least, is CourseSmart. They offer specific textbooks for many different institutions across Canada as well as the more popular texts for many intro classes.
Hmm I logged in to iBooks on my 4S with my US account and there was still no textbook category..
It shows up on the iPad.
You want to access textbooks without purchasing new iPad ? That is not their plan 🙂
yes i was going to mention Coursesmart aswell. I am in college and I have rented textbooks from them on my iPad and use it instead of a textbook. for example a textbook i needed cost 180$ but to rent it from coursesmart i paid $42 to rent it for the 6month period. Its great. Now I should be a spokesperson!
Same. After 2nd year, I didn’t purchase another tangible textbook.
I sure miss the days of spending $150 for a textbook that I’d open once or twice during the semester. Ah, the good ol’ days.
Tell me about it -.- I just did that for school this year I wish I had an iPad to buy them on 😛
Dear Apple,
Where is the Textbooks category in iBooks 2?
Sincerely,
Canada and RaphaelNinjaTurtle
For crying out loud, this announcement about textbooks. Do we need a million bloggers reporting on this matter? Things can’t get even more boring than this crap.
In the description for iBooks 2.0, it explicitly says that it is only available for American customers only. Hopefully this will be coming to Canada in the near future with Canadian textbooks.
Probably a copyright/licensing issue. Same as with music, movies, tv shows etc. Apple will have to negotiate rights for content in each country separately. So I am fairly confident it will come to Canada and the rest of the world in the future. Easier to start with the US and establish the system and then roll it out for the rest of the world.
Better end letter like this
Sincerely
rest of the world
The US iBookstore has the “TextBook” category that contains only nine (9) titles. One of them is just a demo (Life on Earth, available in Canada), the others seem to contain important errors. McGraw Hill and Pearson need to improve their quality control. So, with only 9 textbooks and very bogus ones, the Textbook section on iBookstore in the USA is a big joke.
As for Canada… Textbooks must be in sync with the curriculum in the various canadian provinces. That means the titles published for the canadian market have to be approved some way by the provincial department of education.
Another issue is the availability of textbooks in French for francophone schools (mostly in Québec, New Brunswick and Ontario). If textbooks from the USA can be used in Canada with very minor changes, textbooks from Europe (France, Belgium, Switzerland) are almost all useless for schools where French is the common language.
Ummm iBooks 2 is only on the iPad 2 smarty pants. Do some digging before you past a story. I live in Canada and I have it ON MY IPAD 2. Gosh it says on apples website. You better delete this before you misguide people
Show us a screenshot of the Textbooks category on your iPad 2–that is the issue we’re discussing here.
Can anyone purchase iBook textbooks from Mining Gems (publisher) through the Canadian Apple store?