One of the best things about electronic books and textbooks is that you can mark them up. Rather than a physical book that you rent or buy and want to sell later, with books on your iPad, you can make notes and highlight important points. Plus, you can read wherever you go with your device.
Here are the best apps to read and annotate PDF books on iPad.
When it's released ahead, during or after next month's WWDC, iOS 8.4 should at last make it possible to enjoy digital textbooks on your iPhone. Although Apple makes no mention of this feature in the official release notes accompanying today's release of iOS 8.4 beta 3, Teddy Svoronos noted it on Twitter.
If true, this is a pretty big deal. In iOS 8.4 beta 3, any publication created with Apple's free iBooks Author app, not just digital textbooks, is reportedly viewable on the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus along with their video content, Study Cards, the glossary, highlights and linked online content.
Our previous how-tos shared tips on saving storage space on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad by removing photos, videos, songs and apps. And last week, we shared an excellent tip on clearing ‘Other’ storage occupied by Safari's Reading List, app caches and temporary data.
With that in mind, you'd be surprised to learn that electronic books can take significant amount of storage space.
While a typical book found on the iBooks Store is about two megabytes in size, a textbook with enhanced features like audio and video will typically require anywhere between a few hundred megabytes to up to two gigabytes of storage, per textbook.
Now, if you're anything like me, your devices are stuffed to the gills with multimedia-rich smart reads. In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to identify the amount of on-device storage consumed by iBooks content, teach you how to reclaim storage space by removing books and PDFs you've read and share a few useful tips along the way that I bet you didn’t know about.
The online retail giant Amazon on Thursday announced a brand new application for the Mac which allows anyone to create and publish textbooks on Kindle. Currently in beta and available in English only, the applications can be downloaded to Mac or Windows PCs through Amazon's website.
Similar to Apple's iBooks Author app for the Mac, which debuted in 2012, Kindle Textbook Creator makes it easy to create textbooks and other educational material with by augmenting text with graphs, charts and equations and other graphically rich content.
In addition, the app can convert existing PDFs into a digital book, ready for distribution on the Kindle Store.
Today is a big day for Apple's strides in education as the company in a media release announced a significant expansion of its educational content.
iBooks Textbooks are now available in a total of 51 countries around the globe while iTunes U Course Manager is available to customers in 70 countries, Apple said.
Starting today, iBooks Textbooks and iTunes U Course Manager are rolling out to new countries in Asia, Latin America and Europe, including Russia, Thailand and Malaysia...
The Los Angeles Board of Education has approved a plan to deploy Apple's iPad tablets to 38 campuses ahead of state tests in the spring, which is part of the school district's effort to equip additional classrooms with tablets and computers to "revolutionize instruction", The Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.
The proposal is worth an estimated $115 million - enough to purchase between 40,000 and 70,000 tablets for deployment across 38 campuses, as well as a bunch of laptops for seven high schools...
Apple's been making a big push into education in recent months, updating iTunes to allow users under the age of 13 and touting new features in iOS 7. It says the update makes it 'easier for institutions to put devices in the hands of students.'
But for many schools with student iPads deployed, the update is actually making things more difficult. Various educators across the US are reporting that iOS 7 has left their devices unfiltered when accessing the Internet away from school...
Apple's iBookstore is great, especially if you're an iOS device owner. I'm a heavy reader so I always keep a few e-books on my devices to read whenever I have some free time. As part of Steve Jobs's dream to reinvent the education, Apple at January 2012's media event in New York City unveiled interactive Textbooks, a whole new kind of textbook experience.
Having bought a few since, I can safely proclaim interactive digital textbooks the future of education - as in, I wish I were a school kid now. Unfortunately, Textbooks work only on iPads as smaller form-factor iDevices are not supported. Over the past few days, several solid pieces of evidence suggested that iBooks Textbooks are coming to the iPhone and iPod touch.
Jump past the fold for the full reveal...
Apple has altered its iTunes Terms and Conditions to permit children under the age of 13 to operate individual iTunes accounts created at the request of an 'approved educational institution,' signaling the beginning of its next big push into education.
Previously, the company restricted iTunes accounts to children aged 13 or older. But with it landing major iPad distribution deals with school districts, the Mac-maker has announced that it will be changing its policy with the fall release of iOS 7...
Last month, word got out that Apple had won a bid for a colossal tablet deal with the Los Angeles Unified School District. The district, which is the second-largest in the country, agreed to buy some $30 million worth of iPads.
Today comes more details about the massive tablet rollout. According to a new report from CITEWorld, the LAUSD plans to distribute over 30,000 free iPads to students this school year in an effort to improve education...
Taking a page from Apple's book (pun intended), Google's Play Books service will start carrying textbooks in August, giving students the choice of renting (for six months) or buying electronic textbooks, available on iOS or Android devices.
And in drawing from its Internet roots, the search monster also said electronic textbooks will be available for reading on the web, using any standard desktop web browser. The Internet giant promises a "comprehensive selection of titles" from five major publishing partners: Pearson, Wiley, Macmillian Higher Education, McGraw-Hill and Cengage Learning.
Jump past the fold for the full reveal...
There's been quite a bit to digest today regarding Apple's excellent educational event. I think the rumors that we'd see a "Garageband" for iBooks pretty much panned out like we expected.
To sort out all of the details, we've compiled a post explaining the highlights from Apple's event, along with details on the software involved and videos plus download links.
If you're at all behind on Apple's Media event this morning, don't worry, we've got you covered.