iBooks 2 Launched by Apple to ‘Reinvent’ the Textbook

Posted by James in Apple, Education

iBooks 2 launched by Apple in order to ‘reinvent’ the textbook.

Ahh yes the bane of every young students life, a bag full of text books each 500 pages thick and weighing more than they do.

I almost killed myself when I was 12 as the bag of books I was carrying swung from one side of my body, where it had been nicely balanced, over to the other side… where it was not.

The sudden shift in weight caused the bike I was riding to veer across the road in front of oncoming traffic. It all happened so fast I had no choice but to hang on and pray.

Thankfully, all I bruised was my ego and I got away with a few honks from shaken motorists. I had to pick up a cycling proficiency award later that day too, life’s funny that way sometimes isn’t it?

Anyway, I digress. Back to Apple.

iBooks 2

I can certainly see where Apple are coming from with the launch of iBooks 2. They want todo away with such cumbersome things as a good old fashioned textbook and bring education into the 21st century.

With iBooks 2 they see a world where textbooks are interactive and fun (presumably with every student using an iPad). They demonstrated how iBooks 2 utilized the portrait position of an iPad to show a text led book and landscape mode to enter into a far more interactive experience.

iBooks Author

Apple also launched a free app to make it easier for anyone to create an interactive textbook. It is called iBooks Author and it is described as being to ebooks creation as garageband is to music creation.

You can download iBooks Author for free at the app store here and it includes templates already made by Apple that you can use as a starting point.

The big educational publishers such as McGraw Hill and Pearson Education are already publishing their books for the iBook 2 app and more publishers are producing content as I write this.

Apple promised that iBooks 2 will offer books for every subject, grade level and student.

How schools will react to Apple’s plan for educational domination is not known.

A classroom full of kids playing with very expensive hardware worth many hundreds of copies of a textbook may be some teachers idea of hell.

Thats if they could raise the funds in the first place, add to that the cost of the ebooks themselves and you have a very large investment.

If parents are going to pay for such devices then their kid might suddenly become the most popular kid in the school, perhaps not for the right reasons.

Photo: Apple

Steve Jobs Biography

Posted by James in Apple, Biographies

Steve Jobs biography: The man in the black turtle neck who made technology cool.

Steve Jobs was an inspiration person who sadly passed away this week. In tribute to him and his legacy we have compiled this biography that only scratches the surface of Steve Jobs life.

If you would like to know more then we recommend a forthcoming book by Walter Isaacson Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography

Steve Jobs Biography: The Early Years

Steve Jobs was born in San Francisco in February 1955 to unwed parents who put him up for adoption. He was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs and was brought up in what would become the centre of the computing world, Silicon Valley.

Perhaps naturally growing up in that environment, Steve Jobs was fascinated by the fledgling electronics industry and spent time at companies such as HP and Atari. It was during this period that he met Steve Wozniak who would later join him in founding Apple Computers.

Steve Jobs is well known for dropping out of college and he only attended in Oregon for a short period. He did however, allude to the fact that his time there contained some great insights for him. For instance, he attributes the inspiration for Apples famously clear font styles and user interface (UI) designs to events such as attending calligraphy and typeface printing classes.

After dropping out Steve Jobs spent time on a spiritual journey, learning about Eastern mysticism and taking a journey to India to learn meditation and find out what he wanted out of life.

Steve Jobs Biography: Apple Computers

When he returned to Silicon Valley it seemed as though he had gained a clear perspective on what he wanted todo and a determination to achieve it. He teamed up with his friend and electronics wiz Steve Wozniak who had just designed and built his own computer board.

Steve Jobs saw the potential of an idea and formed Apple Computers in 1976 with Wozniak, selling the computer boards to local computer stores.

Meanwhile Wozniak had been working on what would become the most advanced personal computer of the time, the Apple II. It had color graphics and the worlds first commercial spreadsheet program.

After getting funding from an ex-Intel executive, the Apple II was a sensation and Apple Computers went public soon after in 1980. Steve Jobs assets were now valued at $200 million.

Increased competition, including IBM entering the market, meant that the early 80′s were tough on Steve Jobs and the Apple company.

They were still innovators though, they brought the first graphical user interface (GUI) to market and we saw the first Macintosh computer in 1984.

It was also a time of internal strife, Steve Jobs was considered by some in Apple as arrogant and temperamental. Poor sales meant that internal pressures could not be swept under the carpet as Apple began to look like a company in trouble.

Apple CEO John Sculley, whom Steve Jobs had brought in to help him run the company, fell out with Jobs and the resulting shakeup meant that Steve Jobs was sidelined at Apple and absolved of his responsibilities.

Steve Jobs Biography: Pixar & NeXT

Apple may have been his life up to that point, but the phrase “when one door closes another one opens” could have been written for Steve Jobs.

George Lucas had been working with a team of computer animators and for some reason (I can never find a satisfactory answer to this one), decided that he didn’t have the means to take them forward.

He introduced them to Steve Jobs who decided that he could. He turned them into another company you might know called Pixar, although it would be many years before they would become the company we know today.

Steve Jobs had also been working on another idea, he wanted to build high end computers for research projects and universities. He also wanted some of Apples best people to join his team.  Another argument ensued prompting Steve Jobs to finally resign and sell most of his Apple stock in protest.

NeXT computers was finally born in 1986 with Steve Jobs at the helm after Apple dropped its threats of legal action. It wasn’t a great success and although they tried to expand into the business market the company was losing money.

With Pixar also struggling  the early 90′s were a bleak and humbling time for Steve Jobs and his ambitions.

In his personal life things were better. He married Laurene in 1991 and had a young son, the up side of his current business circumstances meant that he could spend time at home with his young family.

Wiser men than me have suggested that mans greatest triumphs often come on the heals of their greatest defeats and so it proved with Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs Biography: Zero to Hero

Pixar had initially been commissioned by Disney to produce the worlds first full computer animation movie back in 1991, but it was 4 years before the phenomenon that was Toy Story was released.

Never one to overlook perfect timing Steve Jobs took Pixar public a week after the Toy Story release in 1995, instantly seeing his net worth rocket to $1.5 billion.

His other major venture, NeXT, would also take a dramatic turn.

With the release of Windows 95 Microsoft had really turned up the heat on Apple computers. Since Steve Jobs had left they had failed to produce anything new or innovative and their market share was in freefall. Their once elegant operating system had become bloated and was no match for Microsofts new Windows 95 software.

As with Apple, Steve Jobs had always stayed true to his original vision of simple design and powerful features in whatever NeXT produced. This was true of their operating system called NeXTSTEP and it was this software that persuaded Gil Amelio, then CEO of Apple Computers, to buy NeXT and bring Steve Jobs back into the Apple fold.

Gil Amelio may have brought Steve Jobs back to Apple but he wouldn’t be shown any mercy by Jobs when he announced huge Apple losses in 1997. Steve Jobs showed his ruthless side and promptly took his job.

Steve Jobs undertook a complete review of the company from top to bottom and streamlined every area of operations.

He also started to undertake what would perhaps become the biggest achievement of his career, the branding of Apple, headed by the slogan ‘Think Different’.

He was telling people what he always believed, that you don’t have to be like everyone else, you can change the world and Apple are there to help you.

Within the year Apple were back in profit with products such as the Apple Powerbook (I used to support these by the way, their reliability was shall we say… debatable).

Steve Jobs Biography: The Modern Era

The modern era of Apple can really be traced back to one event, the launch of the iMac in 1998.

Something that Apple would do again and again over the coming years happened for the first time since the launch of the original Apple II, the challenging of conventional wisdom and assumptions through great design.

In the case of the iMac, a riot of colorful plastic, it was the assumption that computers had to be boring grey boxes. It was a massive success with the public and changed the personal computer industry almost overnight.

Steve Jobs began to formulate the plan that would sow the seeds of success for Apple over the next decade, he saw the future of the personal computer as a digital hub for the new digital age. Seamlessly linking to other digital devices and he wanted Apple to be at the heart of it all.

The first creations to come out of this strategy were the so called iApps such as iMovie and iTunes. It was the hardware though that would really change the game.

In the early 2000′s there was a music site called Napster that allowed the downloading of music from the internet in MP3 format and the attention it was getting didn’t pass Steve Jobs by.

He wasn’t going to restrict Apple to just building computers and with some outside help, he turned their attention to building their own MP3 player and launched the iPod in 2001.

Steve Jobs Biography: The iPod

They weren’t the first but with Apples trademark good design and simple interface, the iPod became the de-facto MP3 player in what would become a massive market. The iPod and iTunes combination changed the music industry almost overnight.

Steve Jobs also decided to sell the iPod and other Apple hardware through their own retail stores. With very low key selling going against the retail grain, original fittings and inhouse product classes and training, they were a continuation of the Apple branding and their massive success is still influencing how other retailers operate.

In 2003 Steve Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and underwent surgery in 2004. After the surgery people thought that he had beaten the disease but as we now know that was not going to be the case.

Revenues from the iPod range, which by now included several versions including the nano and shuffle, actually surpassed those of it’s computers in 2006 and they pretty much had the MP3 market sown up. Even today, iTunes is still the largest retailer of music in the world.

Also announced in 2006 was the merger of Pixar and Disney. The move made Steve Jobs the largest single shareholder of Disney stock, a fact that was still true when Steve Jobs passed away this week.

Steve Jobs Biography: iPhone

Still pursuing his digital hub strategy laid out at the start of the decade, Apple would go on to launch Apple TV and the next real step change in technology in 2007. The iPhone. It changed the mobile phone industry overnight.

When he launched it Steve Jobs said that the iPhone was light years ahead of the competition and I don’t think anyone at that time would have disagreed. Nothing else came close, only with the launch of Googles android software years later did that change.

What is interesting is that Steve Jobs was effectively sealing the fate of his iPod range with the launch of the iPhone. How many other CEO’s would sacrifice a product range that produced around half their revenue?

I think that fact and the iPhone itself sums up more than anything else why many are calling Steve Jobs a visionary, he always looked beyond the short term.

In 2009 Steve Jobs shocked the Apple community by finally admitting the rumoured health problems and taking 6 months off for another operation that would see him undergo a liver transplant.

Steve Jobs Biography: iPad

With Steve Jobs back as CEO in 2010 he announced another ground breaking product that would enhance his ‘visionary’ status and once again change the computer industry almost overnight. He launched the iPad.

Again, other manufacturers had tried tablet computers and failed miserably, so Apple were not the first. They were however, the first to get it right.

The same skilled design that made the iPhone so brilliant did the same for the iPad. A whole new market of the personal computer industry was created with the iPads launch.

In 2011 it was obvious when Steve Jobs resigned as Apple CEO that his health was deteriorating, but the news that he had died this week still came as a shock to many. He passed away peacefully surrounded by his family.

Steve Jobs Biography: Summary

Count how many times I have said “changed the ……  industry almost overnight” and you will instantly gauge what Steve Jobs has brought to the technology industry that now rules every area of our lives in practically every country in the world.

He changed the computer industry with the Apple II, iMac and iPad.

He changed the music industry with iTunes and iPod.

He changed the phone industry with iPhone. He changed the movie industry with Pixar.

How many people can say they built a billion $ company? How many people can say that they did it on 3 different occasions in 2 different industries?

Of course he didn’t do it all on his own, he worked with other great people such as British design genius Jony Ive. But he set the tone, strategy and branding. He had the drive, the vision and the management skills to inspire his colleagues and his many customers.

The fact that the passing of Steve Jobs this week made front line news around the world, that people set up shrines for him as they might a pop star or movie actor, that Presidents paid tribute tells you alot about the man.

How many other business people around the world can say that they will get the same treatment when they pass away? It is difficult to name even one.

Photos: Robert Scoble, Ed Bierman, Tom Newby Photography, Marcin Wichary, Yutaka Tsutano, Apple

iPlayer Goes Global with the BBC

Posted by Jeff in Entertainment, TV

iPlayer goes global today with the launch of a BBC iPad app containing the best of the BBC’s output.

The iPlayer iPad app will allow international viewers, initially from 11 European countries, to get access to on-demand streamed content from the BBC. Including classic programmes such as Faulty Towers & Only Fools and Horses, as well as up to date programming such as Doctor Who and Top Gear.

The iPlayer BBC download service is only available for UK users for a 7 day catch up and the live version only available if you have a UK TV license. The license is a annual fee every UK TV owner pays & is where the BBC gets it’s financing from. It means that they do not use any advertising.

Why is the iPlayer important?

Well, the iPlayer is one of the biggest, earliest and most successful streaming services on the market. It can stream content live or recorded, at a consistent high quality, including HD and cope with some serious load.

The BBC reported 145 million requests in December 2010 alone. It is also available for all formats including games consoles, mobiles, internet enabled TV’s or players.

Backing up this technical wizardry is the BBC corporation, the original TV broadcaster and it’s millions of hours of programmes. Programmes such as Top Gear are watched already by 100′s millions of viewers each week around the world on TV and this can only increase as the iPlayer goes global.

From today, for a monthly or yearly fee, European viewers can get access to what the BBC considers it’s best content via the iPlayer app on the iPad. Other formats will follow.

A US launch is likely to follow after the European launch. At the moment the BBC operates a cable channel in the US but it’s reach is limited.

Successful programmes usually get bought up by the big US channels and remade. This may give the BBC a stronger foothold in that market to push it’s own versions.

In the UK some of the most popular programs are the iPlayer Doctor Who version and the iPlayer EastEnders version. Both have a potential global audience of millions more viewers.

Other players in the UK market have their own versions. There is a ITV Player, a Channel 4 iPlayer, a Channel 5 iPlayer, an E4 iPlayer and a Sky iPlayer version. They are not all called the iPlayer but you get the drift. Some are more successful than others as they try and keep up with the BBC giant.

The BBC has been looking at sharing the iPlayer platform with other broadcasters, so it could be that they will switch onto the same technology and coding. As the BBC is publicly funded by the license fee it is often obliged to share it’s knowledge, experience and technology.

Apple Reports Record Earnings

Posted by Clive in Apple, Business

Apple have announced record earnings of $28 billion and a net profit of over $15 billion for the last quarter.

The profits are on the back of surging demand for the Apple iPhone and iPad products, sales of which have more than doubled.

It is interesting that this massive demand has occurred when competitors to both the iPhone and the iPad has become alot stronger. HTC, for instance, have started to match the iPhone for functionality and design with their Google Android based phones.

The results do mask however, a real downturn in the fortunes of the iPod product range which has slipped by 20%. It seams more and more of us now store our music collections on our phones.

Analysts had been concerned that the devastation caused by the Tsunami in Japan would have an negative impact of Apple‘s supply chain, but it seems that there were no adverse supply problems.

Shares in the company rose by over 5% on the financial news and the Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said that he expected revenue of about $25 billion in the 4th quarter of 2011. Predictions from Apple tend to be conservative so it will be interesting to see if they can improve on this performance.

Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO said,

“We’re thrilled to deliver our best quarter ever, with revenue up 82 percent and profits up 125 percent. Right now, we’re very focused and excited about bringing iOS 5 and iCloud to our users this fall.”

They also have a new version of their operating system out this week, a new thunderbolt 27″ monitor and a rumoured launch of the iPad 3 and the iPhone 5 to come.

As you can see in our iPad 2 reader poll below, over 60% of you are waiting for the next generation iPad 3. Rumour has it that it will feature a display resolution that will make the Apple fans drool.

Are you waiting for the Apple Ipad 3?

Are you someone who is planning on getting / has bought the iPad 2 or are you willing to wait for the iPad 3 ? Cast your vote below.

Are Apple Tracking Your Movements?

Posted by James in Apple, Technology

In an unusual step Apple have replied to accusations by security researchers that alleged that Apple was tracking the movements of it’s iPhone and iPad users.

Security experts had said that they had found that Apple was storing the location of it’s iPhone and iPad products in an unencrypted file on the device, this file was also copied to the users computer via iTunes when the device was backed up.

In response to this accusation, Apple have made the unusual step of taking a question and answer session about the revelations.

Below are the main points that arose and Apple’s official answers.

1. Why is Apple tracking the location of my iPhone?
Apple is not tracking the location of your iPhone. Apple has never done so and has no plans to ever do so.

2. Then why is everyone so concerned about this?
Providing mobile users with fast and accurate location information while preserving their security and privacy has raised some very complex technical issues which are hard to communicate in a soundbite. Users are confused, partly because the creators of this new technology (including Apple) have not provided enough education about these issues to date.

3. Why is my iPhone logging my location?
The iPhone is not logging your location. Rather, it’s maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around your current location, some of which may be located more than one hundred miles away from your iPhone, to help your iPhone rapidly and accurately calculate its location when requested. Calculating a phone’s location using just GPS satellite data can take up to several minutes. iPhone can reduce this time to just a few seconds by using Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data to quickly find GPS satellites, and even triangulate its location using just Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data when GPS is not available (such as indoors or in basements). These calculations are performed live on the iPhone using a crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data that is generated by tens of millions of iPhones sending the geo-tagged locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers in an anonymous and encrypted form to Apple.

4. Is this crowd-sourced database stored on the iPhone?
The entire crowd-sourced database is too big to store on an iPhone, so we download an appropriate subset (cache) onto each iPhone. This cache is protected but not encrypted, and is backed up in iTunes whenever you back up your iPhone. The backup is encrypted or not, depending on the user settings in iTunes. The location data that researchers are seeing on the iPhone is not the past or present location of the iPhone, but rather the locations of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers surrounding the iPhone’s location, which can be more than one hundred miles away from the iPhone. We plan to cease backing up this cache in a software update coming soon (see Software Update section below).

5. Can Apple locate me based on my geo-tagged Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data?
No. This data is sent to Apple in an anonymous and encrypted form. Apple cannot identify the source of this data.

6. People have identified up to a year’s worth of location data being stored on the iPhone. Why does my iPhone need so much data in order to assist it in finding my location today?
This data is not the iPhone’s location data—it is a subset (cache) of the crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower database which is downloaded from Apple into the iPhone to assist the iPhone in rapidly and accurately calculating location. The reason the iPhone stores so much data is a bug we uncovered and plan to fix shortly (see Software Update section below). We don’t think the iPhone needs to store more than seven days of this data.

7. When I turn off Location Services, why does my iPhone sometimes continue updating its Wi-Fi and cell tower data from Apple’s crowd-sourced database?
It shouldn’t. This is a bug, which we plan to fix shortly (see Software Update section below).

8. What other location data is Apple collecting from the iPhone besides crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data?
Apple is now collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced traffic database with the goal of providing iPhone users an improved traffic service in the next couple of years.

9. Does Apple currently provide any data collected from iPhones to third parties?
We provide anonymous crash logs from users that have opted in to third-party developers to help them debug their apps. Our iAds advertising system can use location as a factor in targeting ads. Location is not shared with any third party or ad unless the user explicitly approves giving the current location to the current ad (for example, to request the ad locate the Target store nearest them).

10. Does Apple believe that personal information security and privacy are important?
Yes, we strongly do. For example, iPhone was the first to ask users to give their permission for each and every app that wanted to use location. Apple will continue to be one of the leaders in strengthening personal information security and privacy.

Software Update

Sometime in the next few weeks Apple will release a free iOS software update that:

• reduces the size of the crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower database cached on the iPhone,
• ceases backing up this cache, and
• deletes this cache entirely when Location Services is turned off.

In the next major iOS software release the cache will also be encrypted on the iPhone.

Apple App Downloads Pass 10,000,000,000 (Yes..10 Billion)

Posted by Jeff in Apple, Technology

Apple has reported that the number of apps that have been downloaded from their app store has now surpassed the 10 billionth download.

There are approximately 160 million iPhone, iPod and iPad users worldwide that make up those purchasers and one lucky person, Gail Davis in the UK received a $10,000 iTunes voucher for being the 10 billionth person with her purchase of an app called Paper Glider.

Most of that total number, 7 billion, was purchased in the last year and shows how quickly the app store has gained traction in the marketplace. It operates in 90 countries around the world and the iPhone has yet to launch in some populous markets.

Other manufacturers are coping the business mode including Google and Nokia, hither to the top operator in the marketplace until a few years ago.

Apple Announces $6 Billion Profit

Posted by James in Apple, Press Releases, Technology

Apple announced this week record profits of $6 billion for the last quarter with record sales across it’s product range.

It is an impressive achievement and the new product range including the iPad seems to be at the heart of it. There have been tablet computers before but no one had anything that could be considered successful and the niche was abandoned by most manufacturers as a waste of time and money.

Apple changed all that in a master stroke with the iPad and instantly created a whole new sector which others are now scrambling to get into.

Apple® today announced financial results for its fiscal 2011 first quarter ended December 25, 2010. The Company posted record revenue of $26.74 billion and record net quarterly profit of $6 billion, or $6.43 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $15.68 billion and net quarterly profit of $3.38 billion, or $3.67 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 38.5 percent compared to 40.9 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 62 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

Apple sold 4.13 million Macs during the quarter, a 23 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 16.24 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 86 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 19.45 million iPods during the quarter, representing a seven percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter. The Company also sold 7.33 million iPads during the quarter.

“We had a phenomenal holiday quarter with record Mac, iPhone and iPad sales,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We are firing on all cylinders and we’ve got some exciting things in the pipeline for this year including iPhone 4 on Verizon which customers can’t wait to get their hands on.”

“We couldn’t be happier with the performance of our business, generating $9.8 billion in cash flow from operations during the December quarter,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the second fiscal quarter of 2011, we expect revenue of about $22 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $4.90.”

Apple Add Beatles to iTunes

Posted by James in Apple, Technology

Apple the technology company and Apple Corps Ltd, the music company have finally agreed peace and come to an agreement that will finally allow The Beatles back catalogue into the iTunes store.

The band are one of the biggest on the planet even though they split up decades ago and most of their members are no longer with us.

Not having them on iTunes has been an embarrising omission for iTunes since it started but there was an ongoing court case that was finally resolved in 2007 over the name Apple.