Alright, I just fired up iBooks Author, which is a free download from the Mac App Store. It installed quickly, and after selecting a template I was editing my first-textbook in moments. The single-window interface is just like any other modern iWorks app, and Apple isn’t offering it for free for lack of features. Like Josh mentioned in the liveblog, the app is a mix of Keynote and Pages, with drag and drop layout tools and a sidebar of “slides” representing the table of contents.
iBooks Author hands-on: making textbooks in the 21st century
The single-window interface is just like any other modern iWorks app, and Apple isn’t offering it for free for lack of features.
The single-window interface is just like any other modern iWorks app, and Apple isn’t offering it for free for lack of features.
Of course, the app isn’t exactly designed for your mom to publish a interactive textbook of her vacation: while some aspects are a breeze, there’s no WYSIWYG to build 3D objects from scratch or code HTML5 elements, you’ll have to do that externally. Also, the app didn’t support many of the videos in various QuickTime-supported formats on my computer (though, oddly, it embedded a music video from the iTunes Music Store), and animated GIFs seem unsupported as well. Standby for the official The Verge textbook in highschools everywhere this coming fall.
Also worth noting: nothing in this tool makes you automatically an expert on any educational topic. Luckily, this tool seems just as fitting for publishing a regular book, with fancy typography or interactivity as needed. We just hope Apple will have a close eye on its textbooks category, before somebody leads our country’s young minds astray.
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