Comments on: Apple Cracking Textbook Racket

By: Grover

Grover — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 20:13:03 +0000

What I’d like to know is what’s to prevent the viral sharing of copyrighted materials? I design ESL materials. What’s to prevent some chain ESL school in China, say, from buying a single copy of my latest book for $5.99 then dishing it out to a thousand or more students in a single year, repeating the procedure year after year while the content is still current, popular and usable. I get $5.99 for all my efforts. Once! It’s pretty easy to find iBooks that have been ripped for download now when there are few iBooks on the market at all. An alternative approach: such schools could buy a number of iPads and rent them, preloaded with textbooks, to their students, creating a new revenue stream. At best, I get to sell a few iBooks. I can’t see any value in developing for such a platform.

By: Beelzebub

Beelzebub — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:31:14 +0000

Let’s not forget that socially conscious Apple outsources the manufacturing jobs needed to assemble their iPhones, iPads and iBooks to the sweatshops of China that pour raw chemical waste into the rivers and the atmosphere. In spite of using slave labor to assemble their products they continue to sell them to the stupid consumer at premium prices. Is that that kind of company we want to reward with a massive financial gateway into public education?

By: NormD

NormD — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 11:32:34 +0000

Why is it conservatives have such a love affair with Apple?

The company is run by committed liberals who sell overpriced products to semi-religious believers that lock you into a walled garden.

Apple is getting into textbooks to make money and try to revive it failing iBooks platform. Why should Apple get 30%? For running the iTunes bookstore?

Most of the cost of any book is not the printing. There is no reason to suspect the e-form of books should be substantially cheaper than paper. And lets not get started on the problems with DRMed books.

By: queeg

queeg — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 06:58:08 +0000

Your missing the boat……royalties ala intellectual property….licenses.etc.

The education/publishing kabal ain’t going down that easily…

By: CalWatchdog

CalWatchdog — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 02:50:35 +0000

Mr. B. Well it’s just a start. Soon we’ll have great $49 Android tablets that do the same thing.

— John Seiler

By: Beelzebub

Beelzebub — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 23:36:24 +0000

So who buys the public school kids their Ipads??? The taxpayers @ $800 a crack??? Of course it means we would have to fund huge IT departments for the school system to maintain and repair the Ipads. How many Ipads will the average 8 or 9 year old go through in a school year??? 3???

I bet the Apple lobbyists are swarming Sacramento and DC for new legislation outlawing books in schools.