Apple doubles down on book creation with iPad app

Apple’s ebook creation tools – first launched in 2012 – have long played an interesting if minor role in the ecosystem. While Amazon has the indie book world sewn up with Kindle Direct Publishing, the desktop-based iBooks Author has always been the multimedia alternative and a favorite for folks creating one-off texts. Although there are no clear numbers (the last announcement happened in 2015 when Apple claimed seeing 1 million new iBooks users per week), there is some evidence that it behooves indie authors to at least support the platform and with the new iPad Author tools it looks like creators – and educators – will be able to create and distribute their own iPad-based texts.

The app, which is part of Pages and is called Digital Books in new iOS parlance, allows users to create multimedia books just as they would create regular documents. The app also supports group editing and multiple templates allow you to flow images and text into the app seamlessly.

The new application is a direct attack on the current popular educational authoring tool, Google Docs. Anecdotally, the Brooklyn schools my kids attend all finish and turn in their homework via the schools own private Google accounts, a fact that probably keeps iOS educational team leads up at night. This move from a dedicated desktop app mostly aimed at indie authors and higher education to an iPad app aimed at small groups and, presumably, elementary and high school teachers who want to produce their own lightweight content, is a step in the right direction.

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Apple’s learn-to-code app Swift Playgrounds adds AR lessons

Amid a flurry of educational-related announcements at Apple’s press event this morning, the company also unveiled a new feature in its learn-to-code app Swift Playgrounds, that will help teach a younger generation of iOS developers how to build AR-enabled apps. Apple has been heavily pushing augmented reality and its ARKit for developers, as the technology is expected to usher in a whole new ecosystem of smarter apps that can interact with the real world – whether that’s Pokémon-style games, apps that help you pick out your next sofa by visualizing it in the room, apps that animate real-world objects, help you learn, or just entertain.

Now Apple wants to encourage novice developers to get into AR, too.

Swift Playgrounds was first introduced in 2016 as a new tool for teaching kids to code. The app ships with a number of basic coding lessons and challenges, but with a more graphical and engaging interface than some other learn-to-code apps had in the past. It’s also distributed as an iPad app – meaning it’s ready for schools where iPads are used in the classroom.

Today, Apple highlighted AR-focused lessons in Swift Playgrounds.

In one example shown on stage, kids could program an animated character to move through a 3D virtual world as a part of a game. AR would allow the animated character and virtual world to be placed within the real world, by way of the iPad’s camera.

The addition of the AR module to app was part of a larger “Everyone Can Code” agenda highlighted several times throughout the event, with a focus on how Apple’s tools can help.

The larger news from this morning was the launch of a low-cost iPad with support for Apple Pencil – the company’s effort to combat Google Chromebook’s growing traction in schools.

Apple didn’t say when Swift Playgrounds would add the AR module, or if it already had ahead of the event.

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Apple is finally selling the Space Gray mouse, keyboard and trackpad without an iMac Pro

Surprise! You don’t have to pay $5,000 or more to get a Space Gray Magic Mouse 2, Magic Keyboard or Magic Trackpad 2. You can now buy those devices separately.

And because this is Apple, you’ll have to pay more to get the dark items. The Magic Mouse 2 costs $79 in silver and $99 in Space Gray.

The Magic Keyboard costs $129 for the silver version and $149 for the Space Gray one. This keyboard comes with a numeric keypad. The small version of the keyboard only has one color option. The trackpad costs the same price.

This news is going to make many eBay sellers really sad.

Apple iMac Pro mouse

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Apple’s “Pencil” now works with its iWork toolkit

Apple is bringing its pencil to the masses.

The pencil tool will now work across Apple’s suite of iWork tools — including the popular Pages (document creation) Numbers (its spreadsheet app), and Keynote (for presentations) apps — on the low-cost iPad that Apple first brought to market last year.

At an event today in Chicago, Apple announced its latest iPad, in a bid to challenge the dominant player in the education technology — Google (a subsidiary of Alphabet).

In addition, the company said that Logitech is introducing a $49 pencil stylus called the “crayon” which slashes the cost of the pencil hardware from its previous, $99 price point.

 

 

 

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Apple introduces a cheap 9.7-inch iPad with Apple Pencil support

Apple is holding a press conference right now in Chicago. And the company unveiled a brand new device — well, sort of. Apple is going to sell a brand new 9.7-inch iPad that works with the Apple Pencil.

Before today, only (more expensive) iPad Pro models could take advantage of the Pencil. The company said today’s new iPad would be the most affordable iPad yet. Apple hasn’t shared any price yet. Current 9.7-inch only cost $299 to schools.

Based on the introduction video, it looks and works just like the existing 9.7-inch iPad. The bezels are identical and there’s a Touch ID sensor. Apple Pencil support is the only thing that seems new so far on the hardware front.

Existing iPad users will also get new features as Pages, Numbers and Keynote for iOS are all going to be updated to support the Apple Pencil. It’s surprising that those Apple apps haven’t supported the stylus yet, but now it’s possible.

This feature is going to be called Smart Annotation and is going to be available as a beta. Teachers could use it to grade papers for instance.

Apple showed some tech specs. This new iPad should have an LTE version, an 8MP camera, all the sensors you’d expect in an iPad and an A10 Fusion chip. This chip first appeared in the iPhone 7.

Apple also said that there are 200,000 education apps in the App Store right now. The company is trying to position the iPad as a more capable device against Google Chromebooks.

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Follow along live from the Apple education event in Chicago

Apple held an education focused event in Chicago today at Lane Technical High School. CEO Tim Cook took the stage and began his announcements with a nod to the student marches that occurred this week in support of gun control.

Cook praised Lane Tech High for having more PHDs coming out of it than any school in the country and highlighted its programming and robotics efforts.

Cook says that Apple has had an education focus for 40 years, from the early days of the company. “We believe that technology could help deliver a truly unique and personalized experience to students and teachers.”

Cook highlighted Apple’s efforts to increase coding efforts and opportunities to vocational schools and high schools including the City Colleges of Chicago with Swift and Swift playgrounds.

Cathleen Richardson ConnectED Program Development Executive at Apple works with classes and teachers to put Apple devices into classrooms. She took the stage to give some examples.

Follow along and refresh this post for more.

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Apple’s original shows may launch next March, report says

Apple’s upcoming slate of original TV shows may finally see the light of day as early as next March, according to a report from The New York Times on Sunday. Citing producers and entertainment exec sources, the article says Apple has been taking advantage of its significant cash stores to fund its TV efforts – and is, in fact, spending north of the $1 billion budget it had first committed to original programming.

The report also notes Apple has now outspent both Facebook and YouTube on original content, and has beaten Netflix in a few bidding wars for new series.

So far, Apple has greenlit 12 projects, nine of which are straight-to-series orders – meaning, they’re skipping the pilot phase and heading straight into production.

Many of Apple’s forthcoming series include big names in Hollywood. They also sound far more promising than its first efforts in this space, which had included a pitch-off show about apps (“Planet of the Apps”) and a longer version of “Carpool Karaoke.” 

The upcoming roster of Apple shows spans genres, including a Reese Witherspoon/Jennifer Aniston drama about morning news shows, a Steven Spielberg reboot of “Amazing Stories,”  a thriller starring Octavia Spencer, and a new space drama from “Battlestar Galactica’s” creator, and a Kristen Wiig-led comedy, an M. Night Shyamalan thriller, a Kevin Durant-inspired scripted basketball show, a documentary about extraordinary homes, and a series from “La La Land’s” director, among other things. 

Beyond who’s involved with each of these projects, details about the shows themselves are still vague. But The NYT report claims Apple is not focused on shows that are “gratuitously dark” or heavy on social issues. In other words, don’t expect the next “The Handmaid’s Tale” (Hulu’s Emmy winner) on Apple, it seems.

Unlike Netflix, Apple will limit the number of series it puts out, focusing on quality over quantity.

It’s still unclear how Apple will distribute its series to customers, though it’s expected access will be tied to a subscription of some sort. The shows might be housed in Apple’s existing TV app, which today organizes video programming from Prime Video, Hulu, CBS, Starz, Showtime, HBO, and others that require sign-in from a TV provider.

The TV app is already starting to shape up to become an alternative to television, especially with the recent addition of streaming news channels, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, Cheddar, CNBC and Bloomberg.

The March 2019 launch date is the best-case-scenario for Apple, which has so far ceded a ton of ground to rivals like Amazon, Google (YouTube), Netflix, and Hulu in terms of streaming TV and original programming.

The target launch time frame is actually anywhere from March to summer 2019, the report said.

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