iBooks 2 still contains 2x image files hinting at high-resolution iPad

iBooks 2 still contains 2x image files hinting at high-resolution iPad

"Education is deep in our DNA, and it has been since the very beginning."

With those words, Apple senior vice president of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller kicked off the
company's invitation-only education event on Thursday, according to Technologizer's Henry McCracken.
At this event, Apple introduced the newly interactive iBooks 2, a first wave of $14.99 school
textbooks from the top educational publishers and a new tool for educators to make their own
textbook. The company also revamped its iTunes U program for sharing multimedia educational
material.

Higher-quality iPad images were first discovered in the iBooks app alongside @2x images for the
iPhone last January. The discovery of the images was taken as evidence that Apple was planning
for its iPad the same resolution jump that it did with the iPhone. Apple released the iPhone 4
with a "Retina Display" that featured twice the resolution and four times the pixels of its
predecessor, the iPhone 3GS.

The company's partnered (initially) with textbook makers Pearson, McGraw Hill and Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt, as the trio are responsible for 90 percent of all textbooks sold -- as well
as DK and the E.O. Wilson Foundation. Phil was gushing, saying that he couldn't "overemphasize
the importance of these partners working with us." Pearson's High School Science, Biology, DK's
Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life, Natural History Insects, Animals and My First ABC as well as
the first two chapters of E.O. Wilson's Life on Earth will be available at launch -- the
latter is free. You'll be able to download iBooks 2 from the app store free of charge,
whilst textbooks themselves will cost $14.99 or less : a far cry from the $80 dead-tree
textbooks we shelled out for in college.

Traditional textbooks are expensive, physically cumbersome and prone to becoming obsolete.
Whereas an iPad is interactive, searchable and can be updated. But while the iPad is portable,
durable and searchable, it lacks content. To that end, Apple’s iBooks 2 will be its “new
textbook experience for the iPad.”

Prior to announcing iBooks2, Schiller announced that there are currently 1.5 million iPads
in use in education and over 20,000 education and learning applications built specifically
for the iPad. iBooks 2 is, of course, available free today for the iPad, you can download
it on the App Store.