Today, during their education press event, Apple announced the availability of the iBooks Author App that allows users to create interactive iBooks on their Mac.
Now anyone can create stunning iBooks textbooks, cookbooks, history books, picture books, and more for iPad. All you need is an idea and a Mac. Start with one of the Apple-designed templates that feature a wide variety of page layouts. Add your own text and images with drag-and-drop ease. Use Multi-Touch widgets to include interactive photo galleries, movies, Keynote presentations, 3D objects, and more. Preview your book on your iPad at any time. Then submit your finished work to the iBookstore with a few simple steps. And before you know it, you’re a published author.
The App allows you to start with a number of templates and then customize your book with images, videos, multi-touch widgets and even Keynote presentations. You can then preview your book on your iPad and then submit it to the iBookstore for sale or free download.
iBooks Author is available for free in the Mac App Store. [App Store]
Monday December 16, 2024 8:55 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Apple released iOS 18.2 in the second week of December, bringing the second round of Apple Intelligence features to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 models. This update brings several major advancements to Apple's AI integration, including completely new image generation tools and a range of Visual Intelligence-based enhancements. Apple has added a handful of new non-AI related feature controls as...
Wednesday December 18, 2024 11:39 am PST by Juli Clover
Apple is no longer planning to launch a hardware subscription service that would let customers "subscribe" to get a new iPhone each year, reports Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
Gurman first shared rumors about Apple's work on a hardware subscription service back in 2022, and at the time, he said that Apple wanted to develop a simple system that would allow customers to pay a monthly fee to gain...
Contrary to recent reports, the iPhone 17 Pro will not feature a horizontal camera layout, according to the leaker known as "Instant Digital."
In a new post on Weibo, the leaker said that a source has confirmed that while the appearance of the back of the iPhone 17 Pro has indeed changed, the layout of the three cameras is "still triangular," rather than the "horizontal bar spread on the...
Wednesday December 18, 2024 10:05 am PST by Juli Clover
Elevation Lab today announced the launch of TimeCapsule, an innovative and simple solution for increasing the battery life of Apple's AirTag.
Priced at $20, TimeCapsule is an AirTag enclosure that houses two AA batteries that offer 14x more battery capacity than the CR2032 battery that the AirTag runs on. It works by attaching the AirTag's upper housing to the built-in custom contact in the...
Tuesday December 17, 2024 9:02 am PST by Joe Rossignol
The current Apple TV 4K was released more than two years ago, so the streaming device is becoming due for a hardware upgrade soon. Fortunately, it was recently rumored that a new Apple TV will launch at some point next year.
Below, we recap rumors about the next-generation Apple TV.
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman last week reported that Apple has been working on its own combined Wi-Fi and...
Monday December 16, 2024 4:17 pm PST by Juli Clover
Blackmagic today announced that its URSA Cine Immersive camera is now available for pre-order, with deliveries set to start late in the first quarter of 2025. Blackmagic says that this is the world's first commercial camera system designed to capture 3D content for the Vision Pro.
The URSA Cine Immersive camera was first introduced in June, but it has not been available for purchase until...
Apple launched the controversial "trashcan" Mac Pro eleven years ago today, introducing one of its most criticized designs that persisted through a period of widespread discontentment with the Mac lineup.
The redesign took the Mac Pro in an entirely new direction, spearheaded by a polished aluminum cylindrical design that became unofficially dubbed the "trashcan" in the Mac community. All of ...
Sunday December 15, 2024 9:47 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple is planning a series of "major design" and "format changes" for iPhones over the next few years, according to The Wall Street Journal's Aaron Tilley and Yang Jie.
The paywalled report published today corroborated the widely-rumored "iPhone 17 Air" with an "ultrathin" design that is thinner than current iPhone models. The report did not mention a specific measurement, but previous...
I know! I have a Mac Plus and I'm outraged...OUTRAGED that Apple doesn't support that at all. I bought that in 1986 and it's still working fine. How DARE Apple not support this anymore with software updates and programs. They're just trying to get me to spend more money with them. No. Thank. You. I spent enough back then and it's still working so why upgrade?
So I feel for the PPC users out there. It's only been 6 years since they switched to Intel and those PPC Macs have at least another 20 to 25 years left on them.
But seriously, I don't know how people work on those old machines. I have a 2008 MacBook Pro and that's getting to be slow as molasses in working with Photoshop and Lightroom. And don't even get me started on Aperture...that takes forever. I will do an adjustment then the CPU pegs to red and you wait and wait and wait for the adjustment to actually show up. It's not like I'm running out of RAM either as I have 8 gigs in this thing.
I guess if I was just surfing the web and doing emails or something, a PPC would still be okay. I just can't fathom doing Photoshop on them, but I guess some people do it all the time. But come on...time marches onward. Do you really expect Apple to keep developers around that code for the PPC with new products?
Why would you expect new functions to be back-ported to old OS versions? As a software vendor myself, I don't know why anyone would do this-- the development and support costs are non-trivial. Users do need to pay for this, and maintenance fees or upgrades are alternative ways. A $30 upgrade fee seems pretty reasonable to me.
I'm not complaining about the price - in fact, I already own Lion. But for a variety of reasons that I won't go into right now, upgrading will take a lot of effort, and I'm not willing to do it quite yet. It's alright though; I'm not exactly an author. But I look forward to playing around with this.
"Now anyone can create stunning iBooks textbooks, cookbooks, history books, picture books, and more for iPad. All you need is an idea and a Mac."
Oh great. Now anyone can write a textbook! You don't need to be a scholar or even an authority. All you need is an opinion, time, and a Mac. I can't wait for the "textbooks" on how the world was created in seven days.
Yeah, that whole freedom of speech and freedom of the press thing really sucks.
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Holly crap! You have 3 other options: Windows, Linux and Google Chrome. No one is forcing you to buy Lion.
If you've been following along for the past 12 years, every new version of OS X has been worse than the last, according to the peanut gallery. These people should just stick with 10.0 and be happy with that.
This is just trolling or plain stupidity. I'm sorry, but a $29 upgrade to Lion shouldn't break the bank for anybody who had enough money to purchase a Mac in the first place .... much less complaining about it as a requirement to use some FREE publishing software they're offering people.
I don't get all the anti-10.7 sentiment out there anyway? Sure, there are situations where you won't want to upgrade a given machine past Snow Leopard. I've got one Mac like that myself. (You may still rely on older apps that require Rosetta to run because they're still coded for the old PPC architecture.) But the same was said about "Classic" MacOS, and eventually, 99.9% of us managed to move forward and let go of some outdated software that wasn't ever upgraded to run OS X native.
There's actually quite a bit "wrong" with 10.6. For example, it has a lot of security weaknesses they overcame in 10.7. There's also a lot of "little stuff" improved in 10.7 that's simply nice to have -- such as the elimination of auto key repeat when you hold down a keyboard key for several seconds. (Who ever really used that, ever since the days of trying to draw artwork on line printers, made of lines and lines of AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA and what-not?) Instead, 10.7 does something sensible -- cycles a letter through various accent-marked versions for you.
Apple, one of the most cash rich corps in the world and this s/ware is for the latest version of Lion only? Talk about trying to screw everyone in a time of global recession. WTF is wrong with 10.6?
