Steve’s Final “One More Thing…”

[dkf]

Jobs’ upcoming biography is the source for a lot of this new information. Even though the book won’t be out until Monday, several tidbits have leaked out over the past few days. Consider that sentence a verbose SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!

Another potential “One more thing…” for Jobs is apparently digital textbooks for the iPad. “Mr. Jobs’s biographer Walter Isaacson says in the book that Mr. Jobs viewed textbooks as the next business he wanted to transform,” Damon Darlin and Nick Wingfield reveal on The New York Times’ Bit blog. Jobs apparently went as far as having meetings with publishers about partnering with Apple to make this happen. And he was thinking about ways of circumventing state certification requirements (a tricky issue in the textbook market).

--

“He very much wanted to do for television sets what he had done for computers, music players, and phones: make them simple and elegant,” Isaacson wrote.

Isaacson continued: “‘I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,’ he told me. ‘It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud.’ No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels. ‘It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.’”

http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/22/boom/

[Scuba]

1. He made phones simple? Coulda fooled me. n/t

[Prometheus Bound]

2. Second that. I hate my iPhone.

I know, I'm a lazy bonehead. But I still hate it.

[dkf]

3. Keyboard certainly. Had to pony up for the 4s to see if Siri would improve things.

[Retrograde]

7. I'm (slightly) amused by the arrogance of its OS

Claiming I'm in the "Cupertino" time zone - bleh.

It's OK: I like the Kindle ap. I don't like how it eats up power, or that it's too big to fit comfortably in my pocket - or hand (I have a 3: IMHO the design of the 4 is clunker). Overall, I don't think I'm the person Apple's Usability Lab designed for, but I was looking for something to replace my old PDA and it was the least bad.

[Tesha]

11. Strangely enough, tens of millions worldwide have figured out how to work their iPhones...

...and love them. Three-year-olds worldwide can work
iPhones.

Yes, Apple, under Steve Jobs' "visionary tyrany" *DID*
create a simple-to-operate smartphone.

And I know; I've used many smartphones besides iPhones
and now, wouldn't trade my iPhone for any other brand.

Tesha

[Prometheus Bound]

15. I already admitted I'm a lazy bonehead.

I certainly hope I didn't imply that you and three-year-olds worldwide were.

I also hate the weight and size. I rarely use it, preferring to put the chip in my tiny, light, easy to handle Samsung.

[begin_within]

4. I thought that would be one of the principal reasons for the iPad anyway.

Why would it be any revelation that textbooks would be on iPads? To me that's the logical application for them. Students would never again be required to lug around a heavy bundle of expensive textbooks. They could simply download the book, and it would expire after a certain time period. I would think the publishers of textbooks would be in favor of it, since it would reduce their costs dramatically. And even students submitting term papers, taking tests, even watching recorded lectures. All could be done on the iPad. I don't see why it would be considered revolutionary or anything, just a logical application of the popular iPad.

[dkf]

5. You would think it should be easy enough, but you've got those textbook publishers too.

And he may have had some twists on the idea. Every so often some feature that i happen upon does surprise me.

[Tesha]

12. There are a wide variety of "vertical markets" accessible to the iPad.

These include education, medicine, legal, architectural,
engineering and the like.

In education, we'll certainly see dynamic textbooks,
teachers' aids, etc.

In medicine: doctor's aids, pharmaceutical apps,
EMR/Electronic Medical Records, etc.

As you have observed, it is these vertical markets
where iPad will really change the world.

Tesha

[sibelian]

6. So even TVs would crash and have useless interfaces.

Apple = technology for people who don't want technology.

[dkf]

8. Or for people who have mucked up earlier efforts.

[Tesha]

13. Apple: Technology for people who have better things to do than...

...dink around with the technology.

That's why you see so many scientists, creative
folks, and many other folks using Apple products:
they want technology that is simply unobtrusively
assistive and not an end in itself.

Tesha

[InvisibleTouch]

9. I can see both benefits and drawbacks to revamping the traditional textbook.

Benefits: Students don't have to lug 100 pounds of textbooks around. Saves trees and causes less pollution in the manufacturing process. A digital version will hopefully be cheaper. As new information is discovered, it can be updated right away.

Drawbacks: You presumably can't re-sell or find cheap secondhand copies of digital textbooks. You may want to keep some books for reference, and it's nice to have a real, physical book that you can access anytime, rather than having to power up a reading device. And the biggest one: Information can be changed and skewed by those with an agenda, leaving no hard-copy evidence behind.

Overall I think digital textbooks accessible on a simple, lightweight reader would be a good thing. I'm thinking back to my own undergrad days, to the classes that I had to take simply to fulfill general requirements, where I neither particularly wanted to shell out a lot of money for the book, nor wanted to keep it when I was done with it. But a hard copy must also available for those that want it.

[TheDebbieDee]

10. A Professor Negroponte was on Colbert about a year ago......

talking about his plan to export libraries to villages around the world. His idea was to buy several sets of laptop computers, load each computer of the set with different works of literature, reference materials, encyclopedias, etc. and then ship these computer sets to remote villages in Africa, while I am sure that he wanted to eventually expand his portable library to other parts of the world.

Prof. Negroponte was hopeful that the young people in these villages, who know about cell phones and internet and other modern conveniences that don't exist in their village, would learn even more about the world outside their village while teaching their parents how to read.

Maybe Jobs had plans to partner with Prof. Negroponte, or perhaps he modified Negroponte's plan...........

[Tesha]

14. You're thinking of the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) effort.

http://one.laptop.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child



The effort definitely continues and generally speaking,
it's shooting for a lower-priced part of the market
than is *ANY* commercial effort including Apple's.

I've used the original OLPC machine and it's an
amazing piece of technology.

Tesha