meg white
on Aug 1st, 2011
@ 7:33 am: 

you may be going mainstream, but you’ll never be ordinary.

[Reply]

Jack W Perry
on Aug 1st, 2011
@ 9:39 am: 

I am sure we will hear many of your thoughts in the various other venues. Good luck and look forward to you r next blog.

[Reply]

Jay Huldeen
on Aug 11th, 2011
@ 8:15 am: 

Evan, my dear friend, you went corporate back in 1986. I’m glad you have finally realized it.

It would be interesting to hear your musings on the how the effective transfer of control of ‘content’ (what a dreary word when the emphasis is on the first syllable!) from the old order to the digerati will affect our culture generally. Do you think we will continue to get stupider, or are you hopeful that somehow there will be a recovery of real literacy? Or am I simply wrong in my premises?

The new glasses are very corporate, and a good look for you. Please let us know where to find your new blog.

[Reply]

eBooks and the Science Community: My ScienceOnline 2011 reading list | Kylemilhoan's Blog
on Jan 14th, 2011
@ 5:05 am: 

[...] Amazon’s Newest BFF [...]

Chipp
on May 5th, 2010
@ 10:57 am: 

Though I disagree with your “clues”, your conclusion is interesting.

First off, you need to check your facts. Apple and iPad are not providing the suite of productivity tools freely. They are paid for apps, just like on any other OS, and their cost is substantially lower than commercial suites, and higher than free ones.

Furthermore, as anyone who has used Apple’s productivity suite of tools knows, there is a huge amount lacking in them– namely the ability to move a file from your iPad to another device– or sync it in any way. Long way to go before it really is “productive.”

Second, the iPad can certainly be used to access porn. And it’s done just like every other computer does it– through the browser. It’s all just a URL away. As you correctly point out, Steve is just trying to toss Android under the bus, along with Google, Adobe, Flash, Verizon, developers and a whole host of other people he’s spoken ill of publicly recently. Not very becoming for a CEO.

One reason I believe there will be no large scale adoption of the iPad in Education markets is because folks in Education know they cannot count on Apple to be a good partner. Do you think Steve would accomodate their wishes? For instance, If they need the iPad to have a USB slot so kids can load their homework assignments? Nope. But, on the other hand you can be sure Android tablets will have such a feature.

Another concern with Apple is the concept of a single source supplier. Apple can dictate pricing and usage plans with zero competition. But if an Android tablet is used, there will be HP, Asus, Dell and a host of other suppliers of the hardware, and the software will be much easier to write for and deliver, because it can be created in Flash or bunch of other HDE (High Level Development Environment) which allow developers to write apps faster and with less bugs. Unfortunately, Steve has limited the development of iPad apps to only his Objective-C toolkit– which is not an HDE. There are many more programmers available to program for Android than there will be for iPad.

Google Apps on Android will be much better suited for education as all the data is stored in the cloud. And of course Kindle and Nook and the rest will also be on Android, along with a huge amount of Flash educational content which won’t play on iPads.

So, in the end, I disagree with your hypothesis. Apple knows it cannot compete in education, and is not targeting it as a primary market for iPad.

[Reply]

The Daily Square – Lay Low for the Letdown Edition | Booksquare
on May 5th, 2010
@ 9:15 pm: 

[...] The iPad: Gateway Drug to Digital Learning?This is reasoning we can get behind: the lack of adult material, the mix of entertainment and learning. [...]

Thoughts from across the Publishing Blogosphere « Kindle Review – Kindle 3 Review, iPad Review
on May 19th, 2010
@ 11:57 pm: 

[...] Evan Schnittman at Black Plastic Glasses has finally started writing again and he makes two excellent points. [...]

Jane Brown
on Jul 1st, 2010
@ 5:02 am: 

I can’t really agree with what you said about ipad beeing a getaway drug, because even if it didn’t exist, kids still wouldn’t be reading books. Sadly, that’s the way things are these days :/

[Reply]

Stephen Hull
on Jul 15th, 2010
@ 11:54 am: 

Correct me if I’m wrong (someone doubtless will) but wasn’t there a significant test of the iPad on a number of campuses this past academic year? I believe the data showed students — some undergrad, some in professional schools — overwhelmingly did not like using the iPad as their textbook e-reader and note-taker. Evidently a large percentage quit the test anywhere from three to eight weeks into the semester and reverted to print textbooks and note-taking on their laptops. I have no idea what this means for the future of the iPad as a higher ed curriculum platform; probably just that Apple and Pearson will learn a few lessons and adapt as necessary. But I think it does indicate that the iPad, at least in its present iteration, is not automatically a magic bullet, killer app for the higher ed market, regardless of how cool it is for entertainment uses.

[Reply]

Evan Reply:
July 15th, 2010 at 12:02 pm

You are mixing up the Kindle DX test with the iPad.

[Reply]

Mike Shatzkin
on Mar 23rd, 2010
@ 6:08 am: 

Very thoughtful and original post. You make a critical point that textbooks matched the ecosystem of learning: one class moving at a constant speed from a common starting point to a common ending point. And clearly, digital change enables our learning materials, at least, to be much more nuanced than that.

[Reply]

The iPad: Gateway Drug to Digital Learning? « Black Plastic Glasses
on May 5th, 2010
@ 3:46 am: 

[...] my last post, What’s Next in Digital Reading I explored my notion that there are three kinds of reading; extractive: immersive, and pedagogic. [...]

Collection Development Blog » Interstitial reading
on Sep 12th, 2010
@ 6:14 pm: 

[...] Schnittman of OUP has an interesting post in which he discusses three types of digital reading: extractive, immersive and pedagogic. It is [...]

Mike Shatzkin
on Jun 21st, 2009
@ 9:52 am: 

I like the thinking here, but I will pick a couple of nits.

1. Going to a licensing model does not necessarily require that an advance be paid on “royalties.” In fact, more and more publishers are trying to do “no advance” deals with authors so I think we’ll also see more “no advance” deals with rights. So whatever the problems with the rights paradigm in the retailer space, the requirement for an advance doesn’t have to be the thing which knocks it out.

2. The problem with your “net pricing” idea, I think, is that it doesn’t account for the fact that, in the digital download world, eventually most publishers WILL sell direct to end users even if they didn’t in the past. And they will sell at some price, which will be, de facto, the publisher’s retail price. This is already happening, of course, and Amazon has apparently raised the point with some publishers that their “discount” is meant to be off the publisher’s price, and if the publisher is selling for less on their web site, their discount should be based on the lower price.

That’s why I have advocated cutting the DISCOUNTS to intermediaries and have the publisher continue to sell at “full retail” (except for special promotional offers, bundles, etc) Seems like that would give us a cleaner playing field, if not a more level one.

This is all still in the stage of getting more complicated, not simpler.

[Reply]