Last night while waiting for my ISP to take my call, I started a book with the new iBooks Author app. The really cool distinguishing features are the widgets and their *extreme ease of use.* In my test book, I inserted a Keynote presentation using the Keynote widget; a photo with text using the interactive widget; a gallery of photos using the, you guessed it, the photo gallery widget; a question with 4 multiple choice answers--identifying the correct answer. If the reader gets the wrong answer, s/he and try again. Of course, this was the question widget; The other widgets are 3D, movie, and HTML. I didn't have any content in these forms to insert. I then exported to my iBooks app, and it ran smooth as punch on my iPad. Totally amazing. While you are designing and laying out your book, you can preview your on going work and any of the multimedia widgets with the iPad when it's hooked up to your computer.
It seems to me the reason to use this app is for its amazing widgets, and if you're going to use them, then you'd need to feel fairly certain that the majority of your readers would have the device capability to enjoy your interactive book to the fullest. I have no idea how an interactive book produced with this app would run on, say, a Kindle or Nook device. It runs great on the iPad, and I suspect that was the main intent, and if your book is only going to run great on an iPad, well then any mass distribution goals might have to be reconsidered. If you're doing a book with just text and standard images or graphics, you really don't need this app, though, obviously, you could still use it if you wanted to. Cheers, Christine On Jan 22, 2012, at 4:16 PM, "P. J. Alling" <webstertwenty...@gmail.com> wrote: > So it's not quite an evil empire, it's a wanna be evil empire. > > On 1/22/2012 4:41 PM, Stan Halpin wrote: >> I don't see this as a big issue. Blurb gives me free software to layout >> books to print/sell via Blurb. I can't use that software to print in any >> other way, even on my own printer. (Well, I can print, but with a big Blurb >> watermark on every page.) Anybody that doesn't want to print/sell >> exclusively via Blurb can find some other software to use. Apple offers free >> software to layout/distribute books via the Apple store. Anybody that >> doesn't want to sell exclusively via Apple can find some other software to >> use. Ho hum; no evil empire. >> >> stan >> >> On Jan 22, 2012, at 3:50 PM, Igor Roshchin wrote: >> >>> >>> Apple's license (EULA) forbids you from distributing your work created using >>> Apple software. >>> >>> While the software discussed is not the one for photography, but for >>> writing/publishing (iBooks Author), this can create a precedence. >>> >>> Read more about it here: >>> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/apples-mind-bogglingly-greedy-and-evil-license-agreement/4360?tag=nl.e589 >>> http://venomousporridge.com/post/16126436616/ibooks-author-eula-audacity >> > > > -- > Don't lose heart! They might want to cut it out, and they'll want to avoid a > lengthily search. > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. > -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
