Apple takes on Amazon with iPad e-reader features, bookstore

January 27, 2010, 1:53pm PST | Length: 00:04:28
At an Apple press event, CEO Steve Jobs shows off the company's new iBooks app. Users can now browse, read reviews, read a sample excerpt, or just buy books--and the book downloads to a virtual "book shelf." The software has the support of five of the largest publishers, including Simon and Schuster.

Transcript

Apple takes on Amazon with iPad e-reader features, bookstore

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>> Amazon's done a great job of pioneering this functionality with their Kindle. And we're going to stand on their shoulders and go a bit further. So this is what a Kindle looks like. I'm sure many of you have used one. This is reading a book on the new iPad. It's really nice, and our new app is called iBooks. Now, iBooks has a bookshelf. Looks like this, where you have all your books. If you want to read one, you just saw what it looks like. It's terrific. You can go into portrait and see both pages, if you'd like. And, in addition to having your bookshelf and being able to read books, there's a button in the upper-left corner of the bookshelf which is the store. And we've created the new iBook store, fully integrated with the iBooks app to allow you to discover and purchase and download eBooks right onto your iPad. So you can discover books. We've got, of course, our top charts lists; The New York Times bestseller lists; and we've got five of the largest publishers in the world that are supporting us in this and are going to have all their books on the store. And we're going to open up the floodgates for the rest of the publishers in the world starting this afternoon. So we're gonna have a lot of books on the bookstore. We're very excited about this!

Clapping We think it's going to be a great app! So let me go ahead and show it to you.

Pause So there's our bookshelf. Here's some of our books. And probably the best thing is let's go into the store right now. I hit the store button and it's kind of like a secret passageway. It flips around.

Laughing And here is the iBook store. And if you've used iTunes or the App store, you're already familiar with this. And we can look at books here; we can look at The New York Times bestseller lists, etc. And let's go back here. And I want to actually buy True Compass by Edward Kennedy, so I just tap on it and I get more detail about it here; take a look at the reviews of it; and I'm going to buy it. I'd get a sample of it to read if I'd like, but I'm sold already. So I'm just going to go tap on it and buy this book, and the book downloads right onto my bookshelf like that. And that's all it is.

Clapping It's just so simple. And now, if I want to read that book, I just tap on it. And here it is; this is what it's like to read a book. I have some controls. I can just tap in the center and the controls go away -- get them back, send them away. And, to flip the page, I just flip forward. I tap anywhere on the right, then I flip forward. Flip back, just tap on the left. And that's it. I can even flip myself if I want by dragging it, if I'd like, you know.

Laughing Very simple.

Clapping And I can go to the table of contents here and I can just pick a chapter and go there. I'm going to pick Part Two, Brotherhood. And, again, you can have photos, black and white or color; you can have video, if you'd like, in your books, whatever the author wants. It's very, very easy. And this is what it's like. And we can change the font size, if we'd like -- bigger, smaller. We can change the font, pick a different font; whatever you want. And that is iBooks.

Clapping

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