Just announced.

http://www.apple.com/education/ibooks-textbooks/

Looks like Apple applied a healthy dose of common sense to another market. I'm intrigued with where this can be applied beyond textbooks and school reading. There is so much untapped potential in the eBook market.

You can't get textbooks on kindles?

Watch the video. They're not just textbooks. They're completely interactive.

I didn't see that link earlier. But its pretty cool, I could see a day when students use tablets instead of textbooks.

Maybe they will do an industry first and make college textbooks actually affordable....nah who am I kidding that's never going to happen.

The interactive aspect is really freaking cool though.

Great idea for those who have an ipad, but do they honestly expect schools to buy an ipad for each of their pupils? Or is it the pupils who will be buying them? Besides, I cant imagine schools allowing pupils to bring ipads into class as they could easily just be on the internet or playing games during class, unless they have a timed lock on using other apps or something..? Anyway, I want to see a video!

with the cost of text books i wouldn't be suprised if its cheaper to buy all the students a cheap tablet and getting books in digital form. If grammer-highschool text books are anything like college a tablet would be far cheaper.

Oh, i just saw the video. Are textbooks really $60-100 in America? That is a ridiculous price, they are about £10 here in the uk! Infact, schools probably wouldnt even have to pay for them, because once they allow pupils to bring ipads to school it will become a craze and everyone will want to buy one. The only thing apple have to overcome is actually pesuading schools to allow their students to bring ipads to school.

For college, yes. A single textbook can range from $50(unlikely) up to $200 or more. Usually around 100-150 though. I used to spend almost 500 a quarter on books. It was a joke.

Not now ofcourse, and it doesn't have to be high-end tablets that schools buy, low spec tablets will be more than capable of running these kindoff things at ease in a couple years.

These could be in classes in the future, it will actually be a hell of a lot cheaper than buying shitloads of paper, books and textbooks, it would work a lot better and tablets with these capabilities will be dirt cheap in the near future, especially if bought in large numbers or if schools/universities/colleges got discounts. If it belongs to the school, they could easily manipulate the UI or the settings or whatever so it can only be used for what they want it to be used for, teachers would even be able to moniter screens (glad this isn't happening to me). 

Students could possibly write on them with a stylus if the device is accurate enough, that would also eliminate the need for exercise books. The only problem would be the increased electricity bills.