Apple made an announcement yesterday, the first since the passing of Steve Jobs, rolling out their latest initiative ‘iBooks’ the digital textbook.

Job’s, a college drop out, dreamed up this idea early in his career but was always cynical of the educational market’s participation. He believed there had to be a better option than the often outdated textbook in every classroom. “Textbooks were just waiting to be transformed,” said Jobs “Not only were they dull and sometimes outdated, they were heavy (just ask any seventh-
grader with a backpack full of them).”

This will certainly revolutionize the way students learn, both young and old. Virtual textbooks will allow for ever-changingdiversity in learning materials and new avenues for those with unique learning styles.

Can you imagine a textbook that changes as the world changes, brilliant!

Connie Burke

It is with great sadness that we learned of the passing of Apple Co-Founder and one of the greatest innovators of our time Steve Jobs. Steve lost his battle with cancer last night, just 6 weeks after stepping down as Apple's CEO. Our hearts and prayers go out to his wife Laurene and four children. 

As I write this I cannot hope but feel weird that my last blog entry was about Steve stepping down (I apologize about slacking on the posts) and now here I am, just 6 weeks later writing about his death. That's life. It's always funny how insignificant the once important things such as school, work, position, hierarchy, wealth or success seem when the realness of death, loss or sickness strikes. 

But enough sentiment. I feel compelled to write this entry when I stop and think about how much of an impact Steve has had on our industry. Some of the most important tools we use: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and FourSquare, have all been impacted, developed and advanced through the technology that has come about as a result of Steve's vision. With Steve, Apple created a new trend of pushing developers of social media platforms to continue developing in an attempt to keep up with all of Apple's newest technologies and their capabilities. Each time Apple released a new product, say the iPad or the recent iPhone 4s, Facebook and Twitter scurried to come up with new versions of their apps that would be able to incorporate everything the newest piece of Apple technology had to offer. 

So for all you've done to impact our lives, relationships and business, thank you Mr. Jobs. You will be truly missed. 

Dave Siekanowicz

As far as Apple branding goes, Jobs was the perfect representation of the company. What good branding seeks to accomplish is replace the face and persona of the perfect shop keeper whom the local customers trust to recommend and sell the best possible product. As far as branding and CEOs are concerned, Jobs fit apple perfectly. Apple would have done well to keep him on as the face of their company while someone else ran the show behind the curtain, but I doubt Jobs would have taken that well. People trust a known face, they have accept Steve Jobs and had identified with his ideas. Tim Cook has some big shoes to fill, I hope he's half the presenter Steve was. 

 Dave Siekanowicz