Apple has announced that its iBooks Author and iTunes U products are being discontinued. Apple will no longer update iBook Author and iTunes U will be discontinued at the end of 2021.
Apple says that while iBooks Author will continue to work, users should make the transition to Pages in the near future. Pages has gained much of the functionality of iBooks Author in recent years. Apple will include an import function in a future edition of Pages.
iBooks Author will no longer be updated, and it won’t be available to new users as of July 1, 2020. If you’ve previously downloaded the app, you can still access it from your App Store purchase history. You can continue to use iBooks Author on macOS 10.15 and earlier, and books previously published to Apple Books from iBooks Author will remain available.
If you have iBooks Author books you’d like to import into Pages, a book import feature is coming to Pages soon. It will allow you to open and edit iBooks Author files (.iba) in Pages.
Apple has also announced that the end is in sight for iTunes U, as it will be discontinued at the calendar end of 2021.
Apple has been hard at work building the next generation of apps for both teachers and students:
- Classroom turns your iPad into a powerful teaching assistant, helping teachers guide students through a lesson, see their progress, and keep them on track.
- Schoolwork helps teachers save time and maximize each student’s potential by making it easy for teachers to share class materials, get students to a specific activity in an app, collaborate with students, and view student progress.
In addition to Classroom and Schoolwork, Apple also introduced Apple School Manager to enable IT Administrators to easily manage iPads, Macs, Apple TV, Apple IDs, books, and apps, while ensuring data is kept secure and private. Apps such as Pages, Numbers, Keynote, GarageBand, iMovie, Clips, and Swift Playgrounds have education-specific features that are used regularly by teachers and students.
With this in mind, Apple will discontinue iTunes U at the end of 2021. iTunes U will continue to be available to all existing customers through the 2020-2021 educational year.