Apple fanatics around the world are hotly anticipating the arrival of Steve Jobs (Simon & Schuster, 656pgs) the biography by Walter Isaacson, which hits shelves on Monday October 24. Isaacson, a high-profile biographer, was granted Jobs’ full cooperation with the book and was allowed exclusive access to the highly private entrepreneur. The pair met for dozens of interviews, the last taking place a few short weeks before the creative visionary’s passing on October 5. In an interview with the Associated Press, Isaacson provides an early glimpse into Jobs’ private life. Their conversations touched on many subjects, including the impetus for the Apple name, which Jobs came up with after visiting an apple orchard during his experimentation with a fruitarian diet. He felt the name was “fun, spirited and not intimidating.” Read more…

Steve Jobs’ presentation at the Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday revealed some interesting facts about the iPad’s eBook sales and the new features planned for the iBooks app. Engadget reported on Job’s impressive announcement that in the few short months since the iPad’s release, Apple has won 22 percent of the eBook market. In the first 65 days that the “magical” device was available to the public, five million eBooks were downloaded by iPad users. To capitalize on this success, Jobs also announced some great new features set to be added to the iBooks app later in the month. Users will be able to read PDF documents with iBooks, as well as utilize new note-taking and bookmarking functions.
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Earlier this morning, Steve Jobs introduced the world to Apple’s latest technological marvel: the iPad. The slick new interactive tablet, which looks a lot like an iPhone on steroids, allows users to browse the web, get e-mail, view photos and video, play music and games… and read books.

Just .5″ thick and weighing 1.5 pounds, the iPad’s 9.7″ glossy multi-touch IPS display offers considerably more screen real estate than its competitors in the eReader space. Both the Nook by Barnes & Noble and the Amazon Kindle 2 have 6″ screens, though the Nook does also have a 3.5″ color nav screen. Like the Nook, the iPad will use the ePub format.

Apple’s new iBooks app (which works similar to iTunes) and its partnership with 5 big publishing houses: Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Group, and Simon & Schuster, allow users to  access a wide selection of titles that are easily purchased and downloaded. In addition to books, The New York Times has already announced its new app for the iPad, and a number of other publications are rumored to be in talks with Apple to provide content for the device.
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