New iBooks and iTunes U App For iPad, New iBooks Author Tool For Mac

This morning Apple announced a new iBooks app, and a content creation tool to match. The announcement came at a special presentation in New York featuring top Apple brass.
iBooks 2 for the iPad is available right now in the iOS app store and improves on the original by adding support for more graphics and animation, and even interactive widgets. Note-taking has also been improved. To get iBooks 2, simply go to the App Store on your iPad and update your apps. The new version of iBooks should replace the old one.
The new free iBooks Author app is available in the Mac App store and allows anyone to create books compatible with iBooks 2. It is a tool similar to Pages and Keynote where one can drag and drop elements to create a book. You can even import documents from Microsoft Word. Keynote presentations can be added to pages as well. It also supports HTML5 for coding interactive objects and connecting to online sources.
In addition, Apple has worked out a deal to bring many popular school textbooks to iBooks 2 for only $15. This is a much lower price than most current print textbooks. Though I imagine that prices will vary in the future depending on what the publisher want to ask.
Apple also announced a new iTunes U iPad app, available today. iTunes U has previously been available as a subcategory of content in iTunes. The new app gathers together content into courses and allows instructors to add notes and other materials, even issuing notifications. Lessons can be created using iBooks Author and materials can even include other iPad apps.