CourseSmart on the iPad. How will it work?

Like a lot of people with iPhone app’s, we are encouraged by Apple’s assurances that iPhone apps will run on the iPad from day one of its launch. That gives us confidence that our app, eTextbooks for the iPhone, will be available on the iPad and give every student in North America the ability to buy one or more of their textbooks as a CourseSmart eTextbook and use it on an iPad.

The process is simple for students.

• They begin by coming to www.coursesmart.com and searching for their assigned textbook. CourseSmart has more than 8,800 of the most widely adopted textbooks on campus, covering most of the market.
• Once they find their assigned textbook as an eTextbook, they can purchase a subscription to the title either as an online eTextbook (your textbook in the cloud) or a downloadable one. The main difference is that the online eTextbook can be accessed through any computer connected to the Internet while the downloadable is restricted to one computer.
• Once a student has an existing subscription at CourseSmart (which he or she can access on netbooks, laptops, or other computers) they can download the eTextbooks for the iPhone app and access these same subscriptions on their iPhone, iPod touch, and now iPad.

Of course, the iPad is a very different device than an iPhone and we are now hard at work designing an updated application to take advantage of those differences.  We believe that, while the iPhone is a valuable tool for study and review, the iPad will be more valuable as a primary reading and studying tool. Our updated application will seek to better support that type of activity.

We will launch a new app as soon as possible to the launch of the iPad and likely a second release of it, based on what we learn from our initial customers, before back-to-school 2010.

Check out our iPhone app now and the iPad app in March.