iTunes U/iBooks Author Discontinued

iBooks Author

Mac app discontinued July 2;

Completely removed from the App store;

Transitioning users to Pages.

In an email to iBooks Author users, Apple has advised the service will be discontinued July 2, with the app removed from the Mac App Store. Users will iBooks Author installed on their Mac will still be able to use the app and published books exported to Apple Books will remain available.

A support document is available to assist users transition from iBooks Author to Pages. However, many of the iBooks Author features have been drip-updated to Pages over the past year.

The email reads:

Thank you for being a member of the iBooks Author community. We have some news to share with you about the future of book creation. Two years ago we brought book creation into Pages. With key features such as the ability to work on iPad, collaborate with others on a shared book, draw with Apple Pencil, and more, Pages is a great platform for making books. As we focus our efforts on Pages, ‌iBooks‌ Author will no longer be updated and will soon be removed from the Mac App Store. You can continue to use ‌iBooks‌ Author on macOS 10.15 and earlier, and books previously published to Apple Books will remain available. If you have ‌iBooks‌ Author books you'd like to import into Pages for further editing, we have a book import feature coming to Pages soon.

iTunes U

Discontinuing end of 2021;

Tools replaced with next-generation apps - Classroom, Schoolwork, and Apple School Manager.

Via a support document, Apple has announced they will discontinue iTunes U after the 2020/21 United States school year. The focus will now be on Apple's next-generation Apple School Manager, Classroom, and Schoolwork apps.

For public publishers, content will need to be created though Apple Podcasts and Apple Books, whereas Apple recommends Schoolwork for private publishers.

An excerpt from the support document reads below:

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.