Amidst the rumours about the launch of Apple‘s iPad mini and iPad 3 doing rounds, the company  goes ahead and launches iBooks 2 – an upgrade version of the former iBooks app, bringing the digital textbook experience to iPad.

iBooks textbooks offers iPad users interactive diagrams, photos, videos, animations and unrivaled navigation. To deliver titles to iBookstore, Apple has partnered with known education services companies like Pearson, McGraw-Hill, Miffin Harcourt and Houghton.

According to Apple, the iPad is durable, portable, searchable, interactive and capable of storing richer content thus, making it a perfect counter. Apple’s SVP of Worldwide Marketing, Phil Schiller said,

“Kids are really going to love to learn with iBooks”.

Along with iBooks 2, Apple also announced iBooks Author, a free app available in the Mac App Store. They are on the roll. Now this simple app allows Mac users to create iBooks cookbooks, textbooks, picture books, history books, and what you may, to publish on iBookstore. Apple said that publishers and authors can use Apple-designed templates and start creating iBooks.

Adding text and images to iBooks is as simple as dragging and dropping. Moreover, multi-touch widgets allows users to easily add interactive 3D objects, Keynote presentations, movies, photo galleries and a lot more.

With this move, Apple seems to be focused on making the learning process more exiting. Let alone iBooks 2 app on your iPad, you can visit the App Store and download it for free. To read more about the app, you can visit Apple’s web portal here.