Over in New York at the Guggenheim Museum, the mystery of Apple's education event is over; the tech giant has announced iBooks 2 - "a new textbook experience for iPad."

"We try to bring the same energy and passion we've put into every product we make into our education business as well," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing. "There's something really profound starting to happen, it's remarkable. We're seeing that, as students are introduced to iPad, remarkable things are happening."

In a move that Apple hopes will "reinvent the textbook" (and shift a few million more iPads no doubt) the company unveiled iBooks 2 to the assembled tech hacks at the world famous venue and demoed its new functionality such as animated 3D models, real-time glossary definitions and a nice gallery view with pinch to zoom features.

Learning quizzes are built in to help the little fanboys get their knowledge on, and it's easy to make study notes and revision cards using the "My Notes" feature. There is, of course, a commercial element to iBooks 2 as well, with an online store where pupils can browse, purchase and directly download textbooks that they require.

iBooks 2 is hitting the App Store now and will be free. You'll need to buy some books to go in it, of course.

Apple also announced iBooks Author, an OS X application for creating new textbooks for iBooks 2. "Authors are going to love to use iBooks Author to create not only textbooks, but any kind of book," said Schiller.

Again, it's free and is hitting the Mac App Store now.