iBooks 2, and Apple's aim of educating the masses, is off to a flying start with a reported 350,000 textbooks downloaded from the new store in just three days.

The education initiative was announced by Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, Phil Schiller,  over in New York last week. A platform dubbed by the tech giant as "a new textbook experience for iPad" and one that Schiller said would "reinvent the textbook".

The 350,000 figure comes courtesy of Global Equities Research, who monitor Apple’s iBook sales using its own proprietary tracking system. There was also an estimated 90,000 downloads of Apple's free Mac OS X software, iBooks Author, in the same period.

The textbook publishing through Apple's portal is said to benefit both publishers and students as it cuts out the supply chain markup on physical copies as well as reducing the obvious production coss. And clearly Apple makes a few bucks too. After all, iPads aren't cheap and it will be taking its usual cut from any digital purchases.

"We try to bring the same energy and passion we've put into every product we make into our education business as well," said Schiller at the launch. "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."

Remarkable things like Apple getting an even firmer grip on society, he failed to add.

Check out What is iBooks Author? for more info