January 19 is an important day for Apple as it has scheduled an ‘education announcement’ on that day. Media analysts are speculating what that can be. The first thing that comes to mind from the word ‘education announcement’ is the fact that Apple has long been planning of entering the realm of digital textbooks. It was mentioned in Steve Jobs’ biography that he was working on it and apparently, Apple will be releasing an e-book creation app on January 19 and finally make it’s debut.
According to Steve Job’s biography written by Walter Isaacson, Jobs had ‘set his sights on textbooks’ and believed that digital textbooks was a very viable business. But some other sources reveal that the mention in the biography is barely revealing and that in reality, Jobs had been working for many years on this front. And that the announcement that is to be made on Jan 19 was originally scheduled in October 2011, along with the release of iPhone 4S but was delayed due to Steve Jobs’ demise.
A device, an app or an e-book creation tool?
The question that everyone is asking is: what is it that Apple will release on Jan 19? For all we know, it definitely is not a device. Most probably, it will be an app, a tool for quick creation of e-books. The expectation is that Apple will release a tool that will make e-book creation very easy, which currently is a very tiresome process. Moreover, it is also expected that the tool by Apple will allow the creation of interactive e-books, so that students could interact with the texts and perhaps share it with others on iPhone and iPad. Apple has already been working with a world-renowned publisher, McGraw Hill.
However, what we can rest assured of is that Apple will not go into the process of creating e-books on it’s own. Just like Apple doesn’t create any original content for iTunes and merely provides a platform to host content from others, this new tool by Apple may be used to create e-books and Apple may then provide a viable platform to market these e-books for iPhone and iPad. Apple itself won’t go into content production.
Image courtesy pcsiteuk.
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