AppleInsider Staff
Journalist Clayton Morris of Fox News wrote on his personal blog on Tuesday that Apple will in fact deliver a presentation to the media in New York later this month. The location was allegedly chosen because it is "more centrally located for textbook and publishing."
He said the event was originally scheduled for late fall of 2011, but it was postponed. The press conference will reportedly focus on iTunes U, a free service Apple provides that gives access to educational content, and other education-oriented topics.
Morris's claims are followed by a report that came on Monday that stated Apple planned to make some industry-related announcements for publishers about the iBookstore platform, currently available on iOS devices. Word of the late-January event was first publicized by All Things D, which said the event will not feature any new hardware like an anticipated third-generation iPad or Apple television.
Morris has now added to those rumors with his own details, and he said the event will feature "a big announcement in a demure space." He expects "at least two large project announcements as they relate to Apple in education."
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was said to have been personally involved in this project before he passed away in early October. Jobs even told biographer Walter Isaacson that textbooks were one product he wanted to reinvent, along with photography and televisions.
While his latest information does corroborate with other recent reports, Morris has a spotty track record with respect to Apple rumors. Two years ago, he incorrectly claimed that Apple would show off iOS 4 and iLife 2010 at a January media event in California.
Morris's sources were also wrong in claiming that Apple would release two versions of the first-generation iPad: one with CDMA support, and one with GSM, to offer compatibility with both Verizon and AT&T 3G networks in the U.S.
Andrew Orr
Wesley Hilliard
Christine McKee
Malcolm Owen
13 Comments
I will buy this idea as more plausible than a hardware announcement. Given the location and the player mentioned. I could also go with something iTunes store related.
Apple can start by making it possible to read iBooks content on the computer - either through iTunes, a new iBooks application for Mac and PC, or by supporting epub files in Preview.
There does need to be a lot more textbooks available on the iBookstore. I would rather support the iBookstore than the Kindle Store when buying my books for college.
Apple can start by making it possible to read iBooks content on the computer - either through iTunes, a new iBooks application for Mac and PC, or by supporting epub files in Preview.
Definitely, since to develop an enhanced iBook you need to test it and having to transfer it to an iOS device over and over is not a practical work flow. Given that there are no really ideal applications for developing an enhanced ePub document, hand coding is the only way to actually fine tune it. It is very similar to building web pages. You can use inDesign to build ePubs much like you would use Dreamweaver to build web pages, but to get it right you have to do the entire thing by hand.
There does need to be a lot more textbooks available on the iBookstore. I would rather support the iBookstore than the Kindle Store when buying my books for college.
My guess: The announcement will be a particular textbook publisher and probably one or two school systems or university programs are going to switch from print to to iBooks in 2012.
Switching to iBooks would be difficult for an entire university to do at one time unless there are several publishers on board from the beginning, but I could see something like a law school, nursing school, etc., making the switch.