Apple creates the Future of ePublishing

Today, at a prestigious gather at true Guggenheim Museum in New York, Apple did what Apple does well. It set about changing the world once again. Just as it did with the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984 (which set the standard for every WIMP device since); and it did with Desktop Publishing by making that art accessible to the world; similarly it changed the music industry and is now targeting television.

This time Apple is changing publishing. Not since the days of the first laser printers, Pagemaker and the Mac has the control of the quality and look of the print industry been so threatened. The threat?

Digital publishing.

The problem with digital publishing (and this is not web publishing, but the creation of eBooks and truly digital publications that can be used and interacted with on any device) is that the standards have been somewhat complex, with publications sometimes being incompatible on different end-use devices. This made publishing difficult.

Apple has long had a relationship with Education, indeed it’s DNA, Steve Jobs once famously said, was embedded in Education. He always saw Apple as a company at a crossroads between the Arts and Technology, bring products of grace to life, that technologically make people’s lives richer. Apple has always created products that take complex concepts and package them in clever, well engineered and simple to use formats.

Welcome to iBooks Author………… This will change the way teachers can create resources, learning can be made more appropriate to the 20th Century - and yes, it can also be far, far lower in cost. How?

eBooks (digital texts) can now be made by anyone. What it will unleash in terms of teacher’ds creativity, we can only wonder, but if you look at what has happened to the growth of iTunes University (have you looked at iTunes University? - see later), its massive catalog of University and educational content, married to true 7 billion downloads says a lot. If you haven’t looked at iTunesU, where have you been?

http://www.apple.com/uk/education/itunes-u

So, here is the reason for all of the above: iBooks Author.

Guess what? It is FREE. That’s FREE with an ‘F’.

A bargain, I say.

Do you want to learn how to use iBooks Author? Want a course for your staff, school cluster, or just a chat about ICT strategies that work?Contact me at john@johnarudkin.net - asap.

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