14 DAY TRIAL // At the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, Apple plans to host an event focused on digital textbooks and publishing.
According to a report by Cultofmac compiling information from the likes of WSJ and Ars Technica, one prominent publisher making an appearance at the event is McGraw-Hill. Another may be Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
The duo has reportedly experimented with interactive approaches to creating and using digital content in education. One example is allowing students to take quizzes for foreign language study as they read and hear audio.
The problem is that many digital textbooks still retain a lot of the downsides of their physical counterparts, which means a revolution is in order. McGraw-Hill has been working with Apple on such a revolution since June last year, according to these sources.
One source in particular specifically said that Apple would unveil a “GarageBand for eBooks” on January 19th. The effort is reportedly to streamline the creation of educational content for platforms like the iPad.
"That's what we believe you're about to see," said Inkling CEO Matt MacInnis. "Publishing something to ePub is very similar to publishing web content. Remember iWeb? That iWeb code didn't just get flushed down the toilet—I think you'll see some of [that code] repurposed."
"Who better than Apple to revolutionize textbooks?" said International Data Corp. analyst Al Hilwa. "Everyone, including the industry and universities, have to come together, and this is the kind of thing Apple does really well."
It has been reported that Apple’s event on January 19th will materialize Steve Jobs’ dream of reinventing textbooks.
Walter Isaacson wrote in his biography on Steve Jobs, “He had three things that he wanted to reinvent: the television, textbooks and photography. He really wanted to take these on.”