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Make up your mind. Either Apple's new format isn't "all that" and readily reverse engineered....or it's a threat to publishing as we know and love it (or at least love to hate it).
Apple DID innovate the ePub standard...but just didn't CALL the results "ePub". If they had, folks would have been crying FOUL. "Apple is unilaterally changing ePub....".
We don't know what, if any, of the iBooks features will be submitted to ePub. We do know that Apple wasn't about to broadcast it's products plans early by submitting their changes to the ePub committee before launching their product.
And NOBODY IS PRODUCING EPUB3 ANYTHING at this point. It's not a standard...it's a proposal that's early in flux.
If someone wants to make an eText Book, and publish it not on Apple's hardware....they can do so today just as yesterday. If they want to publish on the web, they can. If they want to make interactive CD-Rom's to run on computers they can. If they want to publish on the kindle they can. And people have done ALL of these things for years and years.
If someone wants to publish an eTextbook for the iPad using ePub. They can. The iBooks 2 app still supports ePub, and there's a plethora of other apps they can choose if they don't like the iBooks app. They can make eTextbooks and sell them via Amazon and run on the Kindle app on the iPad, or the kindle web app on the iPad.
None of which need bother with Apple's EULA or be sold via the Apple store.
If they like, they now have an ADDITIONAL OPTION, to create compelling and interactive textbooks FOR THE IPAD, and they can do so with a free tool PROVIDED....they give the textbook away, or sell it via iTunes.
Which platform will succeed to become the REAL standard? Time will tell. There's competition and that's good. That some could wish Apple would create great free software that did not come with the current strings...is understandable. We all like it when corporations spend millions and millions of dollars and then just give us the free products. But I think it's a bit much to actually be too worked up about it.
Lee
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