Apple's iBooks 2, iBooks Author: Bids to own publishing's future

[wannabee]

From the Los Angeles Times

Well this will certainly set the cat among the pigeons. While everyone suspected Apple was trying to hijack eBooks. The cat is out of the bag now. It's official! Apple definitely wants to dominate the ebook market and has released a free AUTHORING tool that integrates with iBooks and iBook Store.

Whilst purist code writers here at MR have pooh poohed enhanced eBooks with their bells and whistles, it's one of the regular questions that keeps being raised in the workshop forum. "How do you embed video and sound in eBooks"
I think the ignorant void by the general public of what an eBook actually is, is actually filled with bells and whistles. Steve Jobs counted on the desires and wants of Joe Public for what only iBooks has delivered so far and others are copying.

Other companies copied Apple with their versions of iPhones and iPads. Just like those products, Apple is once again giving Joe Public what they want. While Mr Tried and True eBookmaker tutt-tutts over the vanity of these new books I think that Joe Public who hasn't read a book since leaving school will scoop them up as another shiny to keep in their treasure chest on their 30 million iPhones and 9.25 million iPads bought over the last three months.

Alongside Apple stating that iBooks 2 and textbooks on the iPad would reinvent the textbook as we know it, the iPad-maker announced Thursday that it would also attempt to reinvent book-making by way of an app called iBooks Author.

Jobs told Isaacson "the process by which states certify textbooks is corrupt ... but if we can make the textbooks free, and they come with the iPad, then they don't have to be certified. The crappy economy at the state level will last for a decade, and we can give them an opportunity to circumvent that whole process and save money."

The apps are also a challenge to Adobe, a company Apple has been known to partner with and feud with from time to time. Adobe's Creative Suite, Digital Publishing Suite and Touch Apps, available on both Windows PCs and Macs, are some of the most popular tools used by publishing houses and self-publishers looking to create a book, whether an e-book or a book before it heads to print.

Though capable of producing many different types of content for a broader range of devices, Adobe's software can cost thousands of dollars, while Apple's iBooks Author app is free.

. . . and, anyone can use it.

That reminds me of the 80's when people already using computers resented Apple introducing the Macintosh. The argument was something like . . .
I've spent years leaning how to program a computer and these upstarts bring out a computer that anyone can use right out of the box.