Undulations

Despite not being an Apple fan, I’ve been resting curious hope around Apple’s “reinventing the textbook” and the media buzz surrounding it – however, after the press conference was over and the news was ousted, my first reaction, understandably was disappointment and an “is that it?” face. However, a closer inspection reveals a better picture; and it seems quite likely that this move from Apple can actually cause quite some change in the education and textbook scene, though an outright revolution is less likely.

The package announced is actually deceptively simple – There’s iBooks 2, the next version of the company’s already popular eBook platform; there’s iAuthor which helps you author iBooks on a Mac; and there’s content partnerships with a handful of textbook publishers – that’s it. Which, in the critic’s eye is nothing but an unimportant software launch cladded in a “reality distortion field”. Only that, this time, the field actually matters.

It’s undisputed that there had already been a lot of textbooks on all major eBook stores; and that students were actually using them in a good scale. What they lacked, however, is ubiquity. There was no ubiquitous medium or textbook chain that universities could endorse; they had to stick with physical, paperback books. With a buzzed up launch like this one, Apple might potentially convince universities that the time for reinventing the textbook is finally here (and in fact, the time is long overdue); this is why I said the RDF matters this time, more than just the naïve customer, if Apple also lures universities and colleges, it’s ultimately going to benefit the students.

The package is, however, not without its share of questions. The idea of releasing iAuthor to the public, for free particularly raises my eyebrow. A textbook is clearly not everyone’s piece to author; unless Apple puts up some very stringent scrutiny before these books are approved for their store, the bookstore will fill with “textbooks” of holidays in the beach and puppies. The second question is how good Apple is going to be at netting universities and institutions into this game.

The third and most important concern, however, is about the international roll-out. Apparently the idea of replacing your backpack with a single iPad is a very novel and appealing one; but will the idea be stuck to the US alone? None of the US giants are very good when it comes to worldwide roll-outs – iTunes took a long time before it seeped out to the rest of the world. Google Music and Google Voice are still US only. How long then, is a project of this magnitude (in the idea of getting universities in the game, that is) going go worldwide?

[Image Courtesy: Confessions of a Homeschooler]