
Admittedly, I forgot Apple was having a big media event today. I’ve got a lot on my plate right now, and that was not really number one on my priority list. Having read all the rumor sites, both blogs and Twitter, I was fairly certain it concerned education, and possibly something about publishing.
Little did I know.
The big thing Apple is pushing here is their (forceful) entry into education. I say education, and that’s not really the right terminology, as they’ve been there for a while. This is their push to get the iPad into it even further, to get textbooks into their ecosystem. That’s a good thing. That’s an exciting thing. I don’t want my daughter breaking her back lugging around 20 lb. textbooks in her backpack when they can all reside on a nice, comfy iPad.
No, what Apple is doing here is pushing their way into publishing, even further than they have in the past (think PostScript, LaserWriters, Aldus, et al). When I first saw the announcement, I thought to myself, “cool, they’re doing something to help my daughter’s future, by maybe putting a few chiropractors out of business.”
But looking further into their announcements, I saw they had a new app: iBooks Author. Disco!
But a bit of back history here: Adobe, in it’s best intentions over the past few months, introduced their “Digital Publishing Suite,” which (correct me if I’m wrong here) seemed more like plug-ins or add-ons to their already existing Creative Suite package. What they told me was that I first had to shell out $1,200 for Creative Suite itself, then another $400 for their “Digital Publishing Suite.” With those pieces in place, I could successfully publish to the iPad.
What the sales rep didn’t tell me, however, was that $400 additional cost was PER ISSUE. That’s right, PER ISSUE. Every time I wanted to publish a new publication, like a special section or edition of the newspaper, I needed a new license. At $400. Or I could buy a yearly subscription, which means I didn’t actually own the app, I was just renting it to produce unlimited apps/publications. I can’t even fathom the cost of that.
So along comes Apple and their iBook Author app, for free. Now I realize, this only serves to help them: the more authors they get into their ecosystem the better, plus they get their own 30% cut of it all. But, you mean I don’t have to pay you $400 per issue to publish on your platform? Sold.
As soon as I heard the announcement, I fired up the App Store and downloaded it. Two minutes later, I was already plotting my “Welcome to Wise” attack on the iPad, easily dropping in photos, stories, figuring out ways Joe could help me build photo galleries, ways our video editors could trim down footage to be optimized for electronic delivery… The world was our oyster!
Sure, there’s a few caveats with it all (strange wording of their EULAs and all, only works with iPads, how can we eventually streamline the whole production process to produce an iBooks version of the paper immediately after spending hours on the print edition, etc. etc.), but ultimately, congratulations, Apple; Steve would be proud.