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Apple Tablet: McGraw-Hill leaks info on Cupertino's worst kept secret

McGraw-Hill Chairman and CEO Terry McGraw has prematurely let the cat out of the bag that Apple is to announce a tablet tomorrow. More than that, he leaked some important information about the device.
Written by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, Contributing Writer

McGraw-Hill Chairman and CEO Terry McGraw has prematurely let the cat out of the bag that Apple is to announce a tablet tomorrow. More than that, he leaked some important information about the device.

During a live taping on CNBC on Tuesday, McGraw had the following to say:

Yeah, very exciting. Yes, they'll make their announcement tomorrow on this one. We have worked with Apple for quite a while, and the tablet is going to be based on the iPhone operating system, and so it will be transferable.

So what you are going to be able to do now is, we have a consortium of e-books. And we have 95 percent of all our materials that are in e-book format on that one. So now, with the tablet, you're going to open up the higher-education market, the professional market. The tablet is going to be just really terrific.

 

Lots of questions remain, but this leak has already told us a lot, and in some way it steals a lot of Apple's thunder tomorrow because we can start to join the dots:

  • It's an ebook/newspaper/magazine reader (Kindle killer?)
  • Apple's likely to expand the iTunes store to sell electronic books/magazines/newspapers/textbooks
  • iPhone OS means that the device should be compatible with some/most/all apps in the App Store
  • Core to this device will be an Apple stronghold - education
  • Price is likely not to be as premium as once guessed at (I'm going with $599 right now)

I wonder where this leaves the relationship between McGraw-Hill and Apple. Apple is a super-secretive organization and is likely to be very, very displeased that a partner has displayed such indiscretion.

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