Apple's announcement today unveiling its new education offerings leaves out critical details of exactly "how" and "why."
The event itself lasted less than an hour, and was a brief scope over the latest iBooks offerings for education and how Apple intends to breathe life into its publishing platform.
Apple has in effect given publishers an entry-level drug. Just as the music industry has to battle piracy head on, Apple came up with a solution: a premium music service named iTunes Match. Publishers still suffer at the hands of pirates, but have to face up to the fact their digital publishing infrastructure just isn't there.
Although there was no mention of the 30 percent cut that Apple normally takes on in-store purchases, Apple will still make a hefty buck out of its iBookstore. Once publishers are in, they will increasingly find themselves wanting to break away and fund their own digital publishing platform, but need Apple's user base first to achieve that financial goal.
Windows was not specifically mentioned during the announcement. In fact, it seemed that Phil Schiller, Apple's marketing chief, deliberately avoided it. It would have made sense for Apple to bring out a desktop counterpart, as Amazon has done with the Kindle software. Since Windows users appear to be left out of Apple's self-publishing platform, it's only the students that suffer.
But what did you expect? Apple will probably never bring iWork to Windows while Office is still around. Why should it extend the same courtesy to e-book self-publishers?
As one Twitter user put it: "If people knew just how bad the state of technology budgets is in most high schools, requiring tablets would seem hilarious."
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