TechCrunch: January's Apple event to focus on iBooks and publishing

TechCrunch dug up a bit more info on the media event Apple is reportedly holding later this month. According to the site's sources, the event will have less of a consumer focus (don't expect any new hardware), and it will be more about unveiling improvements to the iBooks platform to the publishing industry.

TechCrunch's sources haven't determined anything more exact than that, with the exception that this isn't expected to be a "major" event. I don't know about anyone else, but when I hear about "improvements to the iBooks platform" I immediately think, "iBooks for the Mac? I really hope you're talking about iBooks on the Mac, because next to the Kindle platform you're looking kind of silly without it."

No specific date for the event has been announced yet, but it's expected later this month.

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Source: http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/02/this-months-apple-event-to-…

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TechCrunch dug up a bit more info on the media event Apple is reportedly holding later this month. According to the site's sources, the...

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Pitchy

In other news, Apple further copies the Kindle app while continuing to limit other ebook apps to push iBooks on to the masses.

January 03 2012 at 1:25 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Mike Burroughs

That seems like a rather huge step backwards if it's iBooks for Mac. The whole reason that eReaders got popular was because it was the first digital reading system that didn't make you want to gouge your eyes out after a few hours of reading. Putting it back on the Mac (or Windows) is just going back to that...

January 03 2012 at 10:28 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Mike Burroughs's comment

bonobob

Some people can read from a computer screen for hours without eye strain (I speak from personal experience). The lack of an iBooks app on the Mac has killed any interest on my part in using iBooks on my phone. I would like to be able to use a larger screen without buying a iPad--I don't need that big a mobile screen right now.

iTunes will play an audio book for you. Why won't it display a textual book?

January 03 2012 at 12:27 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

ikkyu

i'm a dyed-in-the-wool OSX/iOS user, but i can see, and i really hope that Apple can too, that if they want to have any chance at all of seriously competing with the Kindle platform then iBooks for OSX is not enough - they MUST also issue iBooks for Windows,

January 03 2012 at 4:47 AM Report abuse Permalink +1 rate up rate down Reply

Michael Vallance

It will make sense if iBooks was a bit more 'international'. The iBook store in Japan is pitiful and due to distribution rights in Japan I can't even get my own self published book on iBooks in Japan. And yet my book is available in USA, UK, Oz and some European countries.
A massive disruption to the publishing industry required .. just as iTunes changed the music industry.
C'mon Apple. Do it for the authors :-)

January 03 2012 at 2:57 AM Report abuse Permalink +1 rate up rate down Reply

Frank Lowney

Getting iBooks for MacOS X would be a major boost to the development of eBooks. Also important would be extending the EPUB export function of Pages to include "fixed layout," "Read Aloud" and she of the basic Javascript interactivity seen in the Open University's "eBook for IBooks" offerings. Pages for iOS doesn't offer any EPUB export at all but that, too, could change. The overarching goal here is for authors to have a low friction workflow allowing the creation and prereview of enhanced EPUB documents.

January 02 2012 at 11:23 PM Report abuse Permalink +1 rate up rate down Reply