I thought the article by Audrey Watters titled “Apple and the Digital Textbook Counter-Revolution” was particularly interesting this week. I am a self admitted hater of just about everything apple (although I use an iPhone) and found Audrey pointing out a couple of points that I had not considered in this matter. Although Apple claims that iBooks Author will benefit just about everyone, they gloss over the fact that you must own their tools specifically in order to access the content. “revolutionary for whom? For wealthy schools? For students who have iPads at home and parents willing to pay out of pocket for supplementary textbook materials? For publishers?”. Anyone that wants to access these user created textbooks will need to go through iBooks, which can only be used in iOS. It also limits the authors rights by limiting licensing choices (cannot make it creative commons) and forcing them to use only iBooks only as a distributor. This has been my biggest issue with Apple from the beginning, their refusal to inch any closer to an open cross-platform future. I believe the only reason that they have survived is not because of what their products do, but rather their design.

Although there are a variety of negative aspects to this ‘revolution’ I still see it as mostly a positive thing. Maybe everyone will not have access to these new eTextbook to begin with, but it would be foolish not to experiment with the technology in limited classrooms to see how it can be developed and used more effectively.