The original epub format was pretty much a text only affair. It could flow text across different size pages and use different size fonts so it was very flexible. However, it is limited to things like paperback books with few or no images.
They are now up to epub 3 which supposedly overcomes many of these objections. In a textbook (or any other content rich book) you want to embed charts, tables, images and videos. You want to fix the layout so that the text doesn't get separated from the images or tables. You would like to have an easy way to make the embedded video full screen and have the tables popup so they can be scrolled. You want to have a way to add notes and annotations and maybe share these with other people. You want the text layout to accommodate math and science formulas.
Go to the inkling website and see their example. It is pretty awesome.
I don't know if Apple will support just epub 3 or that plus a more sophisticated format. I'm hoping for something really great that we can use for years. I produce content for our group (brochures, training materials, reports) and it would be awesome to be able to integrate content and push it to an iPad or a laptop.
How nice to have a brochure describing a product where you can click on an image and have it become a video of an application scientist demonstrating some feature of your product with real samples. Or to have a popup chart that is larger than the page which the reader can scroll through.
I can't wait.
This actually made me think about the digital editions of magazines. Entertainment Weekly manages putting out print and digital versions EVERY WEEK and never has these problems, while still tossing in interactive media. The same can be said for many magazines that go beyond a pdf like export of the magazine.
My point I guess is that this is apparently not that hard for professional companies. Yet, it's funny what a mess ebooks are considering they should be so much easier to port than an entire magazine, which has a far more advanced layout. It's not the dark ages where publishers got hand written manuscripts and had to type set them... people submit word documents these days.
I guess if Apple can idiot proof it... that's a good thing.
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The current state of ebooks is terrible. The industry is in need of a great set of software tools to make interesting and interactive books...I hope Apple makes it happen. Instead of an iWeb/Garageband type program though I would like for them to go professional-level instead. In order for the software to take off it'll need to be more than just a toy. I'll keep my fingers crossed.
Yet magazines and all sorts of other developers have put out great interactive publications. The app store is filled with them.
The people who suck with these things are the big 4 publishers, ironically. All they'd need to do is.... well, hire someone who can program for IOS or use any of the other programming languages for other platforms? Seems to work find for everyone else.
