Apple will announce a new app and service for interactive eBook creation, with a new distribution plan in place to bring the custom eBooks to the iPhone and iPad.
Described as “GarageBand for eBooks” by Ars Technica, which broke the story, the eBook creation service will be targeted at education, with a focus on disrupting the traditional textbook market. Apple is poised to announce the new tools and platform on Thursday, January 19 at an event in New York City.
According to the report, Apple has mainly adopted ePub 2 as its iBooks standard, and tweaked it via HTML5 for multimedia and user interaction. The new iPub 3 natively supports multimedia, and Apple's tweaked ePub 2 eBooks may have trouble with outside eReader environments. As a result, Apple is expected to support ePub 3 in the future.
Source: Ars Technica
