Apple to Announce 'GarageBand for E-Books' at NYC Event?

Apple is preparing to announce a new tool to help create interactive e-books and plans to expand its platform to distribute those e-books to iOS users, reports ArsTechnica and Inkling CEO Matt MacInnis.

Will Apple launch a sort of GarageBand for e-books? "That's what we believe you're about to see," MacInnis told Ars (and our other sources agree). "Publishing something to ePub is very similar to publishing web content. Remember iWeb? That iWeb code didn't just get flushed down the toilet-I think you'll see some of [that code] repurposed."

According to the site's sources, Apple will also announce support for the ePub 3 standard for iBooks.


Apple has largely embraced the ePub 2 standard for its iBooks platform, though it has added a number of HTML5-based extensions to enable the inclusion of video and audio for some limited interaction. The recently-updated ePub 3 standard obviates the need for these proprietary extensions, which in some cases make iBook-formatted e-books incompatible with other e-reader platforms

This project and digital textbooks are thought to have been very important to Steve Jobs. The former Apple CEO is said to have worked on this for several years. Apparently, it was set to be unveiled in October 2011 alongside the iPhone 4S; however, those plans were postponed, perhaps due to Jobs' worsening health.

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