A good idea

I just read an interesting post from 9to5 Mac that offered a perspective on a topic of personal interest that I had not considered. The post notes that Apple has purchased Texture – a service that allows users unlimited access to a large number of magazines for a monthly fee – and should do the same for books. My wife and I have a Texture account so we are familiar with the product.

My interest was less on Apple having a way to compete with the Kindle/Amazon “all you can eat (read)” option and more on the potential of Apple finding a way to escape its own walled garden and offer a superior reading/learning format that is cross-platform. I have a couple of books available from Amazon and I know well the limitations of the Kindle model. I am not putting Amazon down for its formats (the book and textbook approaches are slightly different) because Amazon is so open to hardware options that it must provide formats for the Kindle which is ill-suited to multi-media, but great for reading and carrying around pure text. Apple iBooks is a great platform, but limited for authors because it is Apple specific.

What if Apple would take advantage of the Texture-based content sophistication, but would repurpose it as an option for textbooks?

BTW – I am not a user of the Amazon all you can read format because I value the opportunity to access my notes and highlights from the books I have read. Continued access to the integrated book and content I add is important to my work style. I don’t read enough to pay for both the all you can read and the book by book models.