A publishing exec confirms “really terrific” Apple tablet, W

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McGraw-Hill’s CEO went on live TV late yesterday spilling the beans on Apple’s much anticipated tablet and specifically confirming it’d debut today. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal has put a premium price tag on e-books while Wired stressed that the device will re-invent content, not tablets. Can anyone question the iSlate existence at this point?
The news came in a yesterday’s interview by CNBC with McGraw-Hill’s CEO Terry McGraw regarding the company’s fourth quarter earnings that grew 24 percent during the quarter. McGraw said the company has been seeing the market rebounding for the past two quarters. The executive dropped the iSlate bombshell at the 2:50 mark while responding to a point blank question about the iSlate. McGrat specifically confirmed the existence of the device based on a variant of iPhone OS that will be able to serve digital text books:
Yes, they’ll make their announcement tomorrow on this one. We have worked with Apple for quite a while. And the Tablet is going to be based on the iPhone operating system and so it will be transferable. So what you are going to be able to do now – we have a consortium of e-books. And we have 95 percent of all our materials that are in e-book format on that one. So now with the tablet you’re going to open up the higher education market, the professional market. The tablet is going to be just really terrific.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple has been courting the biggest magazine, newspaper, and book publishers for possible iTunes content deals. The publication cited sources who claim that Apple will allow publishers to set prices of their e-print products. Most digital incarnations of hardcover best-sellers should reportedly be priced between $12.99 and $14.99. That’s a notable premium over Amazon’s usual $9.99 price point that should be offset by the greater interactivity and multimedia content (videos, galleries, etc.) packaged with the e-reading material for Apple’s device.
Wired claims that the iSlate will re-invent content, not tablets, accessible via any iTunes-enabled device. According to the publication:
Apple’s goal is to offer a new platform for content creators to reinvent books, magazines and online content – in addition to offering a new avenue for content producers to make money. That platform will likely be far broader than just a tablet device, and will extend to every device or computer that iTunes touches.
Apple is scheduled to host a special media event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco at 10am Pacific, 1pm Eastern to show its “latest creation”. Make sure you check Sal’scoverage and all of the Geek’s coverage regarding Apple’s conference for up-to-the-minute news as it happens. The rumor mill has been calling for a number of things in the weeks preceding the event, namely the tablet itself, iPhone OS 4.0, fourth-generation iPhone, Core i5 MacBooks, iLife 2010, multitouch-enhanced iWork office suite for the tablet, and more.
 
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