12/17/2010
In my mind Apple is missing 4 key things for the iPad to be ideal for kids books:
1) Ability to fix page width and "lock" books as horizontal (needed for kids books with 2-page spreads)
2) Ability to have text show up OVER images (again for kids books)
3) Ability for sound files to be played on pages automatically or at the touch of a link (word, image, whatever).
4) Ability to have basic animation automatically played on a page or at the touch of a link.
In the past month Apple has secretly added the first two things on this list, and told a few publishers about it:
http://www.pigsgourdsandwikis.com/2010/12/apple-disses-ebook-developers-at-their.html
Liz is very unhappy about it, but I'm psyched.
I haven't explored them yet, and there's no documentation on it so it would be literally cracking open their code and figuring out what they did to make this happen.
Humm, what to do with myself over the holiday break?