Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Apple to Release Tablet PC Today: e-Books are One Target Market

Apple is releasing their tablet PC today.  According to NPR, they plan to include an e-reader.  As I mentioned in a previous post, I though that the tablet was the perfect medium for e-books, and would supplant the Kindle, Nook and other current e-book devices.  Only time will tell for sure.

The move by Apple is brilliant.  It already has a first class distribution model with iTunes pushing out applications and music for the iPhone and iPod.  e-Books are just a natural progression. 

From an XML publishing standpoint, EPUB is a relatively easy format to render. The DocBook XSLT stylesheets has an EPUB format built in.  I'm not aware of one for DITA yet, but I can't imagine that it would be too far behind, or difficult to build.

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