Daniel Steinberg:
I was an early embracer and adopter of iBooks Author. I could produce beautiful books. The software was initially frustrating but they improved it in significant ways early.
Then they stopped.
And:
iBooks Author could have been a trojan horse into the personal publishing business. It would have been classic Apple. Instead of small authors going to Amazon’s platform, they would have started with iBooks Author. Apple should have made it easy for them to push to Amazon as well. Why? Because these people wanted to publish on Amazon but they weren’t considering publishing with Apple. Thousands of authors would have come to Apple to create content and stayed with Apple after publishing content there.
Daniel Steinberg knows of which he speaks. He’s an excellent writer, and dedicates himself to teaching others. If you get the chance to hear one of his talks, do so. More to the point, he’s no curmudgeon.
A post worth reading, especially if you care about books and teaching.
Apple creates tech, gets users excited, and then walks away. Ibooks Author is one of those. Along with hypercard, automator, etc.
Anyone remember Beacons? Why does Garageband have LESS functionality now?
Apple squandered the opportunity to make a really great tool with iBooks Author.
I was looking forward to having a need for learning and using iBooks Author, but it turned out not many publishers felt similarly.
I think Apple is entitled to start projects, decide to back out of them for whatever reasons they have, and sunset them. The question isn’t that, it’s how they’re doing it that’s the problem.
For me the missing link is a big picture idea of where Apple is going, especially in the Macintosh world. It took a while for them to make public that they were dropping the Thunderbolt Monitor, and as far as I know, they haven’t officially dropped the AirPort and Time Capsule line but it sure sounds like it. Will they dump Time Machine as well?
If iBooks Author is being phased out it would seem to me that it’s in everyone’s best interest for Apple to make a statement about it so folks can start to transition away from it. If not, then maybe they need to put some more resources on it.
Reminds me of how Aperture died on the vine. Not handled well by Apple.
“….. Instead of small authors going to Amazon’s platform, they would have started with iBooks Author….”
Wrong. Why? Because Amazon has the sales platform. They have the customers for books. Not Apple. While there might be some authors who would prefer Apple because of a fantastic iBooks Author, most self-published authors want to make money and Amazon was always going to be the place to do that.
I want to see all of the times you’ve bitched at Google for sunsetting things. Also… how’s Windows?
Publishers are notoriously conservative about altering their workflow. They have to take a manuscript, send it through a lot of processes and people (various editors, layout people etc). iBooks Author was NEVER going to replace Word for that. THere’s simply too many dependencies for that to happen. And as I noted in my own comment, indie authors are mostly going to care about sales, not shiny tools.
Me too!
After reading the article it occurred to me that Apple’s/iBookstore response to Steinberg’s issue was, in some ways, like a Siri response lacking contextual understanding. Its almost seems like Apple’s using Siri to resolve these open tickets. Meanwhile, Apple’s iBookstore phone support rep seems to have a minimal amount of info to be effective at resolving the problem.
I started out in publishing; some were a bit more open to change than others. But I was specifically thinking more of new companies like Inkling Systems.
I found a bug in iBooks Author. When I called support, they treated me like shit. When I told them I was a quality assurance engineer, they laughed at me. I couldn’t believe it.
I think the point here is people have high expectations of Apple, and like to see Apple operating at a higher standard. Comparing to other companies doesn’t refute this.