Apple to announce tool for interactive e-books

Apple is expected to announce support for the ePub 3 standard on Thursday. The company would also announce software for creating e-books in that format, so that audio and video can be integrated.

Apple has scheduled an event in New York for Thursday. Initially there were rumors that the company was going to announce its new iPad there, but it soon became clear that the emphasis will be on education in combination with iBooks.

Currently, Apple’s iBook platform has support for the ePub 2 standard for e-books, which allows video and audio to be inserted through extensions. The expectation is according to Ars Technica that Apple announced on Thursday that it will also support ePub 3. The ePub 3 specification describes, among other things, the synchronization of text and sound and the use of xhtml, svg and css for publishing.

Publishing files in ePub would be similar to publishing web content, but there would still be few good tools for it. Apple would respond to this by coming up with a kind of ‘Garageband for e-books’, which would make creating e-books child’s play.

Steve Jobs is said to have been closely involved in a project related to education and e-books for several years. An introduction in October 2011, at the same time as the iPhone 4S, would have been canceled at the last minute.