MANILA, Philippines — Apple started officially offering ebooks when it launched iBooks and iBookstore. The ebooks were simply digital equivalent of their dead tree originals -- basically, the ebooks were boring and non-interactive. January 19, 2012 marks the day Apple changes ebooks, particularly textbooks, and makes it fully interactive with immersive photos, videos, animations, and practically anything you can do with a little HTML5 and Javascript programming. What is even better, the ebooks are not stagnant, unlike current ebooks or its dead tree versions, with the ability to connect online and get it updated.

Apple released the next version of the iBooks app (still a free download) with support to interactive textbooks. Describing the whole experience won’t do it justice, I suggest that you check out the video online, or better yet, download it and a few textbooks. In addition, there is now a Textbook category at the iBookstore - making it easy to browse through the entire collection.

Is it revolutionary enough? Not really. Just made textbooks interactive and that’s it. Any company can produce that - in fact, there are iTunes app that provide the same level of interactivity, same level of experience.

However, Apple provides a companion product that changes the ballgame. True that companies can provide the same interactive textbooks to us, Apple empowers the ordinary user to create interactive textbooks by providing a free iBooks Author Mac application -- a Garageband for textbooks, as some people say. If this does not change the whole textbook publishing industry, I do not know what will.

Apple also revamped the iTunes University offering but introducing an iTunes U iOS application. The iTunes U app not only provides you with the content available on iTunes, it now provides you with the entire syllabus, slides, quizzes, homework (with push notification) and whole lot more.

It even integrates with the iBooks textbooks! If that isn’t enough, Apple now opens iTunes University for K-12, meaning K-12 schools may now start publishing their own content online!

Now is a great time to be a teacher and a learner. For the teacher, it means being able to create materials that engage your students more. For the learner, what more can you ask for? No more heavy and expensive textbooks (just the expensive iPad hehehe) to carry. As a learner, you have access to a lot more resources online!

Apple sets the bar high again! Other platforms may be able to easily replicate the interactive ebooks, however, it will take time before it can manage to copy the iBooks Author app and provide the full seamless iBooks ecosystem.

I hate it when Apple provides us with free tools to change the status quo! It gives me more reason to get locked-in to the platform. Lastly, it provides educators more reasons to go with the iPad than other platforms. Frankly, why would educators use other tablets or ebook readers now?