Jeffrey Paul

I think that the iPad will eventually replace college textbooks. Those things cost hundreds of dollars and the publishers intentionally release new editions each year so that students have to buy new copies instead of being able to sell their used ones to the next group taking the course. The iPad is perfectly suited to this type of market, considering that the cost savings in trees alone could pay for the iPad in one or two semesters.

Add in the fact that it’s light, searchable, and the publishers can easily sell on it (and not have to “revise” their editions each year, as iTMS-sold purchases can’t be resold anyway), and you’ve got a win-win for both students and textbook vendors.

PS: Apparently I was completely incorrect in my previous prediction about the iPad likely being totally locked down with DRM from top to bottom. While I am not ruling it out for OS 4.0, it would seem that apparently Apple isn’t as worried about the hackers as it initially seemed. My guess is that the percentage of people actually jailbreaking is probably low enough that they’ve just decided to not go to the effort of locking it down. (Additionally, any super-cool features that the hackers come up with in the natural course of hacking will, of course, eventually be poached by Apple for the OS or replicated by a legitimate app vendor in their App Store.)