October Software ⇥ mrgan.tumblr.com

Hey, did you know that Apple is holding an event tomorrow? Yeah, really. And they’re using a totally bitchin’ theatre for it.

While everyone’s focused on the hardware (read: iPad Mini), Neven Mrgan is thinking about software, including an old friend:

iBooks Author. Remember that? What better time to hand over a badly needed 2.0 version of this promising but frustrating app. I still hope we can get to a point where Author becomes a general-purpose self-publishing app, not just a textbook-specific tool. You can sort of kind of glue together a novel in it today, but boy is it rough sailing. It’s reasonable that Apple launched the app with a specialized use case in mind, but true success comes from eventual mass-marketability. Chop chop on that!

As I said in my overview of the January education event, I’m also looking forward to more options for text-heavy publications. Self-publishing on the iBookstore would be huge for a lot of budding authors.

Mrgan also offers some ideas of iLife and iWork updates, both of which would be more than welcome (the current version of iWork was introduced four years ago this January). It struck me that we haven’t seen any full version updates of either suite since the Mac App Store was launched, which makes me curious as to whether Apple will issue free upgrades, or require a new purchase. My guess is the former.