Terry McGraw, the CEO of McGraw-Hill, has given full credit to Steve Jobs for the new iBooks textbooks on the iPad in a recent interview with AllThingsD. McGraw said that it was Steve Jobs’ idea and his vision that made it possible.
McGraw stated:
Sitting and listening to all of this, I wish Steve Jobs was here. I was with him in June this past year, and we were talking about some of the benchmarks, and some of the things that we were trying to do together. He should be here. He probably is [gesturing up and around]. This was his vision, this was his idea, and it all had to do with the iPad.
He was also reluctant to answer directly on the prospect of bringing similar content to the Google platform:
We’ll do whatever we can to make this the most meaningful space. And the person, or well — Steve Jobs and Apple, have done more, in terms of creating this personalized learning platform than anyone.
We are excited about it. I get questions that are more defensive. You know: “Are you concerned about the fact that you could be replaced?” No. You can’t replace content and curriculum and pedagogy and all of that. We’ve got a different platform now, than a textbook, to do all of that. Everybody wins.
McGraw-Hill had reportedly been working closely with Apple since June on the new iBooks, so the relationship between the two companies is clearly very close, suggesting that a deal between McGraw Hill with Apple’s competitors is unlikely.