As for Steve Jobs being a big business “hack” (not sure what you mean by that term), yes, Jobs is out to make money. Anyone who thinks he has any other fundamental motives here is delusional. And he is very good at making money, as you have pointed out many times. So it is not surprising that he should try and expand the market here.

Now a slightly different question is this, in the build up to the iPad launch people were saying that Jobs was going to save publishing with this new, as yet unannounced device. Will the iPad save publishing? Again, I would say no. It may contribute to the industry moving towards a new model that will survive into the future, but there is much that has to happen to kill/save an industry than just this one device.

And Nick, the iPad may be a useless tool for you and lots of other people. For many the Kindle is as well (and it sounds like you have no use for that either), but different folks have different uses and work habits. As you know from Real Tech 22 I believe it will fit in well with my work patterns, at least on the various business trips I take, but not my research trips. My mantra: judge the tool for what it is, not for what it is not.

In episode 22 of Real Tech, when the education community in mentioned, I got to thinking. Imagine how much money could be made if Penn State said – o.k. No more books. Each student pays for the E-books for each class. The student downloads them straight from the school’s website that is integrated with the publisher’s online delivery service, many ways this could be done – i.e. each school can brand it’s own interface to the publisher’s. Then Penn State also requires the purchase of a proprietary, in-house-programmed application that allows for the sharing of notations and course work, which is integrated into an eBook reader that can use PDF, LIT, and HTML eBooks. You can prevent a significant amount of plagiarism, make sharing information a lot faster and easier, and allow for an easy way for the university to make money without the cumbersome need for actually storing and selling a TANGIBLE product.

The iPad, for me, is simply a useless tool, whose abilities are already being fulfilled by the technology I already have.