When Walsh (2006) elaborated about how multimodal texts convey meanings of documents through a synchronization of modes, the resulting of these culmination of modes often find its way in a new type of medium or genre as we are familiar with and experience on a day-to-day basis today. In short, Walsh's elaboration was an academic view of the function of computers and a number of other electronic devices today that serves the principles of multimodality.
Source: Everyeye.co.uk, 2010
When Steve Jobs announced Apple's much-anticipated tablet computer, the iPad, the masses believe that the company was merely doing the next logical step; taking mobile computing to another level. With it's size, dimension, great screen display and performance, it presented exciting new avenues to discover for the future of e-books.
iPad came about after the arrival of Amazon's new e-book reader platform, the Kindle series that comprises of Kindle, Kindle 2 and Kindle DX. Up to that point, Kindle was considered to be the main choice amongst all e-readers in the market. However, the monochromatic display of Kindle proves to be a bore and does not garner more interest in people to pick up e-books as their preferred reading material format.
Since the acceptance of e-books as a publication genre and e-book readers as a household technology, all there was to e-books are only the transition of texts from traditional book into the e-reader format which is quite redundantly, only displays text and nothing else apart from Barnes & Noble's Nook e-reader which came closest to being what iPad has become. With iPad however, it became possible for the entire content of the book from front to back cover to be transported into a device that offers stunningly rich visual display. The e-book experience does not stop there because with iPad's multitouch screen and multi-axis accelerometer technology that helps determine the landscape or portrait orientation of the device, e-books are able to be as interactive as they can be. Have a look at the video below of an iPad application for Alice In Wonderland and be amaze at the wonder of adding basic laws of physics into multimodality.
Source: Youtube, 2010
One of the most important feature that came along with the announcement of the iPad is rather inevitable. Being known for their well-documented App Store, Apple launched their own store of e-books called iBooks which users can easily download e-books to their iPads with a simple click. iPad is the best attempt at emulating the traditional book experience and pushes it even more. You can change iBooks on iPad to suit the way you read by turning iPad to portrait mode to view a single page or view two pages at once by rotating to landscape mode. (Apple, 2010)
Source: Indesignsecrets, 2010
With iPad and iBooks at the forefront of the e-book revolution, the future looks certainly bright for the publication industry if everyone embrace it and work together for the benefit of our future generation.
References:
1. Walsh, M. (2006),” ‘Textual shift’: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts,” Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol.29, no.1, p.24-37. (UNISA electronic library).
2. Apple iPad (2010), online, retrieved 7 June 2010, from http://www.everyeye.co.uk/wp content/uploads/2010/03/apple_ipad.jpg
3. Ad For The Alice In Wonderland iPad App (2010), online, retrieved 7 June 2010, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_gniS4d5Pw
4. iBooks: A novel way to buy and read books (2010), online, retrieved 7 June 2010, from http://www.apple.com/ipad/features/ibooks.html
5. iBooks (2010), online, retrieved 7 June 2010, from http://indesignsecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/ibooks.jpg
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