2010: McGraw-Hill Axed From iPad Launch After CEO Leaks on TV

Paul Boutin, writing for VentureBeat back in 2010:

This is one of Steve Jobs’ slides from this morning’s iPad launch presentation. Can you tell what’s wrong with it?

The awkward array of five logos used to be a tidy lineup of six. The day before the show, Apple removed McGraw-Hill, the 122-year-old publisher whose 61-year-old leader, Harold McGraw III — better known as Terry — prattled like a teenage schoolgirl about the tablet’s iPhone operating system on CNBC:

Yes, they’ll make their announcement tomorrow on this one. We have worked with Apple for quite a while. And the Tablet is going to be based on the iPhone operating system and so it will be transferable. So what you are going to be able to do now is we have a consortium of e-books. And we have 95% of all our materials that are in e-book format on that one. So now with the tablet you’re going to open up the higher education market, the professional market. The tablet is going to be just really terrific.

The first rule of making a deal with Apple is that you do not talk about making a deal with Apple. Take a guess what the second rule is.

★ Friday, 23 May 2014