McGraw Hill Chairman and CEO Terry McGraw told CNBC that Apple would be announcing an iPhone OS-based tablet during Wednesday's media event. He also said his company would have text books on the device, and that McGraw Hill had been working with Apple for some time on the project, though we'll note that there is still plenty of time for his company to be excommunicated from the event for having spilled the beans in about as official a capacity as we've yet seen.
In an interview about Mr. McGraw's company, the CNBC reporter asked him, "Apparently you may get text book on this new tablet that's coming out. [Is that] a done deal?"
In his reply, he confirms the tablet, answering, "Yeah, it's very exciting. They'll make their announcement tomorrow on this one. We have worked with Apple for quite a while. The tablet is going to be based on the iPhone operating system, and so it will be transferable."
He added, "So what you're going to be able to do now...we have a consortium of ebooks, you know, we have 95% of all our materials in ebook format. So now, with the tablet, you're going to be open up the higher education market, the professional market, the tablet is going to be just really terrific."
You can watch the full interview in the video below.
Our mention of being excommunicated from the media event references a time when ATI let loose information about new Power Mac models from Apple in ATI literature the company released ahead of a Steve Jobs keynote where the new Power Macs were announced.
ATI was subsequently pulled from the keynote, allegedly as punishment for having spilled the beans (ATI actually apologized for the transgression). That was then, of course, and it could well be that Mr. McGraw's comments were merely another of Apple's controlled leaks.
CNBC Interview of Terry McGraw, Chairman, President, and CEO of McGraw Hill