Apple has been granted a patent (number 10,296,177) for “interactive content for digital books” that involves is iBooks Author software.
Books is a free ebook app that allows you to read publications purchased at the Apple BookStore. iBooks Author lets you create Books textbooks (as well as other types of books) for iOS and macOS devices.
In the patent filing, Apple notes that Interactions between a user and digital book content are often limited to merely scrolling through text and viewing static content such as images. The company thinks it can make such content more interesting.
Here’s Apple’s summary of the invention: “A graphical user interface (GUI) is presented that allows a user to view and interact with content embedded in a digital book, such as text, image galleries, multimedia presentations, video, HTML, animated and static diagrams, charts, tables, visual dictionaries, review questions, three-dimensional (3D) animation and any other known media content, and various touch gestures can be used by the user to move through images and multimedia presentations, play video, answer review questions, manipulate three-dimensional objects, and interact with HTML.”
Of course, Apple files for — and is granted — lots of patents by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Many are for inventions that never see the light of day. However, you never can tell which ones will materialize in a real product.
