I cannot help but not notice that there was no mention of Amazon or Kindle in the keynote address delivered by Phil Schiller at the January 19 Apple Education Event in New York. And also curiously absent at the keynote, was desktop publishing software giant Adobe, as Adobe’s InDesign will be affected by what Apple would release.

Apple obviously know where they stand — the iPad is in a class of its own — and it didn’t need to throw mud at others to prove the point. And it’s about education after all, or is it?

On that note, I cannot help but also think about what other things we can do with iBooks Author, the free authoring tool Apple has released shortly after the keynote where we can use to produce interactive multimedia products:

JOURNALISM Imagine how it can transform the way bloggers and independent news outlets produce iPad publications. Now you will no longer need to have a team of Xcode riders or HTML5 coders to produce iPad books, all you need are good designers and layout artists.

PUBLIC MESSAGES In countries where the mainstream media is controlled by the authorities, this tool will allow NGOs or alternative media groups to produce high-quality publications for general distribution. Imagine Apple launches a sub USD200 iPad for education, would that be a game changer?

But I agree, though not in an explosive way, this is going to transform the publishing world.