Well, there's a lot to say about the next version of OS X which Apple previewed yesterday at its World-Wide Developer Conference keynote, not least that they've run out of cats to name system iterations after, and plumped for California hot-spots instead. Mavericks continues OS X's trend of making worthwhile changes to the back-end that improve performance and power-consumption, elegantly innovating on an already-mature user experience, and finding more ways to unify what happens between the Mac and iOS.

Worth highlighting here though is the addition of iBooks to Mac OS X, and especially the well-thought-out support for books created in iBooks Author. This in a single stroke eliminates one of the primary objections to adopting the iBooks platform that I've heard from educators in the 12 months we've been experimenting with it; Being able to access our iBooks on the faculty's many iMacs (and the student's own–quite common–Apple notebooks) eliminates the need for them to own iPads (though that's not an objection I've heard from many students themselves).

If that weren't enough, the smart integration of sidebar notes and the ability to auto-generate citations is another win. The battle to become the default choice for academic text books is far from over, but this is a real step in the right direction for iBooks. Now I'm really waiting to see what the next version of iBooks Author brings, and whether Apple will integrate it right into iWork or leave it separate. Thoughts?