I understand the point you’re making, but I think iTunes U falls outside the purview of my article, which focuses on the content Apple makes available for its own hardware, software and services.

Further, my understanding is that iTunes U is a service hosted by Apple and made available to universities for their content. Apple does not (and should not, in my opinion) try to judge the “quality” of that content. Your opinion of the “bad” content may or may not be valid, but in any case if it’s what the university uses — and therefore what their students are using — that’s their business.

As for the variability of content, I’m sure Apple is aware of it just as we’re all aware of the “variability of content” at various universities throughout the country.

However, given the steep learning curve on some of Apple’s Pro Software, they don’t go at all, or not far enough. I refer in the first case to the forgotten Web Objects software, which should have become iWeb Pro. This is a fine web dev tool used by serious heavyweights like Apple and the BBC. Why allow it to go undiscovered by the many? I also refer to Logic Studio and Final Cut Studio.

On a separate aspect of Apple’s learning resources, the quality of material on the iTunes U resource varies from the sublime (eg Stanford programming lectures) through the OK (Swinburne U) to the downright awful, insultingly careless and useless (check out Object oriented programming sessions and Utah U’s iPhone Programmers’ Association-the first is wholly useless and unintelligible while the Utah U’s video segments are unreadable). It speaks volumes about the staff at the university who posted the OO stuff that it is inaudible, unreadable and dreary in its staging. With the Utah U stuff, the video material looks as if it would have been truly useful but the coding views are unreadable. What a killer omission that rather trashes what might have been truly useful.

I doubt that Apple is aware of the variability of iTunes U content. They should hire a gatekeeper to weed out the insultingly bad stuff already on the site and to vet all future contributions.

These tutorials are of great help and I would recommend it to new users.