Was McGraw-Hill omitted from the iPad announcement?

Ever since the supposedly leaked confirmation on Tuesday about the iPad, rumors have been flying around about McGraw-Hill and its CEO's appearance on CNBC. Not minutes after posting it, people first assumed that Terry McGraw was in trouble with Steve, and then rumors showed up that the leak may have been done on purpose. During yesterday's announcement, McGraw-Hill was notably not among the iBooks vendors listed on the screen behind Steve, and more rumors suggested that they'd been pulled from the announcement in retaliation (though Steve did say that educational literature would be a big deal for iBooks). Rumors and hearsay, all -- so what's the real deal?

Digital Daily has the first official word from McGraw-Hill post announcement, and guess what? It's a denial. They now say that they had never worked with Apple on the launch, and that Terry McGraw didn't announce anything -- he was just repeating "speculative comments" that he'd heard about educational literature on the new device. Of course, they didn't really sound like that on Tuesday, but it's possible, especially considering that the original Wall Street Journal leak never mentioned McGraw-Hill at all.

So maybe we gave McGraw too much credit. Or not enough, depending on how you look at it -- after all, he was right about it being based on the iPhone OS, and right about iBooks, too. But unless you're a fan of conspiracy theories, odds are McGraw-Hill wasn't a victim of Steve's vengeance: they were never in the presentation in the first place.

[via MacRumors]