It would be nice to see all picky professors just collaborate on the http://www.wikibooks.org/ site, and simply make their own edits on, for example, the The One True Microbiology Textbook.
For students who need dead trees, the Wikibooks platform already supports printing PDF's.
I'm having trouble with this concept because Apple already seems locked down to me. Would you provide some plausible and probable examples of how you think Apple would be more locked down in a world without patents?