I disagree. I bet if you went over to Reddit and asked on /r/math or /r/physics, you'd find plenty of people who have a favorite textbook. For example, I'd say Apostol's "Calculus", volume 1, is a favorite textbook of mine. I've read it 3 or 4 times over the last 30 years. The Feynman Lectures on Physics are another favorite of mine.
> 4x more expensive/less accessible/same form factor
(that's from their infographic, comparing textbooks in the '60s to now. It was on three lines there, which I've marked with slashes to fit the quote on one line)
Based on inflation, they should be about 6x more expensive, so if that 4x figure is right textbook prices have improved since the '60s. However, I suspect that they are a little low in their estimate here. I think prices have gone up faster than inflation.
I don't see how text books have become less accessible since the '60s.
> There’s one other major concern: textbooks are just flat-out terrible products. They’re ineffective pedagogical tools: dense collections of long-form text that fail to engage students’ wide range of learning styles
This may be true for the less technical fields, but I have yet to see anything better for, say, a rigorous upper level math course.