On the contrary, I find physical textbooks to be largely superior to digital mediums.

You aren't limited by DRM imposed by the various educational companies. (I loved only being able to download and print 5 sequential pages at a time when you're looking at printing a page of questions for each chapter)

I find it more engaging with using a real textbook. You can feel the pages, write in the margins, not be distracted by things like apps, etc. on the same device.

It's so much easier and faster to flip a section of pages when you want to quickly flip between different chapters/pages for referencing other parts of the textbook as opposed to janky UIs.

I know we're both being anecdotal, but it seems like my opinion is going the way of the dodo, considering the younger generations grew up with staring at tablets/screens from day one so they're used to it.

I agree. I print or buy the book for anything I want to read in depth. The ease of sticking a finger or scrap of paper between pages for easy reference is vastly underrated.

Also underrated is how easy it is find find something in paper book, based basically on how thick the two sides feel in your hand.

Apple Books usually don’t have DRM so I buy those.

Also, iOS 13 is finally adding highlighting for PDFs, which I’ve found to be frustrating.

Now I can highlight and markup the page with Apple Pencil before I print something.

It would have been great to have digital textbooks in university. I had to walk a lot to get around campus, and I could only carry at the very most three textbooks at the time. Not having access to all of my books at all times was definitely an impediment to learning.