
Why we've decided to stop producing TNW Magazine for Android - hboon
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/12/30/no-more-tnw-magazine-for-android/?utm_campaign=social%20media&awesm=tnw.to_b0TPT&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Spreadus
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leoedin
Certainly a sensible decision for their usage, but it's worth noting that
pretty much all the reasoning (apart from the fact nobody on Android actually
downloads the thing) is only an issue because they're moving from the iPad to
Android.

None of the technical reasons given are actual issues with Android, they're
just differences between iOS and Android. If you published a magazine solely
on Android and tried to move it across to iOS you'd have the same issues
(unless you found a functional platform-agnostic media store, which may or may
not exist).

They are of course completely justified to stop producing an android version.
Not many people used it, and I don't doubt that there's a lot of work
converting between the two. Why is there a lot of work? Because the starting
point is an iOS specific magazine design, not because Android is inherently
limited.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
It's the whole "optimised for IE5" thing all over again.

Once you've got in the boat of single platform optimisation (using Apple
Computers store for video and music integration in this case) then moving to
something that is platform agnostic is hard.

It's an interesting case study though, that it's costing they're losing money
(I think that's what they're saying) by creating for the diversity of the
Android platform. Would be nice to see the figures.

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RexRollman
To me, the biggest problem is "magazines as apps". Magazines should be in a
common file format that won't lock you in to a particular platform.

~~~
dendory
We solved this problem many years ago with PDF.

~~~
cytzol
Do PDFs scale to mobile phone sizes? I've tried reading PDFs on my phone and
it's possible, but not a pleasant experience.

~~~
petercooper
No, PDF is basically digital 'paper.' However, publisher-end tools and
workflows can produce multiple PDFs from the same content for different form
factors.

HTML5 and related technologies probably have the most promise in this sector
though due to the large amount of cross-device styling and customization that
can be done with CSS3 and JavaScript.

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Tichy
"“You make a beautiful magazine for the iPad, and then you dumb it down for
Android’.

That meant removing movies, sound, interactivity and content."

Interesting, I wasn't aware that Android devices can't play movies or sound,
and don't react to touch.

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gilgoomesh
The exact H.264 profile supported by different devices varies greatly -- it is
not an issue with Android the OS but with the range of different devices in
the Android ecosystem. With only a few iOS devices, you can test them all with
your encoded media (in fact most media encoders have presets for iOS devices)
and offer encodings that support all devices.

This simply isn't possible with Android. Either you lower the quality (because
your video must all be H.264 Baseline 3 for compatibility) or you'll simply
get pockets of oddball devices that can't play media (because they don't
support the entire set of Main or High profile video features).

Additionally, the magazine is probably using HTTP Live Streaming to handle
media (the ideal protocol for streaming to iOS devices). While Android
technically supports this in Android 3 and 4, there are differences in
supported features. Specifically, most of the features in version 3 of HTTP
Live Streaming (which came out in iOS 5) -- including multiple audio tracks,
closed captions, frame based indexes and more -- are not supported in Android.

~~~
sspiff
You make an interesting point. Would it not be possible though, to host
multiple encoding profiles on a server somewhere, and have the device download
the best match for its screen and decoding capabilities?

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josephlord
I'm sure it is possible. I'm not sure it is worthwhile/profitable to manage,
support and test such a set up.

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noptic
As far as I can renember this is a core feature of HTML5 video support:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video#Multiple_sources>

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sabret00the
This is actually pathetic reading.

> “You make a beautiful magazine for the iPad, and then you dumb it down for
> Android’."

and then you read

> "we pick movies from the iTunes store"

So essentially, it was about being lazy in the first place and opting for a
close ecosystem.

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Breakthrough
Agreed. They could, you know... Try to find a proper cross-platform solution.
I also love their logic here:

"To give you some insight in how little uptake we saw on Android here are some
statistics: for every Android user that downloads an Android magazine we have
80 iOS downloads."

Which is funny, because it's also possible that the Android/WP users are just
going to <http://thenextweb.com/magazine/> instead of downloading a dedicated
application to provide "movies, sound, interactivity and content"... Last I
checked, my web browser is _fully_ capable of providing all of that already.

~~~
taligent
But iOS users could be using the web version as well ?

So it really doesn't seem that you're in a position to be questioning someone
else's logic.

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bane
Sooo....it sounds like they have a serious tooling problem, any
recommendations on what they should be using either on Android or for cross
platform publishing?

side comment: the oddity of a site called "the next web" focused on dragging
the paper magazine format onto a digital platform cannot be overstressed,
what's wrong with their great website that people need a magazine app?

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dragonbonheur
Maybe Unity, even though it's a game engine it should be able to do everything
a multimedia diskmag is supposed to do.

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voltagex_
It's a long time since I've heard the word "diskmag". Off to scene.org!

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nyar
You lost me at "See, we pick movies from the iTunes store that people can
download right to their iPads. We pick music the same way and books too."

I chuckled and closed the tab when I read that. Consider not relying on
proprietary methods of content delivery if you want interoperability.

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sspiff
> But even then we had to deal with frequent crashes, a less intuitive
> interface and a platform that is even more fragmented than iOS.

Frequent crashes? Sounds more like an issue with the app than the platform.
You can develop unstable code anywhere. The remark about Android being "less
intuitive" is also a classic among Apple fans, but I don't really understand
why people keep saying this. It's just not true anymore.

~~~
sbuk
Which conveniently ignores the 80:1 download ratio. _That's_ the damming
figure.

Edit: re your second point. How frequently do you uses both platforms?
Personally, I use both extensively everyday. TNW have a point.

~~~
sspiff
I'm not contesting the 80:1 ratio (although bornhuetter makes some good points
against this argument as well.)

I'm contesting their Android-bashing on ease-of-use and technical merits. I
use and have used an Android phone and an iPod touch for the past 4 years.

~~~
sbuk
I take the points, but with a caveat. The overriding issue here is one of
signal to noise and it isn't a simple proble to fix with the pervading
attitude exhibited in this thread overall. It'd be interesting to know exactly
how much demand there was from Android users. We see stories that are similar
to this reasonably often. The trouble is that the discussions are way too
emotive. Reasons put forward are generally dismissed as "FUD" or "fanboys",
with emotional response always seeming to block rational discussion. Until we
get pas this, we won't get beyond where we are.

~~~
anthonyb
There is no caveat. They made a crappy Android version and paid the price.

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bornhuetter
Sounds like they have a team of iOS developers who created a very platform
specific app, and don't want or know how to port it to other platforms.

They created a half-assed Android effort and didn't bother advertising it
properly. Now, instead of doing a proper job, they have just abandoned all
cross-platform development? That's very short sighted.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Is this the case, cause from the article it sounds like they failed to
compromise (I'm thinking pixel perfect design vs fluid?) to accomodate the
diversity of Android forms but that they had managed to create a product but
not one that was working financially?

It's not something I use, are there examples of similar magazines that are
profitably managing a media-rich cross-tablet presentation.

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sirwitti
So, they are telling us that you can't buy iTunes movies and songs on android
devices. Of course android sucks because of this lack.

Why does this remind me of Microsoft and IE aroun d 10 years ago? Oh yeah,
it's because there's a monopoly and people complain why not everything is
working the same way as it does in the proprietory counterpart.

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nicholassmith
Interesting, and sensible decision that they unsurprisingly got pummelled for.

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jiggy2011
Am I missing something, or would a magazine not be simpler just to publish as
HTML?

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hboon
Top 2 reasons:

1\. in-app purchase for subscription with users that already have a card on
file

2\. better control of content and performance

I don't think they did particularly well with (2). "Our Choice" by
<http://pushpoppress.com/ourchoice/> and Alice in Wonderland
(<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gew68Qj5kxw>) is much closer.

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zizee
See previous discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4991267>

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jrabone
Echoing one of the comments, as an Android user I never use the app store for
magazines; only Google Currents. I'd probably pay for content I care about, if
there was a mechanism for doing so, but I won't install anything else. Why
should the content be a seperate app, anyway? If it's just for crapware
purposes, then good riddance!

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ry0ohki
I've had this same experience several times when doing cross platform app dev.
Even though Android supposedly has a majority marketshare now, iOS
downloads/users are usually at least 2:1, if not a more crushing 8:1 or 12:1.

It's unclear to me if it's just because Android users use their devices
different (and get less apps), if it's because the app market doesn't lend
itself to finding apps, etc...

The exact same cycle always repeats: 1) Release iOS first 2) Get lots of angry
Android complaints 3) Release Android 4) Get a trickle of users. (I know you
may be thinking, well you released to iOS first so your app probably isn't at
good on Android, but we've tried it the other way around as well)

~~~
cageface
Android is now globally around 4:1 or more to iOS but only about 40% of those
Android users are running 4.x and I strongly suspect those are the users that
actually download apps so in terms of userbase the two platforms are really
pretty close to the same from the point of view of the app developer.

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craig552uk
Walled gardens. _sigh_

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speeder
I think it is rather interesting that diskmags now are mainstream stuff

