

It’s Not the File Size That’s Killing iPad Magazines - bcolbow
http://bcolbow.tumblr.com/post/19708636095/its-not-file-size-thats-killing-ipad-magazines

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Terretta
I think his point is the least of the problems with magazines. In fact, I
strongly disagree that fast moving blog-style content is a good thing for
magazines. I want to wait for the right mix of browsability and depth, and I
want a "periodic" relationship with my periodicals.

I subscribe to a variety of magazines in print and iPad editions. Wired, Mens
Health, Economist, Car and Driver, National Geographic, and Popular
Photography, to name a few.

I haven't opened a print edition in over a year. That said, I also am not
opening these on the iPad, except when stuck on a plane waiting for the flight
attendant to finish his seatbelt dance.

Why not?

1\. Every time there's an iOS update, the apps forget who I am, and I have to
re-register. This usually results in me just ignoring magazines for a quarter
or two.

2\. They notify of new content, but do not pre-download it. They're huge,
500MB for a magazine, but I have a 64GB iPad -- a lot more memory than
patience. When I launch the magazine and see I'll have to wait 5 minutes to
download the latest issue, I close it again, and that magazine is lost to me.

3\. _Some_ make me scroll around too much. Economist does not. Economist is
actually even easier to navigate on the iPad than in print. Of the magazines I
do get, GQ is the worst at trying to leverage "new media". I have to paw at
the screen 20 times to skim one factoid page, and it's ridiculous. Popular
Photography is similar, and I have finished issues only to realize I'd missed
entire sections.

4\. The pricing model is stupid, and too many magazines don't give a digital
subscription along with the print. I can see why most want their print
circulation numbers higher -- they're a whole different set of ads and ad
pricing. But to have "digital only" subscriptions cost 4x the wholesale print
price is ridiculous. Every magazine I mentioned, I buy in print, copy the
subscriber ID off the label, and get the digital. I chuck the printed copy or
leave it in the company lobby. It's a waste, but when it costs $5/year for
print+digital instead of $50 for just digital, I suspect I'm doing exactly
what they want. If, however, the publishers that don't have this kind of offer
were to let me subscribe digitally for a reasonable price (no more than
$1/month since I still have to see the ads and they don't have to handle
printing and mailing it), I'd subscribe to a lot more titles.

So, these are the problems, and they're fixable. What he is proposing,
however, I disagree with, strongly. Fast moving content is not what magazines
are for.

DPReview is a fantastic photo blog, but it's a fundamentally different
experience than browsing an issue of Popular Photography. The issue has a
theme, a connective binding that ties all its articles together. There's a
comfortable familiarity with the voice of the editor. You enjoy a sense of
expectation when waiting for the next issue. You go back and revisit a prior
month's issue when you're considering a certain kind of gear. These are all
very different from the ephemera of the journo-blogs. Each has its place.
Blogs replaced the daily newspaper, essentially giving me my Tech section, my
Startup News section, instead of whatever my local paper had. But magazines
and newspapers coexisted for over a century and it's because they're
fundamentally different experiences.

With magazines on the iPad, it's fantastic to travel with 50 magazines at
hand, not taking any space. The color images in National Geographic are
spectacular, and I don't miss the paper edition. (Mine are all still in their
plastic.) The article typography and minimalist layout on Economist is a joy
to read.

When done wrong, I can't be bothered to wait for a download, to paw around to
find the end of a story, or to pay 5x as much as I would for print.

When done right, I'm convinced these digital editions are the future of
periodicals, and blogs are the future of newspapers.

~~~
Apple-Guy
1\. That's not normal. I've used magazine apps on iPad 1 to iPad 3 and I
haven't seen one that "forgets" who I am. 2\. Magazines can pre-download on
iPad. It's been that way for awhile. 3\. Agree. Many of those involved don't
understand the new medium. 4\. Agree. It's the problem of the publishing /
content industry.

~~~
Terretta
2\. Should be, and the Newsstand settings are enabled for it. But mine
doesn't. 1. I used to do the restore method of updates. The ota updates don't
forget. But ths last I did a restore and it forgot again.

~~~
lloeki
It seems iOS/iTunes does not back up the keychain if you don't encrypt your
backups via the iTunes setting.

------
ghshephard
I think he nailed it when he indicated that the Blog has done a great job of
replacing magazines.

I used to be a huge newspaper/magazine junkie - I haven't purchased a physical
instance in 4+ years. What has replaced it:

    
    
      o xkcd
      o wsj.com
      o nyt.com
      o HN
      o daring fireball
      o theverge
      o Yahoo Finance (Stock Portfolio)
      o macrumors/appleinsider/loopinsight
      o asymco
    

And, somewhat less often:

    
    
      o Techcrunch
      o parislemon
      o dpreview
      o pandodaily
    

And, for some reason, I keep tripping over interesting articles here:

    
    
      o http://www.vulture.com/
    

I won't even get into how TV has been replaced with iTunes, and Radio has been
replaced by podcasts (See [http://www.macdrifter.com/2012/03/more-on-podcasts-
changing-...](http://www.macdrifter.com/2012/03/more-on-podcasts-changing-of-
the-guard/) for a good collection of many of the ones I listen to)

I've _tried_ to purchase these magazines on my Gen1/2/3 iPad - Wired, NatGeo,
Economist, various Zino instances (horrible experience), Popular Mechanics -
but Colbow has it nailed - you always feel like you are reading a broken PDF,
and you are never certain that you've read all the content)

Other than blogs in web format, NYT has recently (finally) started doing a
good job of presenting their content in a readable format on the iPad. I still
balance it out with the web version, but I find, for long reading, more often
sinking back for an hour or so with the Application.

Who knows, maybe we've seen the future of magazines, and it's the blog.

~~~
corin_
> _I won't even get into how TV has been replaced with iTunes, and Radio has
> been replaced by podcasts_

Not sure they have yet - among everyone I know, including tech people and
people whose ability just allows them to use emails, and everyone inbetween,
the order of popularity I've observed goes:

    
    
      1.) Illegal downloads (torrents or rapidshare/etc.)
      2.) Legal digital distribution (iTunes, Netflix, etc.)
      3.) Traditional physical media
    

And 2./3. are really very close, might even be the wrong way around

As for radio, the order is:

    
    
      1.) Replaced radio with mp3s and mp3 players
      2.) Still listen to radio
      3.) Podcasts (very few people)

~~~
ghshephard
I was going to make a comment about how I don't purchase physical media - but
I just looked around my bedroom at my iPad, iPhone, kindle and MacBook Air,
and realized I don't -own- anything that can play physical media. I may be the
leading edge of a trend, but I'm betting the majority of people will follow
very quickly.

Re: podcasts - all of my friends (bay area) listen to
podcasts+spotify+pandora+ a little bit of kqed. Not sure how atypical they
are.

~~~
freehunter
No game consoles?

Once we see an Xbox or a Playstation without an optical drive, we can declare
it dead. Which seems likely to be next year.

------
kapowaz
I've pretty much ignored the entire concept of iPad magazines (via Newsstand)
until I got my iPad III. Right now I'm trying out the free 7 day trial of The
Guardian, and I'm impressed. It's £9.99/month, so I'm still debating if it's
worth it, but after 4 days I'm leaning towards yes.

Why? Well, in contradiction of the original article's charges, it does
innovate and provide more than just a static page by page experience. You can
navigate in a page-by-page sense, but it also groups subjects, provides links
to other articles, and has a top level navigation. The front page
[[https://img.skitch.com/20120321-jg1fn7y9u4ktw7ktx229uygnja.p...](https://img.skitch.com/20120321-jg1fn7y9u4ktw7ktx229uygnja.png)]
does a great job of highlighting interesting subjects that day, and where an
article has a video it can be played inline.

In many ways it's basically a heavily device-oriented website, but it has the
advantage that all the content is downloaded automatically each day (without
me having to remember to download it whilst on wifi before I head onto the
tube). Also, unlike many of the magazines on Newsstand, it actually embeds
their gorgeous Guardian Egyptian Text typeface
[[https://img.skitch.com/20120321-1xb6ybrcyem76rw29569tf9kp5.p...](https://img.skitch.com/20120321-1xb6ybrcyem76rw29569tf9kp5.png)],
so even though most of the graphics aren't retina-resolution yet, the text is
still beautiful to read.

Contrast this experience with Edge magazine. I've been reading this in print
since 1995, and it's always been a high-production quality publication. I'd
expect the iPad experience to match, but it doesn't even come close.
Apparently one of the oft-mentioned magazines which simply bundles up a bunch
of JPEGs, I could probably get past that were it not for the horrible way it
loads each page, first apparently using a low-resolution image resized to fit,
then gradually drawing in the full-resolution image in tiles
[[https://img.skitch.com/20120321-kam5qxxn3rens7a1x534jgyidh.p...](https://img.skitch.com/20120321-kam5qxxn3rens7a1x534jgyidh.png)].
This happens with _every single page transition_ , even with pages you've
already visited, meaning that switching between two pages of a gatefold
article is an incredibly irritating process. Also, as it's a resized image,
the text isn't especially clear, particularly when you compare to the high
standard The Guardian sets.

The way I look at it, if old-world print publications want to survive the
transition to digital, then they can't expect to get away with the latter, but
instead should be striving towards the former. Make a good product and people
will buy it. Try and push rubbish and when you finally discover you have to
stop the physical presses, the virtual product won't stand up to scrutiny.

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grandalf
I don't think it's about content, it's about usability. I don't want the
magazine publisher's 35 different counterintuitive UX innovations all over the
artfully designed page with copy too small to read.

I just want to read the content of the magazine without something getting in
the way. If the magazine is visual that's fine too, but show pictures or
artwork separate from whatever text I'm supposed to read.

Newspapers for IOS suffer from this too. I download a huge app and it works
like a website that someone went crazy with animations on.

Blogs are taking market share from magazines b/c lots of what goes into
magazines is filler, and blogs don't have the same pressure to publish filler.
Consumers of content know the difference and rarely prefer magazine "filler"
to decent quality blog posts.

Want to ruin blogs? Give the authors deadlines and tell them what to write
about. You'd end up with a magazine.

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MaxGabriel
A thought, iPad magazines would be an excellent place to implement many of
Bret Victor's ideas for interactive numerical content, i.e. adjusting
variables and seeing how they impact a final result and perhaps seeing that
graphed. This seems like a more easily updated model than really unique
interactive content in each issue because the artwork can be generic.

The iPad would probably be more usable for this than the web, because it is
easier, more natural, and is a more common interaction paradigm to interact
with sliders and such on the iPad versus the web. Popovers would also work
well here.

It would probably work well for the Economist, which is known for having many
great graphs and charts, but I think it would be fun for any news outlet
because it isn't gimicky.

Small edits for clarity, popovers.

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arnoldwh
What I thought could be a step in the right direction was Gilt's partnership
with GQ. I envisioned a GQ magazine that was actually interactive, meaning
each piece of clothing worn could be tagged with a link to purchase said piece
of clothing, or at least get taken to a useful google search about it.

Instead what I saw was more of the same in large corporate partnerships...only
one page would be dedicated to the actual items you can purchase. If you
clicked on any of the items, you were actually taken to Gilt's Park and Bond
store completely outside of the app.

Too bad. i'd really be interested in creating a Magazine using Pinterest, with
the business model being links to affiliates.

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jkmcf
While what he writes is true, most magazines are not innovating for tablets.
Compare Nat Geo with Dwell:

Nat Geo is pretty much an app (I get it through Zinio), the fonts are sized
properly for readabilty, and there's a ton of interactive content with hooks
into the web for updated content.

Dwell, and just about every other digital magazine, is basically a photocopy.
Sure, the images look nice, but the text is unreadable unless you zoom in, and
the experience feels wrong. Not to mention they are still pretty pricey.

None of them are searchable, though, which would be an awesome if hooked into
spotlight so you could search across all of your magazines.

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donniezazen
I have been using Nook and 10.1 Tab for over a year now. It has become a
painful experience to carry 'dead-tree' magazines or book. Some vendors just
scan and upload copies of their magazines in a poorly designed pdf readers.
This diminishes the quality of reading. A dedicated app would be a better
idea. It will save bandwidth and provide better experience.

One of the biggest problem with blogging is unlimited availability of space.
Blogging does not has to be supported by credible organization. They serve you
blog with thousands of ads.

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fudged
I think that WIRED has done a fantastic job both in terms of their physical
copies and digital distribution as well. But even as a techie, the interaction
on the iPad just isn't what it should be. I've seen plenty of ads where
there's a link you can't click, and other physical representations of digital
interactions that are unavailable.

It's 100% about usability, and 5% more about cost.

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ap3
Seems like ipad magazines are made by people that don't read on the ipad.

Why can't they be more like instapaper & flipboard ?

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forrestthewoods
I have subscriptions to Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, and Wired. All
three are pretty good and I have few complaints. I believe I paid $15 for 1
year for each one. Barely more than $1 an issue which is quite reasonable.

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joeguilmette
i was very excited about the ipad magazines and subscribed to a couple. at the
time, the way that they were downloaded prevented me from ever actually
getting them.

i had to load up the PopSci app, tell it to download, and then just sit there
and wait (for hours, on my shitty wifi connection). if the connection died or
the ipad went to sleep it had to start again.

i bought 3 annual subscriptions and have never actually been able to read any
of them.

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r00fus
TRVL is the best iPad magazine. Lots of more interesting content, some
attempts at interactivity ... and it's free.

