
Publishers shouldn't be app developers - ph0rque
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3333-publishers-shouldnt-be-app-developers
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obilgic
App for that, app for this .... Every grocery store, every department store
have an app. I am so overwhelmed. I don't want to use any app other than a
browser.

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tadfisher
Exactly. If there's nothing your app does except act as a "nicer" front end to
your website, it doesn't deserve to be an app.

Take the Newegg app, for instance. It is literally a mobile site served up in
PhoneGap. They could just make that their default stylesheet for mobile web
and it would both perform better and be a better experience for their users,
who now don't have to download yet another app to use a website they'll visit
once or twice a year.

~~~
josephlord
Done right offline reading is a valuable feature for news apps (proper
Newspapers), particularly for traveling (flying) or when roaming so that you
can refresh on wifi and use without roaming charges.

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jarnix
I work in "publishing"... and we have to develop mobile apps because
advertisers want to display ads on mobile apps. They want interstitial with
video, they want fullscreen ads...

It's sad and it's wrong for the user's experience but we just have to do this.
If we don't have our mobile apps, advertisers will give their money to
competitors.

I won't send a link to our crappy apps, they are too crappy indeed.

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kennywinker
I'm counting down to the announcement that Marco Arment's The Magazine has
been purchased for x-million dollars and is being turned into a platform to
scratch this exact itch.

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arscan
They shouldn't be web developers either. I get extremely frustrated every time
I go to a site that has built its own custom responsive design framework for
mobile devices that takes 5 seconds to load and doesn't follow web UI
conventions (I'd much rather scroll down then flip pages when reading an
article). </rant>

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tomjadams
I think the issues are a lot more complex than portrayed by simple iPad
magazine apps are crap sentiments. The platforms around today (disclaimer, I
am the co-founder of one of them, Oomph) do allow designers to do silly
things, but conversely, they allow designers to do amazing things that would
not previously be possible without low level coding. The results are
outstanding, and most customers love them, we certainly get a great deal of
positive feedback from the readers of the magazines we help publish. Most of
these platforms (well ours does) also use HTML, as well as other features (we
have one called text objects) that allow rendering on multiple resolutions
with smaller download sizes.

I think The Magazine is awesome on a number of levels, but it also comes from
a certain viewpoint, one that most traditional publishers cannot embrace
without breaking the way they currently do business. Marco has been able to do
build himself a new platform with essentially no constraints (aside from his
upfront time & money investment obviously), utilising a new business model, a
luxury print publishers may not have. He has also been able to build himself
the infrastructure required to complete this, this is not expertise most
publishing houses have, and he's publishing in HTML, a lot of publishers don't
have the tools or expertise to produce HTML content to the quality they're
looking for.

The big opportunity here is for publishers to embrace this new medium
wholeheartedly, not with their traditional mags/brands, but with new ones
built specifically for digital. In my view, publishers & other "traditional"
content owners should be funding skunkworks projects that cannibalise their
own market before someone else does (something Apple continues to do for
example).

A dual pronged approach where they continue to leverage their existing brands,
mags, etc. but branch out into newer markets & business models by repurposeing
& utilising their existing content is a win-win scenario.

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NathanKP
I agree with the points made in this article. Most publishers' apps really do
suck. The startup that I'm currently working for (<http://storydesk.com>) is
solving this problem by building a product which makes it simpler for
publishers to drag and drop image and video assets, and type in their text to
create native feeling content "apps" using a web based tool. The publisher's
content can then be viewed in a native iPad player app which has a fast,
consistent user experience.

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troymc
Apparently this is the hot-button issue at 37signals today. (There's another
blog post by Ryan on the same topic.)

As commented on that other post: I recently researched tools that are designed
to help people make book or magazine apps (mobile apps). There are many
options. I decided to share my findings here:

[http://www.mobilechameleon.com/toolkits-to-develop-
magazine-...](http://www.mobilechameleon.com/toolkits-to-develop-magazine-
apps-and-book-apps.html)

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jawngee
While I agree in spirit (see my post [http://interfacelab.com/is-this-really-
the-future-of-magazin...](http://interfacelab.com/is-this-really-the-future-
of-magazines-or-why-didnt-they-just-use-html-5/) ) his assumptions are pretty
wrong. Most of these magazine apps are built on one of three platforms, the
biggest of which comes from Adobe. Almost all of these platforms are tied into
Adobe inDesign as the authoring tool. Why hire actual iOS developers when your
designers can export out of the tool they use to design the actual magazine?

So what he really is complaining about is Adobe's shitty platform. Good luck
getting old paper to change their current workflows.

I work on and maintain a few non-magazine apps for a very large publisher and
it's a very laborious approval process that moves at a snails pace. Thank god
for day rates and retainerships.

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kondro
I thought this is the problem Adobe's Digital Publishing solution is meant to
solve.

<http://www.adobe.com/solutions/digital-publishing.html>

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tstegart
Its expensive. I think I calculated it at the cheapest its $4000 per year. And
you pay per issue and per user and per download, so the cost adds up pretty
quick.

~~~
ceetn
When money is the issue, look at <http://twixlmedia.com>

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achompas
The New Yorker on iOS is a great example. It's an atrocious app. Each issue
takes >100MB, there's no font resizing or dark mode, and articles are laid out
such that 1/3rd of the screen is white space.

A magazine-porting framework for iOS and Android would rock. Sales would be
tough, though--you'd probably have to partner closely with Conde Nast or
another big publisher for v1.0, and...well, good luck with that.

~~~
bsimpson
Didn't Adobe partner with Conde Nast to leverage AIR for magazines? (I believe
this was quickly scuttled after Jobs's missive on Flash.)

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KMuncie
I am the lead developer for Treesaver (<http://treesaver.net>) and we have
recently been working with a great team in Milan, Italy to try and offer a
solution to this problem. <http://savory.io>

It's not perfect yet but we have a great roadmap and hope to have all the
major features publishers need in the near future.

~~~
RogerBlack
Thanks, Kevin! Treesaver provides an app-like HTML publication experience,
where content is divided into pages. It's responsive, and the layout adapts
with Treesaver's JS algorithm to fit any size screen.

The result works on every browser. Savory hosts content for publishers, and
provides design themes. See <http://chainamag.com> for a working site. Savory
has a great CMS based on Locomotive.

The most robust Treesaver publication is Sporting News,
<http://tablet.sportingnews.com>, which is designed primarily as an iPad app
available through the Apple Newsstand. This magazine gets as big as 1,500
pages (iPad size) daily—with a 5:00 pm update! All this is done with no more
staff than a typical web site. The web edition enables readers to share
content with anyone with a browser and a connection to the net.

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jorkos
By this logic app developers shouldn't publish books because some turn out
bad. I think 37signals might take issue with that, rework or not.

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natesm
The Time Out NY app is fantastic. As in this one:

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/time-out-new-york-for-
ipad/i...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/time-out-new-york-for-
ipad/id506299237?mt=8)

So what's the deal with the horrible magazine one?

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louwhopley
Here's a startup to save the world in this matter: <https://www.snapplify.com>

I'm not affiliated with them, but they fixed exactly what this article
complains about with my one friend's publishing service.

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digitalengineer
Someone should build an uber-App that others can create add-ons for. I (or my
location) will choose the profile I want (a.k. 'Shopping, Groceries, Sports,
Outdoor, Travelling,Family-day-out, whatever). I'll only see (or add) what I'm
in the mood for.

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ceetn
There are tons of Tablet Publishing solutions around. The designer don't need
to know how to program. My favorite is Twixl Publisher for this kind of
projects. (<http://twixlmedia.com>)

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meej
IEEE publishes their content digitally via Qmags. <http://www.qmags.com>

Their iOS app is custom-branded, but still Qmags-powered.

I wonder why more publishers don't go this route...

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jacques_chester
Qmags is godawful, in my opinion. There is no earthly reason they can't just
give me a PDF.

Table of contents? PDFs have that.

Navigation? PDFs have that.

Metadata? Oh for the love of pete, _PDFs have that_.

Qmag adds nothing to the experience and the client is slow and annoying.

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flixic
Awfully off-topic, but it's their 3333rd post. Quite a run for a company blog.

~~~
cdelsolar
Good content generation is one reason 37signals is doing so well.

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benjaminwootton
Is this planting a seed regarding their new app thats in development? :)

Agreed that theres a ton of wasted effort in this space. Something along the
lines of apples Newsstand has so much pitential.

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shoeless
Other than the browser as a common delivery platform, do we really think that
every publisher will happily join hands and standardize on one native magazine
app?

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nicholassmith
A lot of publishers aren't app developers, they're just using existing
technologies which aren't the best, or using them for mixed levels of success.

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n1ghtfury
this is along the lines of what <http://www.inkling.com> is trying to solve
(for books, not magazines)

