

Tablets are waiting for their Movable Type - dmishe
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3334-tablets-are-waiting-for-their-movable-type

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quanticle
Tablets already have their Movable Type. It's called... Movable Type. I
understand that the current fad is to go back to native, from HTML5, but for
very content-centric app (i.e. one designed to make text easy to read), it
makes sense to write it as a webapp. You're not transferring massive amounts
of data. You're not dealing with the same level of interactivity requirements
as, say, a game. Your job is to display text in a clear, easy-to-read fashion.
I think this is something that mobile browsers can already do quite well.
There's no reason to reinvent the wheel with a native app, when we can build
on Movable Type (or some other blogging platform) to make it more mobile
friendly.

~~~
Adaptive
I agree with this in almost every regard. I really don't like the drift
towards sandboxed apps where HTML will do just as (or more) nicely.

But: money.

Solve subscriptions. This is what the apps do. Adobe DPS, which I mention
below, is so totally geared to creating _paid_ subscription content.

The Readability fiasco was unfortunate since I'd like to see other non-ad
based approaches to paying open content publishers/creators. Unfortunately, no
one on the vested interest side of the fence (including Apple) has any real
motivation to solve for this.

~~~
quanticle
I don't see how apps solve subscription any more than a (paid-access) website.
In fact, thanks to Apple's draconian 30% cut of all in-app purchases, it can
be argued that apps are _worse_ , when it comes to subscriptions. At least
when you're serving content through the browser you're not automatically
losing 30% of your revenue.

~~~
nc
1 tap (or 2) purchasing and lots of accounts with credit cards attached

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Adaptive
Actually, to publish a magazine style app you don't need to be very
technically capable. Adobe Digital Publishing Suite is a surprisingly capable
tool and can spit out newsstand/iOS compliant apps. A lot of large/legacy
publishers with teams used to an InDesign workflow use it.

<http://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/dpsse/>

It can be clunky in places and I've seen terrible magazine apps created with
it, but that can be said for native apps as well. There is the Adobe creative
cloud price to factor in, but if you are doing anything with creative cloud
already, you have access to this.

As for actually getting into the actual iOS _newsstand_ as a magazine, that
I'm not clear about. I have the impression that Apple has tight relationships
with legacy magazine publishers and gives them priority.

~~~
tstegart
DPS pricing is ridiculous. Completely untenable for small publishers. Not only
do you have to pay to use the software, you have to pay to publish each issue
with them, and then pay when someone re-downloads a file, which happens often
because Newsstand is built that way. You don't control your code, and you
can't take your magazine anywhere else without re-creating it. If you ask me,
its a steaming pile of dung. If you're a small publisher, I ask that you
please take a look at Baker, an open source framework for publishing magazines
on the iPad. We use it (but are not the people behind it) and we love it. The
newest version supports free Newsstand apps.

~~~
Adaptive
It used to be ridiculous. It's now downgraded to merely comical. I'd check out
the link above, but my understanding is that you don't have to pay to publish
an _app_. You might be referring to just publishing strictly to the newstand,
though. In that case there are both "multi-folio" and "single-folio" options.

I think the bigger issue, besides pricing, is content lock-in, as you note.
I've seen some other systems (not Baker, I'll check that out) that offer
"free" app wrappers for magazine style content but tightly control the
creation process as a lock in mechanism (and I'm not _even_ referring to Apple
here).

Curious: are you actually publishing to newsstand or standard apps? I'm
wondering what the barrier to entry to the newsstand is in terms of approval
vs. apps. At least with ebooks, it gets weird quickly on Apple's end (long
long approval times for independent publishers unless you go through an
"approved" broker, etc.).

~~~
tstegart
Newsstand apps use the same approval process as regular apps, there are no
barriers to entry except figuring out how to code for Newsstand. Once you go
Newsstand your "content" no longer needs to go through any Apple approval
process. You just publish content any time you like, and a Newsstand App
updates automatically. The only thing that needs to be approved is changes to
your code. Overall though, Newsstand is not very well explained in Apple's
documentation, and paid subscriptions are a mess.

We publish a standard app at the moment, because Baker did not support
Newsstand until a short time ago. We will be updating in the next week or so.

DPS pricing is still bad. Single edition only gets you one issue. One freaking
issue! You need to upgrade to professional ($495 per month!) or above to
publish multiple issues, and then pay $.30 every time someone downloads one of
your issues. Compare that to setting up Baker (free) and setting up Amazon S3
free account (15GB data out per month) and DPS looks like a total scam.

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relation
Considering the recent publishing-related posts coming out of 37s, along with
Jason's teasing announcement of a new product (and their history of building
up hype leading up to a product launch), I put good money that their product
will be a publishing app/service.

~~~
habosa
This. The idea is so good I was ready to "drop everything and do it" but I can
smell from the post that 37s is about to release the service they're asking
for and would blow me out of the water.

~~~
karterk
Not really. Their last product (sortfolio) did not really do that well:

<http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3196-sortfolio-lives>

They do have a good reach and that will definitely help them, but the tablet
market is now big enough for multiple players.

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bambax
If you publish through Kindle it works everywhere, you don't have to do
anything but upload a Word or HTML document, and you get paid regularly.

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troymc
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)

~~~
tstegart
Please add a link the Baker Framework (its not linked, but its a great
resource) <http://bakerframework.com/>

~~~
troymc
Thanks! I also added Pugpig, which is similar but can also publish to Android.

<http://pugpig.com/>

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julianz
Everyone had a web browser. Not that many people have access to the Apple
store thing. Maybe if it was more universal.

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hayksaakian
RSS didn't fail because it was too nerdy, it was systematically shunned
because it has no DRM.

Systems like newsstand and Google currents seem nice because of their ui/ux,
but that's only because its so hard to compete with such giants that have
relationships with giant content creators who want surgical grade DRM.

~~~
camus
people are rediscovering RSS , what people need is good RSS reader softwares,
not the usual crap out there , people need to understand things like ping-
backs , get a server somewhere and they will never need facebook or twitter
anymore.

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jeffehobbs
Baker Project is so far the closest I've seen.

~~~
tstegart
This is what we use and we love it. The guys behind it do a lot of hard work
and the newest version supports free Newsstand subscriptions.
<https://github.com/simbul/baker>

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petewailes
This is a conflation of the idea of a desire to publish, with the theory that
that publishing must be de facto available on any platform in it's native
format. In the same way that we don't need desktop apps for reading a blog, or
a website, or anything else, we don't need a tablet or phone app either.

In this case, a website works perfectly well, with the advantages of being
searchable and sharable in far more granular and broader formats than an app,
thanks to the likes of Google, likes/retweets etc.

~~~
pretoriusB
> _This is a conflation of the idea of a desire to publish, with the theory
> that that publishing must be de facto available on any platform in it's
> native format._

No, it's a conflation of the desire to publish with the desire to target the
best electronic devices for reading (tablets), with the best format for _each_
platform (native), with easy 1-click access to monetization (already stored
credit cards and people known to buy things).

None of the above are solved by a website.

And much less it solves stuff like background updates, large volumes of data
and pictures being readable offline, etc.

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neoveller
Glad to see two big dogs from 37Signals calling for this a day apart from each
other. www.pen.fm is actually moving straight into this direction as a
platform to allow self-publishing of all sorts of mediums. Super-clean and
perfect conversion is a hassle, but if we can track/mark each component to
begin, everything regarding styles and rendering becomes so much easier to
control. Currently we're on stories and going into manuals, but I can see
magazines being the next hit. :)

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Tichy
What would such an app provide, compared to a normal ebook? I guess the point
is simply to be able to get paid via the app store? If so, it seems the wrong
solution to me, the app store should change instead of people having to create
clunky, temporary workarounds.

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habosa
Google Currents?

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dmishe
The only problem here is the review process, you probably can sell customized
binaries, but still have to wait

