Cult of Mac on magazines and advertising on the iPad

Ryan Faas in Cult of Mac writes about magazine apps and advertising, bemoaning the fact that the experience is, often, akin to reading a PDF edition of a magazine, rather than an all-singing-all-dancing experience iPad Publishers Still Boning Up Magazines And Ads.

I have to disagree with Mr. Faas’ conclusions: I subscribe to or access a number of magazines and newspapers on the iPad. The Economist is a sober application, centered on providing access to the text of the magazine, with the added feature of the audio edition. The only downside is that, unlike the web edition, the iPad version is not updated during the week. On the whole, a good experience.
At the other end, Popular Photography is much richer, with pictures and text in layers, sliding and moving all over the place. Content not bad, but the experience is confusing at times, with things sliding where you don’t expect them to or remembering how many taps it takes to get rid of text overlays to see a picture.

Let’s not confuse ebooks, magazines and newspapers with video games and apps: the idea is to READ, not jump all over the screen and chase links and content. And I certainly don’t want advertisements jumping all over my screen, burning up often expensive 3G bandwidth I am paying for, using up tons of storage space on my iPad and getting in the way! If I am paying good money for a magazine, I expect the publisher to keep the advertisements in context and, above all, LIGHT and unobtrusive, then I may even want to find out more about the product, if I so choose.

We have an easy way of sending a message to the publishers about price and features: we can choose to buy an issue or a subscription – or not to buy it, send a comment or complaint to the developer or publisher and, the ultimate weapon: leave a review in the app shop – that scares them witless, as it directly influences purchase decisions.

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