The demos are definitely over-the-top without the subtlety that one would eventually expect from this new medium.
I'd like to see motion be a user-accesible feature, not something always running. For example, comic books require the user to touch a motion pane before it starts.
I'm glad I wasn't the only person to have this reaction. Visually interesting, sure -- but where's the content? If this is an example of the type of reading content we can expect for the iPad, I fear it will rapidly devolve into a gimmick device. Which brings up another potential problem for the iPad. With no standard approach to presenting e-reading content, we're liable to end up with a lot of very different and divergent methods, some of them really bad, and which will reflect poorly on Apple. Dare I say it, but Apple might have to exert more control over content production, or risk having the purpose of the iPad become so fuzzy that consumers won't know what it's about.
Well that was just a movie of the product (you can't interact with it). I meant the final version.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mstone
Yep looks like Flash. I can think of only a few ways to do effects like that.
1. Flash
2. Flash complied as an App from CS5 Pro
3. App with embedded video (After Effects, Motion, Shake, Maya etc.)
From the looks of it they are sparing no expense so it will be interesting to see how much the subscription costs.
Yeah, I'm thinking number 2 as well....Not to start a whole new debate here, but that's one thing that annoys me about the whole kill Flash campaign.... I don't like Flash anymore, I feel like Adobe bloated it out just like they did with Photoshop and Acrobat and that's really sad, but there's still no good alternatives to build a media rich app like this.... If any influential Apple devs read this, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE allow some kind of ClickToFlash option....I think it would have a profound influcence on iPad sales.
What is so specific about that that couldn't have been done before? I mean, it looks like your average flash demo after all. What makes tablets unique is the use of touch and fingers, not just for pressing here and there once but actively interacting with the content. This just doesn't look new.
We get a lot of printed glossy magazines at the office that look very similar. The usual interaction is no more than turning a page to see yet another full page ad or glamour shot. Very little reading is necessary. This is fashion not literature.
That's supposedly 1 article in a single issue of a magazine ? Sheesh - if that's the case then magazines are going to take several months of production and cost about $50 an issue !
You can tell that the piece is created by people that either don't use iPhone/iPod Touch or came at it from a "universal format" perspective.
Why do I say that? Well, one of the core differentiators is the physics of an iPhone/iPod Touch (and soon, iPad); namely touch, pinch-zoom and tilt, yet the piece doesn't deal with any of these game-changing aspects, the use cases/workflows of which I blogged about here:
Excerpt: Flashing forward to the present, I see Apple coming up with tools that allow prosumers, long-tail media, and publishing houses to create world-class e-books that take advantage of the native capabilities of the iPhone Platform. By native capabilities, I mean e-book formats and runtime layers that support touch, tilt, movies, pictures, sound, computation, graphics, compass, direction, and connectivity, not to mention very deep media and apps libraries.
This is a whole new angle toward photography. Hopefully the tools will exist for this sort of work. Motion and After Effects don't seem quite focused in this niche. This isn't exactly a typical video workflow. I can see simpler examples too. Someway to easily create cyclic motion. I look forward to the newspapers in Harry Potter now!
That's supposedly 1 article in a single issue of a magazine ? Sheesh - if that's the case then magazines are going to take several months of production and cost about $50 an issue !
I don't think that is the base line. Simpler variations of this could be interesting. I have a feeling that print media will finally evolve to the next level. Maybe photography will evolve too. With DSLRs that can shoot video now, I think more photographers are going to be interested in this still motion concept. Sounds like a contradiction, but it works.
Tastily done interactivity is quite important too, but not this crazy Hollywood stuff.
Ultimately content is king, if the interactivity it done right it can make the content shine. This has more to do with the power of animation than the iPad itself.
I don't think publishers get it. This "motion graphics->pause->read->continue" model is so dated! I want my information fast and easy to consume! If your visuals don't convey the information then get them out of my way! This is the same old formula that was used on CDs and DVDs back in the 90's. Yeah sure you can download it instead of mail it but in the end it's still boring! And you come out feeling like you waisted a bunch of time. Plus, by the time it makes it through production the content is dated. Have any of these producers read a blog lately? Blogs are where it's at and they will explode with the iPad!
My 21st century/web 3.0 definition of "interactive media" is an open socially interactive medium used to convey and share information. But, most importantly sharing opinions. It's not flashy buttons and motion graphics contained in a closed system. Yuck! The only way flashy buttons and motion graphics work today is if they convey the information and also provide a way to convey information. Ever play Halo?
We have all gotten over the "shiny" effect of digital media back in the 90's. Now we all want to opine with it and receive our 15 nanoseconds of fame! Twitter anyone?
P.S.
I bet the content creators of this demo are still waiting to get paid.
The possibilities are staggering. The medium is engaging. Not just for adults, for children, this is amazing. Text books, interactive training... it's going to be fantastic.
I agree... and want to take it one step further... while adults AND kids have the ability (now) to make their own books and magazines this device (and others that will no doubt follow) will have the potential to ignite a whole new revolution in publishing.
What youtube did for budding film geeks, wanna be celebrities and millions of others each with their own reasons for doing whatever it is that they do on youtube could be mimicked with the iPad. Lets face it creative people don't necessarily want to be in front of the camera or work in the video medium and while YES the web is where people express themselves with text and photos (and video) the iPad takes it one step further and has the unique ability to showcase someones work.
I certainly hope Apple has provisions for getting ebooks on to the iPad without having to enter the iBook Store.
Lets face it... Flooding the iBook store with tons of amateur built ezines and ebooks would not only make finding the professional content harder to find but also force Apple into being a copyright watchdog for each and every user submitted item and be constantly under attack from lawyers who find copyrighted content that slips thru the vetting process (see Youtube for a perfect example). Apple needs to take a somewhat hands off approach when it comes to encouraging and enabling budding publishers... They can give them the tools and show them how to make the product functional in the iPad but Apple needs to leave the distribution up to the amateur publishers. However I'm afraid Apple will simply choose to not promote the concept of amateur publications at all which would be a big mistake.
Especially since a lot of companies are looking and the iPad as a way to get all the publications they create into the hands of its employees (especially ones with a traveling sales force)? These companies are not going to want to put their internal documents (even if they are made available publicly via the clients the company sells to) on Apple servers in order for them to distribute them to their employees any more than companies wanted to distribute they in-house written APPS via the APP Store. Now I guess Apple could make a similar 'corporate' distribution system for edocs but that would still stifle the budding publishers who want to write their own books and ezines etc.
I guess the methods of edoc distribution will be known soon enough or maybe the info is already out there somewhere....
I don't think publishers get it. This "motion graphics->pause->read->continue" model is so dated! I want my information fast and easy to consume! If your visuals don't convey the information then get them out of my way! This is the same old formula that was used on CDs and DVDs back in the 90's. Yeah sure you can download it instead of mail it but in the end it's still boring! And you come out feeling like you waisted a bunch of time. Plus, by the time it makes it through production the content is dated. Have any of these producers read a blog lately? Blogs are where it's at and they will explode with the iPad!
My 21st century/web 3.0 definition of "interactive media" is an open socially interactive medium used to convey and share information. But, most importantly sharing opinions. It's not flashy buttons and motion graphics contained in a closed system. Yuck! The only way flashy buttons and motion graphics work today is if they convey the information and also provide a way to convey information. Ever play Halo?
We have all gotten over the "shiny" effect of digital media back in the 90's. Now we all want to opine with it and receive our 15 nanoseconds of fame! Twitter anyone?
P.S.
I bet the content creators of this demo are still waiting to get paid.
I think the point is more about the motion graphics and less about the interactivity used. I think the interactivity they chose works in this case though. Subtle motion in graphics would be interesting. I hate flash type animation, but I would welcome animation in photography. This isn't iPad specific though. This works for the web in general. I think the production costs are probably still a bit high to make this a reality though. Better camera features and tools could change that though.
It looks great but it would be a booger to read. It strikes me more like what I expected DVD menu screens to be than how I would want to read a magazine. For short reads it might be fine but I hope I don't have to go through all of that to pick up where I left off on page 68.
This is new medium somewhat, a bit of a hybrid. It will take a bit to figure out what the best way to communicate with it is. Kudos to the creators for making the rest of us think though. From a practical side that's a lot of time/money in production to spend on 10 or so pages in a magazine.
I read an idea that I thought would be good. Apple should take iDVD and turn it into an interactive magazine maker thing that would make it easy to create simple interactive publications like these. Pick a theme, add text, pictures, video, and so on, export it all to an EPUB file that iBooks can handle.
That's supposedly 1 article in a single issue of a magazine ? Sheesh - if that's the case then magazines are going to take several months of production and cost about $50 an issue !
Nice concept, but there isn't a magazine in the world that could afford this treatment, except maybe for a special issue, but I doubt anyone could see a fair ROI on this. We've been doing motion work for magazines for about the last year or so and let me tell you budgets are tight, the print world simply isn't ready to spend the money for something like this. There are so many impracticalities, I wouldn't waste my time pitching it unless I knew the client wanted to "go huge" and probably lose some money and I no one wants to be the one in charge of a money losing project. Could be use in advertising, though budgets are being cut there as well.
Like a videogame with reading punctuated by fixed motion video.
This will require a whole new set of vocabulary to describe the genre, like novel, comic, manga, pop-up, all describe books. I suspect the developer/ publisher will develop a look and feel and certain conventions will evolve.
Even the NYT is doing great interactive stuff. We should dream bigger than just articles and video on a screen. Their interactive stuff about the healthcare debate, their graphics about swing votes in the House of Representatives (and similar stuff for swing states in the prez election in 08) were really great and really added depth.
Yep looks like Flash. I can think of only a few ways to do effects like that.
1. Flash
3. Flash complied as an App from CS5 Pro
3. App with embedded video (After Effects, Motion, Shake, Maya etc.)
From the looks of it they are sparing no expense so it will be interesting to see how much the subscription costs.
or Core Animation
or OpenGL
or some custom code using the low level graphics API's in OS X
Im going to guess a native application, playing h.264 video with text over-lays, using core animation for transformations.
Apple doesn't allow 3rd party run-time engines or any other code interpreters on their mobile devices, so you're never going to see Flash on the iPad. Outside of native OS X code, the only other code that gets executed is run inside of WebKit.
I think the point is more about the motion graphics and less about the interactivity used. I think the interactivity they chose works in this case though. Subtle motion in graphics would be interesting. I hate flash type animation, but I would welcome animation in photography. This isn't iPad specific though. This works for the web in general. I think the production costs are probably still a bit high to make this a reality though. Better camera features and tools could change that though.
I think the point is if something like this would work/sell on the iPad which is a interactive device. If their just selling motion graphics then sure. I hope that works out for them. But, then why bother with the copy? I guess their demographic would be comic book readers but that's a niche. Unless they can create and afford a pipeline that can produce content on a daily basis this publication will get lost in the noise of the modern internet. Okay let's put it this way. When is the last time you watched a music video? Every now and then one gets popular but no one is watching music videos anymore. I feel this type of iPad content just ends up in the same ballpark.
Comments
The demos are definitely over-the-top without the subtlety that one would eventually expect from this new medium.
I'd like to see motion be a user-accesible feature, not something always running. For example, comic books require the user to touch a motion pane before it starts.
I'm glad I wasn't the only person to have this reaction. Visually interesting, sure -- but where's the content? If this is an example of the type of reading content we can expect for the iPad, I fear it will rapidly devolve into a gimmick device. Which brings up another potential problem for the iPad. With no standard approach to presenting e-reading content, we're liable to end up with a lot of very different and divergent methods, some of them really bad, and which will reflect poorly on Apple. Dare I say it, but Apple might have to exert more control over content production, or risk having the purpose of the iPad become so fuzzy that consumers won't know what it's about.
Just watched it on my iPhone. It is QT.
Look very good.
Well that was just a movie of the product (you can't interact with it). I meant the final version.
Yep looks like Flash. I can think of only a few ways to do effects like that.
1. Flash
2. Flash complied as an App from CS5 Pro
3. App with embedded video (After Effects, Motion, Shake, Maya etc.)
From the looks of it they are sparing no expense so it will be interesting to see how much the subscription costs.
Yeah, I'm thinking number 2 as well....Not to start a whole new debate here, but that's one thing that annoys me about the whole kill Flash campaign.... I don't like Flash anymore, I feel like Adobe bloated it out just like they did with Photoshop and Acrobat and that's really sad, but there's still no good alternatives to build a media rich app like this.... If any influential Apple devs read this, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE allow some kind of ClickToFlash option....I think it would have a profound influcence on iPad sales.
What is so specific about that that couldn't have been done before? I mean, it looks like your average flash demo after all. What makes tablets unique is the use of touch and fingers, not just for pressing here and there once but actively interacting with the content. This just doesn't look new.
We get a lot of printed glossy magazines at the office that look very similar. The usual interaction is no more than turning a page to see yet another full page ad or glamour shot. Very little reading is necessary. This is fashion not literature.
Why do I say that? Well, one of the core differentiators is the physics of an iPhone/iPod Touch (and soon, iPad); namely touch, pinch-zoom and tilt, yet the piece doesn't deal with any of these game-changing aspects, the use cases/workflows of which I blogged about here:
Rebooting the Book: One iPad at a Time
http://bit.ly/zOoEu
Excerpt: Flashing forward to the present, I see Apple coming up with tools that allow prosumers, long-tail media, and publishing houses to create world-class e-books that take advantage of the native capabilities of the iPhone Platform. By native capabilities, I mean e-book formats and runtime layers that support touch, tilt, movies, pictures, sound, computation, graphics, compass, direction, and connectivity, not to mention very deep media and apps libraries.
Check it out, if interested.
Mark
That's supposedly 1 article in a single issue of a magazine ? Sheesh - if that's the case then magazines are going to take several months of production and cost about $50 an issue !
I don't think that is the base line. Simpler variations of this could be interesting. I have a feeling that print media will finally evolve to the next level. Maybe photography will evolve too. With DSLRs that can shoot video now, I think more photographers are going to be interested in this still motion concept. Sounds like a contradiction, but it works.
Ultimately content is king, if the interactivity it done right it can make the content shine. This has more to do with the power of animation than the iPad itself.
My 21st century/web 3.0 definition of "interactive media" is an open socially interactive medium used to convey and share information. But, most importantly sharing opinions. It's not flashy buttons and motion graphics contained in a closed system. Yuck! The only way flashy buttons and motion graphics work today is if they convey the information and also provide a way to convey information. Ever play Halo?
We have all gotten over the "shiny" effect of digital media back in the 90's. Now we all want to opine with it and receive our 15 nanoseconds of fame! Twitter anyone?
P.S.
I bet the content creators of this demo are still waiting to get paid.
The possibilities are staggering. The medium is engaging. Not just for adults, for children, this is amazing. Text books, interactive training... it's going to be fantastic.
I agree... and want to take it one step further... while adults AND kids have the ability (now) to make their own books and magazines this device (and others that will no doubt follow) will have the potential to ignite a whole new revolution in publishing.
What youtube did for budding film geeks, wanna be celebrities and millions of others each with their own reasons for doing whatever it is that they do on youtube could be mimicked with the iPad. Lets face it creative people don't necessarily want to be in front of the camera or work in the video medium and while YES the web is where people express themselves with text and photos (and video) the iPad takes it one step further and has the unique ability to showcase someones work.
I certainly hope Apple has provisions for getting ebooks on to the iPad without having to enter the iBook Store.
Lets face it... Flooding the iBook store with tons of amateur built ezines and ebooks would not only make finding the professional content harder to find but also force Apple into being a copyright watchdog for each and every user submitted item and be constantly under attack from lawyers who find copyrighted content that slips thru the vetting process (see Youtube for a perfect example). Apple needs to take a somewhat hands off approach when it comes to encouraging and enabling budding publishers... They can give them the tools and show them how to make the product functional in the iPad but Apple needs to leave the distribution up to the amateur publishers. However I'm afraid Apple will simply choose to not promote the concept of amateur publications at all which would be a big mistake.
Especially since a lot of companies are looking and the iPad as a way to get all the publications they create into the hands of its employees (especially ones with a traveling sales force)? These companies are not going to want to put their internal documents (even if they are made available publicly via the clients the company sells to) on Apple servers in order for them to distribute them to their employees any more than companies wanted to distribute they in-house written APPS via the APP Store. Now I guess Apple could make a similar 'corporate' distribution system for edocs but that would still stifle the budding publishers who want to write their own books and ezines etc.
I guess the methods of edoc distribution will be known soon enough or maybe the info is already out there somewhere....
I don't think publishers get it. This "motion graphics->pause->read->continue" model is so dated! I want my information fast and easy to consume! If your visuals don't convey the information then get them out of my way! This is the same old formula that was used on CDs and DVDs back in the 90's. Yeah sure you can download it instead of mail it but in the end it's still boring! And you come out feeling like you waisted a bunch of time. Plus, by the time it makes it through production the content is dated. Have any of these producers read a blog lately? Blogs are where it's at and they will explode with the iPad!
My 21st century/web 3.0 definition of "interactive media" is an open socially interactive medium used to convey and share information. But, most importantly sharing opinions. It's not flashy buttons and motion graphics contained in a closed system. Yuck! The only way flashy buttons and motion graphics work today is if they convey the information and also provide a way to convey information. Ever play Halo?
We have all gotten over the "shiny" effect of digital media back in the 90's. Now we all want to opine with it and receive our 15 nanoseconds of fame! Twitter anyone?
P.S.
I bet the content creators of this demo are still waiting to get paid.
I think the point is more about the motion graphics and less about the interactivity used. I think the interactivity they chose works in this case though. Subtle motion in graphics would be interesting. I hate flash type animation, but I would welcome animation in photography. This isn't iPad specific though. This works for the web in general. I think the production costs are probably still a bit high to make this a reality though. Better camera features and tools could change that though.
content is still more important than flashy pics and sound. give me the WSJ and NYT and i will be happy.
I agree with You!
It looks great but it would be a booger to read. It strikes me more like what I expected DVD menu screens to be than how I would want to read a magazine. For short reads it might be fine but I hope I don't have to go through all of that to pick up where I left off on page 68.
This is new medium somewhat, a bit of a hybrid. It will take a bit to figure out what the best way to communicate with it is. Kudos to the creators for making the rest of us think though. From a practical side that's a lot of time/money in production to spend on 10 or so pages in a magazine.
I read an idea that I thought would be good. Apple should take iDVD and turn it into an interactive magazine maker thing that would make it easy to create simple interactive publications like these. Pick a theme, add text, pictures, video, and so on, export it all to an EPUB file that iBooks can handle.
That's supposedly 1 article in a single issue of a magazine ? Sheesh - if that's the case then magazines are going to take several months of production and cost about $50 an issue !
Nice concept, but there isn't a magazine in the world that could afford this treatment, except maybe for a special issue, but I doubt anyone could see a fair ROI on this. We've been doing motion work for magazines for about the last year or so and let me tell you budgets are tight, the print world simply isn't ready to spend the money for something like this. There are so many impracticalities, I wouldn't waste my time pitching it unless I knew the client wanted to "go huge" and probably lose some money and I no one wants to be the one in charge of a money losing project. Could be use in advertising, though budgets are being cut there as well.
Just goes to show what can be done with the Red One in the hands of the brain-dead.
Awesome!
(Passion Pit rocks, though)
This will require a whole new set of vocabulary to describe the genre, like novel, comic, manga, pop-up, all describe books. I suspect the developer/ publisher will develop a look and feel and certain conventions will evolve.
Even the NYT is doing great interactive stuff. We should dream bigger than just articles and video on a screen. Their interactive stuff about the healthcare debate, their graphics about swing votes in the House of Representatives (and similar stuff for swing states in the prez election in 08) were really great and really added depth.
Alternatives to flash? I dunno enough to say.
Yep looks like Flash. I can think of only a few ways to do effects like that.
1. Flash
3. Flash complied as an App from CS5 Pro
3. App with embedded video (After Effects, Motion, Shake, Maya etc.)
From the looks of it they are sparing no expense so it will be interesting to see how much the subscription costs.
or Core Animation
or OpenGL
or some custom code using the low level graphics API's in OS X
Im going to guess a native application, playing h.264 video with text over-lays, using core animation for transformations.
Apple doesn't allow 3rd party run-time engines or any other code interpreters on their mobile devices, so you're never going to see Flash on the iPad. Outside of native OS X code, the only other code that gets executed is run inside of WebKit.
I think the point is more about the motion graphics and less about the interactivity used. I think the interactivity they chose works in this case though. Subtle motion in graphics would be interesting. I hate flash type animation, but I would welcome animation in photography. This isn't iPad specific though. This works for the web in general. I think the production costs are probably still a bit high to make this a reality though. Better camera features and tools could change that though.
I think the point is if something like this would work/sell on the iPad which is a interactive device. If their just selling motion graphics then sure. I hope that works out for them. But, then why bother with the copy? I guess their demographic would be comic book readers but that's a niche. Unless they can create and afford a pipeline that can produce content on a daily basis this publication will get lost in the noise of the modern internet. Okay let's put it this way. When is the last time you watched a music video? Every now and then one gets popular but no one is watching music videos anymore. I feel this type of iPad content just ends up in the same ballpark.
Well that was just a movie of the product (you can't interact with it). I meant the final version.
I was referring to the concept. Now entering my 4th decade in this business. Have a good idea what, how, when and where these things will work.