As a Fanboy I have the urge to pull an I told you so comment towards Adobe here. But in retrospect we should probably not try and go down that road.
Adobe defended their own product.. fair enough, I guess we can't fault them for that. But now they have created a comprimize that will hopefully make everyone happy, and at the same time they can still get behind flash where it's relavent... And they did all of this in an impressively short amount of time from this all blowing up in the media.
I say good job Adobe, and I'm sure SJ would say the same
Jobs bans 3rd party tools because they cause inferior apps. So instead of a nice, compact interactive magazine viewer Adobe release a bloated piece of rushed-to-market crap ... but hey it's written in Objective-C so it's all OK!
My first question would have to be... how tightly are these magazines locked into In Design? If Adobe decide not to fix this crap iPad application to ensure the Flash experience is better than the iPad one... will the magazines be willing and able to switch away from InDesign?
My second question... how many use In Design? Will this crap start to become common place on the iPad?
At 500MB, I think they have gone the wrong direction with wired. There needs to be a newspaper/magazine framework built in for the iPad, not all these silly apps. Waste of development effort, bloated offerings, and illogical from a user/interaction perspective.
I think publishers should tread carefully in drawing conclusions from the #1 Wired issue.
I bought it out of curiosity, but frankly am unlikely to buy another, at least on a regular basis.
Its very beautiful, but the advertising is overwhelming and I don't want another app for each magazine issue. I don't want a digital version of my grandparents basement (with 5000 copies of National Geographic that accumulated.)
I think there's some evolution that has to happen here.
At 500MB, I think they have gone the wrong direction with wired.
Agreed, that's too large for most folks. But how much of that is code and how much is content? How does it compare with other apps with content of similar scope?
EDIT: After reading one of the other links posted here it's clear why the app is 500MB. Way too big, much more than needed.
[1] Totally disagree. Not any different that paper mags or books. Great use of type. They know their typography.
[2] Simply follow the road signs, e.g., the 'blue' path. Basically very article has one. Like driving down a highway, there is always part of it that is under construction.
[3] Thank god.
[4] As if they could get it past Apple. Not everyone is that stupid.
[5] Thank heavens they didn't produce WIRED. Talk about navigation.
i think publishers should tread carefully in drawing conclusions from the #1 wired issue.
I bought it out of curiosity, but frankly am unlikely to buy another, at least on a regular basis.
Its very beautiful, but the advertising is overwhelming and i don't want another app for each magazine issue. I don't want a digital version of my grandparents basement (with 5000 copies of national geographic that accumulated.)
i think there's some evolution that has to happen here.
There, Adobe, now that wasn't so bad was it. Get on board the gravy train.
Perhaps they have been on board for quite some time. Perhaps Adobe has found a way to keep their creative development hidden from prying eyes. Even Gizmodo never trumped this.
Could it be that Adobe realized some time ago that Flash was and would be a major problem on Mac OSs? Certainly, nobody was expecting a completely new paradigm that satisfies both Apple and the publishing industry.
As for those that think that the WIRED app is bloated, perhaps it is content related. Certainly the results would suggest that the visual effects are right on. And if possible, they will get the size down.
BTW, I look at the first WIRED App more like an Issue. And for now, I will pick up an Issue every once in a while, just like I do for most of my reading materials; with exception of National Geographic which got a kick start with Cover Flow and Playboy, which I can't wait for it to hit the iPad.
You get a magazine that takes a long time to download onto you iPad, you also get a magazine which looks exactly like the slab of paper you pick up at the news stand which is filled with ads from car companies and others.
and yet, how many folks have paid for it. Which means that they might pay for other titles etc. So Adobe isn't going to let that potential money for their tool go by.
Quote:
Originally Posted by digitalclips
Excellent news. I really hope Apple will also produce the same using using the iLife / iWorks style interface.
agreed. in fact I'm rather hoping that next week we'll find out that the reason why two packages weren't updating earlier in the year was that they were waiting for the ipad for just such things. Perhaps in the pro apps they will convert DVD studio to a media studio and have the LP, Extras etc. as well.
Jobs bans 3rd party tools because they cause inferior apps. So instead of a nice, compact interactive magazine viewer Adobe release a bloated piece of rushed-to-market crap ... but hey it's written in Objective-C so it's all OK!
My first question would have to be... how tightly are these magazines locked into In Design? If Adobe decide not to fix this crap iPad application to ensure the Flash experience is better than the iPad one... will the magazines be willing and able to switch away from InDesign?
My second question... how many use In Design? Will this crap start to become common place on the iPad?
My question has always been why have a digital magazine on a portable networked device at all when you can just go to a website?
I bet Adobe used Flash to create it. Let's say they built another intermediate translation layer that decompiled the Flash binary to C++. Made a few tweaks and export to xcode. That way they don't have to reinvent the wheel with all the animation and effects and allows integration with other base code from CS5.
You get a magazine that takes a long time to download onto you iPad, you also get a magazine which looks exactly like the slab of paper you pick up at the news stand which is filled with ads from car companies and others.
I wonder if some enterprising magazine will ever try selling their content by the ARTICLE rather than the whole magazine?
There is no way I'm going to pay $4.99 for this, not even to try it once, but if there was some way to access their overall content and download an article here or there that I find interesting for $0.50 or $0.75...I'd probably give it a shot. There is a clear digital equivalent with the way albums and songs are sold.
It'd also be a good way to obviate the 500MB download without sacrificing interactivity. There are probably very few people who will read the entire digital magazine cover to cover, but they're still stuck with the huge hit to their limited storage space.
Jobs bans 3rd party tools because they cause inferior apps. So instead of a nice, compact interactive magazine viewer Adobe release a bloated piece of rushed-to-market crap ... but hey it's written in Objective-C so it's all OK!
My first question would have to be... how tightly are these magazines locked into In Design? If Adobe decide not to fix this crap iPad application to ensure the Flash experience is better than the iPad one... will the magazines be willing and able to switch away from InDesign?
My second question... how many use In Design? Will this crap start to become common place on the iPad?
Hundreds of thousands of publishers use InDesign, and I think you are going a bit over the top with these comments.
While I think it likely (since Adobe created it), that this converter is indeed a POS, let's be realistic. Any magazine that's based on large glossy full-page spreads (and most are nowadays), and has every second page as a full page advertisement (and most do nowadays), is going to end up being a huge file simply due to all the pictures.
If each page is a 10 meg picture file and it has 30 pages, that's 300 MB right there.
Sure this is probably a crappy app, sure Apple or almost anyone could do better than the hacks at Adobe, but digital magazines are always going to be huge files.
Comments
Adobe defended their own product.. fair enough, I guess we can't fault them for that. But now they have created a comprimize that will hopefully make everyone happy, and at the same time they can still get behind flash where it's relavent... And they did all of this in an impressively short amount of time from this all blowing up in the media.
I say good job Adobe, and I'm sure SJ would say the same
Jobs bans 3rd party tools because they cause inferior apps. So instead of a nice, compact interactive magazine viewer Adobe release a bloated piece of rushed-to-market crap ... but hey it's written in Objective-C so it's all OK!
My first question would have to be... how tightly are these magazines locked into In Design? If Adobe decide not to fix this crap iPad application to ensure the Flash experience is better than the iPad one... will the magazines be willing and able to switch away from InDesign?
My second question... how many use In Design? Will this crap start to become common place on the iPad?
Horizontal scrolling is through the whole magazine, vertical scrolling is within articles… pretty intuitive if you ask me.
The problem is you don't get a sense of where you are within the magazine.
While it may be easy to understand once one has figured it out, perhaps even easily discoverable, I don't think "intuitive" is the correct adjective.
At 500MB, I think they have gone the wrong direction with wired. There needs to be a newspaper/magazine framework built in for the iPad, not all these silly apps. Waste of development effort, bloated offerings, and illogical from a user/interaction perspective.
I think publishers should tread carefully in drawing conclusions from the #1 Wired issue.
I bought it out of curiosity, but frankly am unlikely to buy another, at least on a regular basis.
Its very beautiful, but the advertising is overwhelming and I don't want another app for each magazine issue. I don't want a digital version of my grandparents basement (with 5000 copies of National Geographic that accumulated.)
I think there's some evolution that has to happen here.
At 500MB, I think they have gone the wrong direction with wired.
Agreed, that's too large for most folks. But how much of that is code and how much is content? How does it compare with other apps with content of similar scope?
EDIT: After reading one of the other links posted here it's clear why the app is 500MB. Way too big, much more than needed.
https://www.zinio.com/account/download-reader-page.jsp
Its even worse than that! It consists of 2 images (1 portrait, 1 landscape) for each page.
[1] Most of these pages may look good in print, but the text presentation is FUgly on the iPad and, mostly, unreadable.
[2] It has a confusing, non-intuitive, non-standard UI for page turning and navigation.
[3] The presenter/player ignores the capabilities of the device-- you can't zoom/pan, copy paste, bookmark, annotate...
[4] I think that Adobe is tricking us with a Flash in Sheep's clothing!
For a complete analysis, see:
[5] http://interfacelab.com/is-this-real...st-use-html-5/.
[1] Totally disagree. Not any different that paper mags or books. Great use of type. They know their typography.
[2] Simply follow the road signs, e.g., the 'blue' path. Basically very article has one. Like driving down a highway, there is always part of it that is under construction.
[3] Thank god.
[4] As if they could get it past Apple. Not everyone is that stupid.
[5] Thank heavens they didn't produce WIRED. Talk about navigation.
i think publishers should tread carefully in drawing conclusions from the #1 wired issue.
I bought it out of curiosity, but frankly am unlikely to buy another, at least on a regular basis.
Its very beautiful, but the advertising is overwhelming and i don't want another app for each magazine issue. I don't want a digital version of my grandparents basement (with 5000 copies of national geographic that accumulated.)
i think there's some evolution that has to happen here.
+++qft
.
There, Adobe, now that wasn't so bad was it. Get on board the gravy train.
Perhaps they have been on board for quite some time. Perhaps Adobe has found a way to keep their creative development hidden from prying eyes. Even Gizmodo never trumped this.
Could it be that Adobe realized some time ago that Flash was and would be a major problem on Mac OSs? Certainly, nobody was expecting a completely new paradigm that satisfies both Apple and the publishing industry.
As for those that think that the WIRED app is bloated, perhaps it is content related. Certainly the results would suggest that the visual effects are right on. And if possible, they will get the size down.
BTW, I look at the first WIRED App more like an Issue. And for now, I will pick up an Issue every once in a while, just like I do for most of my reading materials; with exception of National Geographic which got a kick start with Cover Flow and Playboy, which I can't wait for it to hit the iPad.
You get a magazine that takes a long time to download onto you iPad, you also get a magazine which looks exactly like the slab of paper you pick up at the news stand which is filled with ads from car companies and others.
and yet, how many folks have paid for it. Which means that they might pay for other titles etc. So Adobe isn't going to let that potential money for their tool go by.
Excellent news. I really hope Apple will also produce the same using using the iLife / iWorks style interface.
agreed. in fact I'm rather hoping that next week we'll find out that the reason why two packages weren't updating earlier in the year was that they were waiting for the ipad for just such things. Perhaps in the pro apps they will convert DVD studio to a media studio and have the LP, Extras etc. as well.
There is some irony in this.
Jobs bans 3rd party tools because they cause inferior apps. So instead of a nice, compact interactive magazine viewer Adobe release a bloated piece of rushed-to-market crap ... but hey it's written in Objective-C so it's all OK!
My first question would have to be... how tightly are these magazines locked into In Design? If Adobe decide not to fix this crap iPad application to ensure the Flash experience is better than the iPad one... will the magazines be willing and able to switch away from InDesign?
My second question... how many use In Design? Will this crap start to become common place on the iPad?
My question has always been why have a digital magazine on a portable networked device at all when you can just go to a website?
Can anyone answer that question?
My question has always been why have a digital magazine on a portable networked device at all when you can just go to a website.
Can anyone answer that question?
It can be local (though that is now possible with HTML5, too).
It offer more features, be more interactive and be more responsive.
It can better protect the owner's content.
You get a magazine that takes a long time to download onto you iPad, you also get a magazine which looks exactly like the slab of paper you pick up at the news stand which is filled with ads from car companies and others.
I wonder if some enterprising magazine will ever try selling their content by the ARTICLE rather than the whole magazine?
There is no way I'm going to pay $4.99 for this, not even to try it once, but if there was some way to access their overall content and download an article here or there that I find interesting for $0.50 or $0.75...I'd probably give it a shot. There is a clear digital equivalent with the way albums and songs are sold.
It'd also be a good way to obviate the 500MB download without sacrificing interactivity. There are probably very few people who will read the entire digital magazine cover to cover, but they're still stuck with the huge hit to their limited storage space.
For a complete analysis, see:
http://interfacelab.com/is-this-real...st-use-html-5/
.
Very good read.
Reminds me of the good old days of shockwave games.
(Spaceship Warlock anyone?)
There is some irony in this.
Jobs bans 3rd party tools because they cause inferior apps. So instead of a nice, compact interactive magazine viewer Adobe release a bloated piece of rushed-to-market crap ... but hey it's written in Objective-C so it's all OK!
My first question would have to be... how tightly are these magazines locked into In Design? If Adobe decide not to fix this crap iPad application to ensure the Flash experience is better than the iPad one... will the magazines be willing and able to switch away from InDesign?
My second question... how many use In Design? Will this crap start to become common place on the iPad?
Hundreds of thousands of publishers use InDesign, and I think you are going a bit over the top with these comments.
While I think it likely (since Adobe created it), that this converter is indeed a POS, let's be realistic. Any magazine that's based on large glossy full-page spreads (and most are nowadays), and has every second page as a full page advertisement (and most do nowadays), is going to end up being a huge file simply due to all the pictures.
If each page is a 10 meg picture file and it has 30 pages, that's 300 MB right there.
Sure this is probably a crappy app, sure Apple or almost anyone could do better than the hacks at Adobe, but digital magazines are always going to be huge files.
My question has always been why have a digital magazine on a portable networked device at all when you can just go to a website?
Can anyone answer that question?
Two answers:
1) You may not be at a place where you can practically connect to the internet (location, speed, cost).
2) A custom self-contained magazine could provide a better UX... Unfortunately, with Wired Magazine, the web (and browser) provides a better UX.
E.g., I have 70-year-old eyes and have difficulty reading Wired on the iPad. On the web I, can magnify the text as suits me!
.