You can't flick through them easily. And you can't have a pile on your coffee table for people to leaf through without worrying they will break your iPad. Digital Magazine will come when digital paper is as thin as the current stuff and about as valuable.
Simple answer, You read a magazine - you throw it out. You don't give up valuable hard drive space for a 2009 issue of Wired. Bad idea to begin with.
Every issue of Popular Science in my Zinio collection is smaller than 20MB. That's more than 50 issues to a gigabyte. With over 8TB of storage on my Hackintosh, I can spare a few gigabytes to keep issues for years. Your mileage may vary if all you have is a Macbook with 200GB. Even my 32GB iPad has plenty of space for a good selection of recent issues.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ascii
You can't flick through them easily.
I can flick (or did you really mean "flip") through Zinio issues easily. There's a hideable thumbnail gallery across the bottom of the screen on the iPad that lets me jump to any page in seconds.
You young whippersnappers may not remember, but in the bad old days before the 'Web, there were such magazines available in every major city. They were called 'zines. They were home made, with local or literary content. They used an old-fashioned process called "Xerography" to print, and an old fashioned device called a stapler to publish.
There is a Museum of these publications at Harvard University.
The 'Web killed 'zines. It also killed Magazines, but few yet realize that is the case.
Here's a little tip. If you want to be condescending, make sure you know who you're talking to. Some of us "young whippersnappers" knew about such publications long before the "zines" movement in the 1980s. They were called fanzines decades before that and were usually printed with another "old fashioned device" you may not have heard of called a mimeograph. And I absolutely refused to pay for them because of their amateurishness. Early senility, "grampa"?
New and innovative publications to match a new and innovative digital device would.
I beg to differ, the only reason I didn't subscribe to every magazine I read was based on the prices. Cost is lower - Price should be lower. Subscription is same price as buying every individual issue, so I would never bother subscribing.
It's easy for them to keep their current format when they can say the new one doesn't sell. Which is just plain stupid since it's a new market that might tap into more customers that they've just never had before. This is the exact case for me... Bought occasional issues but would never subscribe, then this came along and I would have been a subscriber if the price made any sense.
A swipe is a big motion. A press is a small motion. I hate the ereaders that require a swipe. A simple tap anywhere near the right side of the page is vastly superior.
That is the biggest problem using the iPad for content creation: it has no trackpad, and requires large arm motions instead of a tiny finger motion.
A tap would have a different purpose in an interactive publication. A large arm motion? Really?...
The whole concept of an electronic but non-web-based version of a magazine seems absurd.
Isn't this exactly what www technology is designed to do? It seems unlikely that dedicated/proprietary apps stand a chance against the development prowess of an entire planet of web tech developers.
I've heard all the reasons why magazines could theoretically benefit from technologies not available on the web. However, if those reasons were truly compelling, wouldn't they be incorporated into web browsers? After all, this is exactly what the web was, is, and will be designed for. So far, i've yet to see a dedicated app that I would prefer over clean/well-authored xslt/css.
Oh... and the prices are ludicrous. $5 per electronic issue? These publishing executives are clueless! They're running their own business into the ground!
So you're just into the paper? If I enjoy a magazine, I don't want to just read it once then give it away. I want to have it for a while and be able to pull it out whenever I want to re-read it. That's where digital mags shine. I have a big load of Zinio magazines (some paid, some free samples) saved on my hard drive. They're always organized and they don't pile up on shelves. Each of them remembers what page I was reading last, without needing easy to lose bookmarks. Plus on my huge desktop LCD, they display at far larger than paper size for an even more immersive experience. You wouldn't believe how gorgeous a two-page photo spread in National Geographic can be until you see it at 3x magazine size and without curved pages and a fold in the middle. A "small" subset, about 30 issues, is on my iPad so I can read them wherever I am. I'd really rather not carry 30 paper magazines with me everywhere.
Printed publications are just different. You like your digital versions and I like my printed ones. For example I get a lot of art and architecture publications that are simply not available in digital form anyway. They make lovely presentations for our office waiting/lounge area. Picking up a magazine is a more casual and relaxing activity than purposefully turning on a device and navigating to an app or url and launching it. Plus reading a printed page is easier on the eyes and can be done more easily from an arm chair, rather than sitting at a computer monitor/keyboard.
Picking up a magazine is a more casual and relaxing activity than purposefully turning on a device and navigating to an app or url and launching it.
That's exactly it IMHO, the iPad just isn't casual enough. What it may be good for though is searching through a back catalog of magazines for a particular article, but then you're being purposeful (i.e. not casual) from the start.
A tap would have a different purpose in an interactive publication. A large arm motion? Really?...
In his zeal to troll, Solipcyst really doesn't seem to have noticed the irony of his complaint. When I'm reading with Zinio on the iPad, I turn pages with a small flick of my right thumb, in a motion that takes perhaps an inch. But he wants to complain about "large arm motions"? How about the motion it takes to flip a page in a physical book or magazine? If that isn't a large arm motion, I don't know what is.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mstone
Printed publications are just different. You like your digital versions and I like my printed ones. For example I get a lot of art and architecture publications that are simply not available in digital form anyway. They make lovely presentations for our office waiting/lounge area. Picking up a magazine is a more casual and relaxing activity than purposefully turning on a device and navigating to an app or url and launching it. Plus reading a printed page is easier on the eyes and can be done more easily from an arm chair, rather than sitting at a computer monitor/keyboard.
You seem to swing back and forth, choosing your points haphazardly. You love paper. You love the way it looks and feels. But it's disposable to you. You just like it for a short time before giving it away. You complain that many of your magazines aren't available in digital form. That is not an insurmountable fault of the format, just the whims of the publishers. Navigating to an app is hardly difficult on an iPad. I can have any issue at my fingers 30 seconds after picking up an iPad. Sorting through a stack of magazines for the issue I want to read is hardly relaxing to me. And then there's the old trope of paper supposedly being easier on the eyes. Not to mention for some odd reason, you decide to suddenly pick on how hard it is to sit at a monitor rather than on a couch, ignoring that this has no bearing on your almost Luddite complaints about the iPad.
Personally, I'm happy that I'm saving trees rather than lusting after some dubious advantages of paper. Especially when one considers the massive waste that comes from print overruns, spoiled issues that have printing problems, unsold issues returned from retailers, etc., not to mention the costs of shipping those issues back and forth.
Comments
Simple answer, You read a magazine - you throw it out. You don't give up valuable hard drive space for a 2009 issue of Wired. Bad idea to begin with.
Every issue of Popular Science in my Zinio collection is smaller than 20MB. That's more than 50 issues to a gigabyte. With over 8TB of storage on my Hackintosh, I can spare a few gigabytes to keep issues for years. Your mileage may vary if all you have is a Macbook with 200GB. Even my 32GB iPad has plenty of space for a good selection of recent issues.
You can't flick through them easily.
I can flick (or did you really mean "flip") through Zinio issues easily. There's a hideable thumbnail gallery across the bottom of the screen on the iPad that lets me jump to any page in seconds.
You young whippersnappers may not remember, but in the bad old days before the 'Web, there were such magazines available in every major city. They were called 'zines. They were home made, with local or literary content. They used an old-fashioned process called "Xerography" to print, and an old fashioned device called a stapler to publish.
There is a Museum of these publications at Harvard University.
The 'Web killed 'zines. It also killed Magazines, but few yet realize that is the case.
Here's a little tip. If you want to be condescending, make sure you know who you're talking to. Some of us "young whippersnappers" knew about such publications long before the "zines" movement in the 1980s. They were called fanzines decades before that and were usually printed with another "old fashioned device" you may not have heard of called a mimeograph. And I absolutely refused to pay for them because of their amateurishness. Early senility, "grampa"?
Price won't make a difference.
New and innovative publications to match a new and innovative digital device would.
I beg to differ, the only reason I didn't subscribe to every magazine I read was based on the prices. Cost is lower - Price should be lower. Subscription is same price as buying every individual issue, so I would never bother subscribing.
It's easy for them to keep their current format when they can say the new one doesn't sell. Which is just plain stupid since it's a new market that might tap into more customers that they've just never had before. This is the exact case for me... Bought occasional issues but would never subscribe, then this came along and I would have been a subscriber if the price made any sense.
A swipe is a big motion. A press is a small motion. I hate the ereaders that require a swipe. A simple tap anywhere near the right side of the page is vastly superior.
That is the biggest problem using the iPad for content creation: it has no trackpad, and requires large arm motions instead of a tiny finger motion.
A tap would have a different purpose in an interactive publication. A large arm motion? Really?...
Isn't this exactly what www technology is designed to do? It seems unlikely that dedicated/proprietary apps stand a chance against the development prowess of an entire planet of web tech developers.
I've heard all the reasons why magazines could theoretically benefit from technologies not available on the web. However, if those reasons were truly compelling, wouldn't they be incorporated into web browsers? After all, this is exactly what the web was, is, and will be designed for. So far, i've yet to see a dedicated app that I would prefer over clean/well-authored xslt/css.
Oh... and the prices are ludicrous. $5 per electronic issue? These publishing executives are clueless! They're running their own business into the ground!
So you're just into the paper? If I enjoy a magazine, I don't want to just read it once then give it away. I want to have it for a while and be able to pull it out whenever I want to re-read it. That's where digital mags shine. I have a big load of Zinio magazines (some paid, some free samples) saved on my hard drive. They're always organized and they don't pile up on shelves. Each of them remembers what page I was reading last, without needing easy to lose bookmarks. Plus on my huge desktop LCD, they display at far larger than paper size for an even more immersive experience. You wouldn't believe how gorgeous a two-page photo spread in National Geographic can be until you see it at 3x magazine size and without curved pages and a fold in the middle. A "small" subset, about 30 issues, is on my iPad so I can read them wherever I am. I'd really rather not carry 30 paper magazines with me everywhere.
Printed publications are just different. You like your digital versions and I like my printed ones. For example I get a lot of art and architecture publications that are simply not available in digital form anyway. They make lovely presentations for our office waiting/lounge area. Picking up a magazine is a more casual and relaxing activity than purposefully turning on a device and navigating to an app or url and launching it. Plus reading a printed page is easier on the eyes and can be done more easily from an arm chair, rather than sitting at a computer monitor/keyboard.
Picking up a magazine is a more casual and relaxing activity than purposefully turning on a device and navigating to an app or url and launching it.
That's exactly it IMHO, the iPad just isn't casual enough. What it may be good for though is searching through a back catalog of magazines for a particular article, but then you're being purposeful (i.e. not casual) from the start.
A tap would have a different purpose in an interactive publication. A large arm motion? Really?...
In his zeal to troll, Solipcyst really doesn't seem to have noticed the irony of his complaint. When I'm reading with Zinio on the iPad, I turn pages with a small flick of my right thumb, in a motion that takes perhaps an inch. But he wants to complain about "large arm motions"? How about the motion it takes to flip a page in a physical book or magazine? If that isn't a large arm motion, I don't know what is.
Printed publications are just different. You like your digital versions and I like my printed ones. For example I get a lot of art and architecture publications that are simply not available in digital form anyway. They make lovely presentations for our office waiting/lounge area. Picking up a magazine is a more casual and relaxing activity than purposefully turning on a device and navigating to an app or url and launching it. Plus reading a printed page is easier on the eyes and can be done more easily from an arm chair, rather than sitting at a computer monitor/keyboard.
You seem to swing back and forth, choosing your points haphazardly. You love paper. You love the way it looks and feels. But it's disposable to you. You just like it for a short time before giving it away. You complain that many of your magazines aren't available in digital form. That is not an insurmountable fault of the format, just the whims of the publishers. Navigating to an app is hardly difficult on an iPad. I can have any issue at my fingers 30 seconds after picking up an iPad. Sorting through a stack of magazines for the issue I want to read is hardly relaxing to me. And then there's the old trope of paper supposedly being easier on the eyes. Not to mention for some odd reason, you decide to suddenly pick on how hard it is to sit at a monitor rather than on a couch, ignoring that this has no bearing on your almost Luddite complaints about the iPad.
Personally, I'm happy that I'm saving trees rather than lusting after some dubious advantages of paper. Especially when one considers the massive waste that comes from print overruns, spoiled issues that have printing problems, unsold issues returned from retailers, etc., not to mention the costs of shipping those issues back and forth.