I've been looking at a small selection of these over the past month and what follows is a showcase of the best and most popular editions on the App Store.
#1 Condé Nast
Probably the most renowned of all the big magazine players, Condé Nast deserves a category all of its own simply because it offers so many titles already. Until recently, this hasn't equated to a universal reading experience - in fact, the New York publishing house had created two classes of digital editions. One debuted with Wired and was destined to eventually take over the entire library of titles. Now that it has, how does the new format stack up for the rest of Condé's catalogue?
- GQ, Vanity Fair
Let's start with Condé's two heavy hitters, GQ and Vanity Fair. Both fell under the old template until this month when their May editions were released with a whole new app, frustratingly leaving users of the old app with no way to 'upgrade' their old issues to the new application which currently lists just one paid issue (and a free preview). Inside, however, lies a beautifully new experience with huge interactivity improvements and much smoother browsing. GQ and Vanity Fair are both very slick productions, and just like Wired before it, the two titles are a match made in heaven for Adobe's digital template (which Condé first used last year).
That template means full screen images are the base layer for every single page of each issue, with footnotes, videos and other active elements implemented (and adding extra weight) above it. None of this carries much significance once you're reading – text is crisp, images are beautifully presented and videos download as they are viewed – but it sure does make a difference when an issue is first downloaded. One edition of the “new” GQ clocks in at just under 500MB. For some, that's an entire month's worth of mobile data gone in just one download, so some work should be put in by the developers to reduce its size. Obviously, this will become less and less of an issue as time goes by and carriers add more gigabytes to internet plans, but in the meantime, this is a noticeable problem.
- The New Yorker
Another flagship Condé title, The New Yorker made waves on the Apple news circuit this fortnight when they implemented in-app subscriptions ahead of the Apple-imposed deadline. With a new edition every week, a month's worth of The New Yorker when individually purchased would cost $23.96. Under the subscription model, that's been reduced to just $7.99, with a yearly option also available for $75. Better yet, all subscriptions include full access to the online archive of New Yorker content, which dates back to 1925. That's a whole lot of long form reading.
Having purchased a few issues in the past, I'm impressed with the way The New Yorker is presented on the iPad. While it does use the same Adobe technology noted above, an emphasis is still placed on text inside the app which (once past the landing screen) represents the look and feel of a physical edition with the same fonts, colours and layout. On that note, one particularly stunning feature of the entire Condé selection is that content displays naturally in both portrait and landscape.
- Wired
I first reviewed Wired last year, when the magazine launched for the iPad. Admittedly, little has changed since that first review though it is worth writing about here, since it constitutes the first long term feasibility study of a digital magazine using Adobe's technology. Download sizes, as mentioned above, are very much a significant problem as time goes on, but not just when downloading the content itself. Especially with a lower storage iPad, it is impossible to keep more than a few issues on the device so the largest advantage of “going digital” is already lost in that not every edition can be referenced instantly. Old issues can be re-downloaded for free, but then we face the same large download problem that led us here in the first place.
On the flip side, it's fantastic to have a more complete library on display (fourteen full editions are available to download at any time for $5). It really starts to feel like having a virtual newsstand on your iPad. The latest edition in that library is a free download in preparation for the move to in-app subscriptions, which its editors say will occur in June and will follow a similar pricing structure to The New Yorker. It will be interesting to see how many users will pick up a subscription and whether any extra incentives will be thrown in.
These are app reviews, not magazine reviews, so time spent talking about the content itself will be limited, but I'd like to note the generally excellent quality of journalism that accompanies all four of the magazines reviewed above. Condé Nast clearly has high expectations of their writers and it shows in the always exclusive New Yorker, but also in Wired's op-eds, GQ's interviews and Vanity Fair's feature articles. While almost all of these pieces are freely available to read online, that experience still leaves a lot to be desired when compared to a beautifully produced and carefully curated magazine.
#2 The Hollywood Reporter
Originally a daily trade magazine reporting on all the gossip and goings-on of Los Angeles, The Hollywood Reporter relaunched late last year as a weekly focused on the entertainment industry in general, and brought an entirely new look and feel along with it. What's interesting abut the redesign is that it occurred right in the middle of the original iPad's peak, so an iPad app was created alongside the physical magazine itself. The result is a very intuitive if sometimes buggy application.
The Hollywood Reporter is very smartly split into two sections. While in portrait, the full magazine displays as nature intended. Flip to landscape, and the app turns into a breaking news ticker of sorts, where shorter and newer items are shown and usually converted into an iPad suitable format (if the article is especially new, an in-app browser pops up to display content). This makes enormous sense for an organisation like THR. Magazines are traditionally viewed in portrait, and breaking news is important for an entertainment site. Perfect.
There's some extra controls in magazine mode which extend the app's functionality. Users can change font size or brightness within the app, though the latter doesn't co-operate with brightness of the actual device which can be confusing. Certain parts of the magazine have been redesigned entirely for a digital experience. The contents page has been removed and appears as a pop-over instead. Nor is there a dedicated catalogue screen. It too is given a divided section of the screen when selected.
Crashes are still a reality of the Hollywood Reporter app, as are fairly large download sizes. Text can't be copied anywhere else, and sharing an article sends nothing more than an advertisement for the app to a chosen friend. No preview, no online link, no text whatsoever. This is in contrast to News Corp's The Daily, which has a full copy of the newspaper's articles (as text or an image depending on the type of content) readily available to link.
Nonetheless, it's a more than solid start for the reborn publication and serves as a worthy companion to any pop culture junkie with an iPad in hand.
#3 Esquire
Over at Hearst Publishing, you'll find the Esquire iPad app. Esquire has been compared to the somewhat more established GQ magazine in terms of content, and this comparison is reinforced when looking at the two apps side-by-side.
Just like the Condé Nast/Adobe digital editions template, Esquire brings a scroll-heavy experience to the iPad, with articles reading downwards and multimedia elements spread throughout. The use of video and animation inside digital magazines can sometimes be gimmicky (and it all contributes to the weight of the application itself, which is the largest long term issue all developers need to solve) but Hearst has done a decent job of integrating that extra functionality only when it adds something to the article itself.
Esquire launched on the iPad in October 2010 and their first issue demonstrates just how fantastic a little iPad magic can be: first, readers are greeted with a video introduction by that month's cover model, Javier Bardem (this isn't a one-off trick to attract readers either: Jeff Bridges does the same in the May 2011 issue, with two bonus alternative takes). Further into the magazine, an article about the redevelopment of Ground Zero includes an annotated timeline of the new buildings and their completion dates.
The same in-app purchasing model applies to Esquire as with almost everything else here (will Hearst be paying royalties to Lodsys for the privilege?!) with new editions at the standard $6 price. There's no word on subscriptions yet, but it's only a matter of time before the publisher concedes defeat to Apple.
Aside from some extra animation trickery and larger thumbnail-based menu bar navigation, you won't find too many differences between Esquire and the aforementioned GQ app, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. They're both great apps, so it doesn't really matter if they share a few features. I'd rather have two good apps than one!
#4 Nylon
While publications like The New Yorker and Esquire probably carry more weight than the following app, one should never ignore the impact of a good glossy fashion magazine. They were largely responsible for establishing the magazine as a mainstream media format, and still account for a large section of the market. Nylon is a relatively recent US/Britain-based (Ny = New York, Lon = London) addition to the genre and has already found a strong niche. They've also been at the forefront of digital publishing. Their first issue in 1999 was made available freely online, with an iPhone app launching ten years later, ahead of many other competing magazines. In 2010 came the iPad app, coming to my attention once again when it was promoted this month on iTunes for adopting subscriptions and including twenty free music downloads to draw new readers in (Nylon has something on a focus on all things pop).
As for the app itself, Nylon isn't particularly exciting, but it does have some nice features. In addition to the standard navigation bar and virtual library, you'll find a special section devoted to the new subscriptions model which also makes it easy to transfer downloaded issues (during the subscription period) from one iPad to another.
Nylon's latest issue is free and for those interested, features Florence Welch on the cover. Keep in mind, Nylon is almost exclusively a girl's magazine (there's a Nylon Guys magazine to make the distinction even clearer) and thus won't appeal to many of the readers of MacTalk. But for that essential market, the magazine does a great job reigniting teen interest in the humble fashion magazine. At just $10 for a whole year's worth of issues, Nylon is a big step in the right direction for making magazines more accessible and relevant in today's market. For iPad owners, that is.
#5 Interview
Interview is very underrated, especially for a magazine that launched in 1969 (AKA the year of all things important). Founded by Andy Warhol and appropriately under the nickname “The Crystal Ball of Pop”, Interview is celebrities interviewing other celebrities: Steve Carell talks to Ryan Gosling, Ben Affleck interviews Blake Lively, Zach Galifianakis writes about Megan Fox. And that's just the latest issue.
Almost everyone knows a copy of your favourite magazine in iPad form is much cheaper than its paper counterpart, but the difference in price is most striking with Interview. The few Borders stores that remain open in Australia sell one copy for upwards of fifteen dollars. The iPad edition? Zero dollars. It's completely free, with no extra ads or clutter to ruin the experience.
I've chosen to finish this round-up with Interview because it seems to be skating towards where the puck is heading more than any other digital magazine competing on the App Store. Yes, there are caveats (the app quits out frequently, requires internet access even though images are stored on the device and every issue is released as a separate app rather than one central library) but their business model is leaps and bounds of anyone else and true to the spirit of Interview itself. After all, founder and editor Andy Warhol was occasionally spotted on the streets of America, distributing free copies to passers-by. To retain and translate that to the digital world today is truly impressive.
What the future holds
In all of this, I found it particularly interesting that the big Mac magazines (iCreate, MacLife, Macworld and others) seem to have fallen behind. Arguably the best known brand of all, Macworld is still only available in full through a subscription in the Zinio app, which has one of the worst digital reader experiences on a tablet platform. For something that is trying to be a 'one stop shop' for all magazines, it baffles me as to why they feel circumventing the iTunes payment method entirely and using an online store makes for a more seamless process.
Macworld has another app called Daily Reader which is much more in-tune with what a magazine of this nature should bring to the table. Instead of creating an interactive version of the print publication, this app is simply a native interface for the many articles available at Macworld.com, and the difference between the two is unbelievable. It seems that for some publishers, this is a more viable solution.
As more and more publishers go down that path, apps which simplify the magazine's website to iPad form may end up becoming the dominant way of consuming news and other content on the iPad. Users certainly prefer a free application to something with a price tag, no matter how low it is –*and with projects such as Flipboard and Yahoo's Livestand already winning over the millions of readers who find their content via RSS, Twitter, Facebook and the likes, it might not be long before the print magazine is dead entirely.
It's not all death and despair though – what I hope to have outlined above is a few good reasons to keep reading magazines, even if they do cost a few dollars each and resemble their print editions with varying success. There's something really nice about launching an app and staying there to read a selection of good quality articles, rather than jumping around the internet in the eternal hope of finding something good to read.
Apps Reviewed: GQ, Vanity Fair, Wired, The New Yorker, The Hollywood Reporter, Esquire, Nylon, Interview
Versions Reviewed: 3.0, 3.0, 3.0, 3.0, 1.1, 1.0.0, 1.3 ,1.1
Prices: Various, check iTunes for single/subscription pricing
