Digital magazines are now awesome

When the iPad first came out one of the things i looked forward to was how the industry would use it for publications. 

Newsstand on iOS5,
making consuming publications simple

A Poor Start
From the outset Apple had set up a store for books, and very nice it was too. Though i rarely buy books, i don't read BOOKS (yes i know Pippin Shhh!).

But for magazines, papers and comics publishers were pretty much left on their own to fight it out over best practices for creating magazine apps. This lead to a really confusing scenario not only for magazine publishers but consumers of such publications.

Digital publishers sprung up such as Zineo who created web apps where you could buy scanned copies of printed magazines. You had to buy them outside of the app which lead to a lot of fussing about with signing up to external services and typing in card details. To top it off the scans were not that great and you have the trouble of the printed publications being a different size format to the digital screen of the iPad.

Then you had Adobe waltzing onto the scene with their digital publishing suite, and while their approach was to take advantage of the new realms of digital media publishing and offer its readers the magic of the digital publishing revolution, the gimmick wore off quick after waiting for the 500+mb download to complete on my 2mb connection.

Virgin's PROJECT digital mag
contains animated spreadsheets of
wonder, but takes ages to download.

Order out of iOS5 
With the arrival of iOS5 we got 'Newsstand' an app that collects all your Magazine apps into one specific place. But not only do we have a much easier way to browse and buy digital Magazine apps, the publishers have pretty much all agreed on a standard for publishing magazines.

Each publication has their own App, almost like a digital binder within which you can browse old copies and download the latest.

Publishers such as Future, Imagine and Zineo still present scans of their printed magazines, but it is all done within the app and is quick and easy buy, this greatly effects the appeal of buying a digital Publication.

The quality of scans varies with some publications now changing their print version to be iPad ratio instead of the other way around. These publications now design spreads with the tablet in mind.


Those who went the chunky route of Adobe DPS appear in the new stand with apps that also follow the same standard as the scanned publications. But i find myself reluctant to buy them because they still simply take TOO long to download when all i want is something to read.

The difference ease of use makes
Simply making the way we pay easier and organising them in the newsstand has made digital scanned magazines a much more desirable product. A 30mb download is something i can read within 10 minutes of purchase instead of the one to two hours i have to wait for an Adobe DPS publication such as Wired or Total Film.

Don't get me wrong, i LOVE the extra media gimmicks that come with the Adobe DPS, but i think you will find the general public will go for the simplicity and speed of scanned digital publications.

Ad to that an easy to start in app subscription  option which allows new issues to be downloaded as soon as they are available.

The Fortean Times one of the oldest magazines i've been buying for over 15 years makes it onto 
iOS5 Newsstand. Simply a scanned version of the printed version.
A great publication, but highlights the issues from simply scanning.
Page spreads do not fill up the screen and fonts can be difficult to read.


Other Publications such as Edge magazine have addressed the issues by printing a format designed for digital publication.


I can imagine some of my friends having opinions about how it can't replace the feel of paper in their fingers with questions such as what do you do when battery runs out, or your iPad gets broke, or stories about your eyes getting iPad cancer.

As with most things, ease of use and convenience make a big difference and thats what we see now in digital publications and thats why i now read the fortean times on my iPad.