Is This Really The Future of Magazines or Why Didn’t They Just Use HTML 5?

May 27, 2010

Is This Really The Future of Magazines or Why Didn’t They Just Use HTML 5?

I just downloaded the Wired iPad application, and like most iPad applications (and most magazines for that matter), I found myself bored with it within the first 20 minutes. I’m sure the content is engaging, I’m sure the articles are worth reading – but I am stumped as to why I would chose this over the physical magazine itself, or their website for that matter. In fact, for reasons I’ll get into below, I’m starting to believe that the physical magazine’s “interface” is vastly superior to it’s iPad cousin.

However, what strikes me most about the Wired app is how amazingly similar it is to a multimedia CD-ROM from the 1990′s. This is not a compliment and actually turns out to be a fairly large problem…

1990′s Here We Come … Again

The only real differentiation between the Wired application and a multimedia CD-ROM is the delivery mechanism: you download it via the App Store versus buying a CD-ROM at the now defunct Egg Head store at your local strip mall. And I really mean that comparison. For all of the interactivity that was touted in the Flash prototype, what we’ve really ended up with is a glorified slide show. Instead of the “Next” and “Previous” buttons you might have been used to on those old CD-ROMs of yore, you instead swipe left and right to change pages (well *cough* images of pages).

There are certain interactive elements to the articles, but – and I apologize to all of the people who put in a lot of back breaking work into this – they’re pretty lame. Tapping on a button-looking element switches out part of the page with another image. You can drag your finger across certain images to make them sort of animate like a flipbook (and in truth, that’s what it is – a series of PNG or JPEG images). There are videos you can tap on to view fullscreen. There are audio clips that you can play. The interactivity in the Wired application is very 1990′s. I am not trying to be insulting either, it’s simply the truth. The Wired application has pretty much brought back image rollovers.

And that’s about the extent of the interactivity. Which makes me wonder if that should be the extent of it or should we be wanting more? I don’t have an answer to that, though my gut feeling is that there is a massive opportunity to reinvent the concept of a magazine – yet we end up with something akin to what the web was like in the mid to late 90′s. This basically boils down to a print designer’s vision of what the web should be like – but in this case it’s a print magazine person’s vision of what an interactive magazine should be like.

If you can think back that far, and you were doing web development during that time, you will glumly remember the frustration of web development driven by print design, where pages were essentially huge images cut and sliced and then reconstituted back into insane table structures for pixel perfect layouts. That’s what we’ve essentially gotten with the Wired app: a giant step backwards and a complete dismissal of the lessons we learned from that dark period of interaction design and development.

Holy Shit, That’s Big

With the Wired app weighing in at a whopping 500 megabytes – just 100 shy of a full CD-ROM – how do they intend to maintain new editions of the magazine? 500 MB is too large for a 3G download (no help from AT&T’s less than spectacular network performance) and for those with iPad’s with the smaller storage, each issue will take a significant chunk of space on the device. With no apparent means for managing which issues you keep on your device, this will become huge issue for a lot of people. Obviously they will fix this with updates to the application, but I’m still wondering what they were thinking to begin with. I’m hoping there were voices of dissent that pointed out the end product was not worth it’s weight in megabytes. A PDF version would have been a tenth of the size, though without the interactivity. But is the interactivity worth the 500MB price? I personally don’t think so.

Why is the magazine so large? Being the intrepid hacker that I am (*wink*) I mounted my jail broken iPad via AppleTalk and quickly tore into the app itself to see how it was constructed. Similar to the PopSci+ magazine application, each Wired issue is actually a bunch of XML files that lay out a bunch of images. And by “a bunch of images” I mean 4,109 images weighing in at 397MB.

Each full page is a giant image – there are actually two images for each page: one for landscape and one for portrait mode. Yes, I’m laughing on the inside too. There is no text or HTML, just one gigantic image. The “interactive” pieces where you can slide your finger to animate it are just a series of JPG files. When you press play on the audio file and see the progress meter animate? A series of PNG files.

Something is wrong with this picture. Something wrong and something very lazy and/or desperate.

Over Architect Much? (or How Desperation Ruins Good Ideas)

I have no inside knowledge on how the Wired app was produced, so the following is all conjecture on my part. That said, my guess is that Adobe sold Conde Nast on doing the thing in Flash. Or if Adobe didn’t do the selling, some Flash loving technologist at Conde Nast sold them on it. Either way, since Flash CS5 was going to be able to target the iPhone/iPad, they’d be able to publish the thing as it had been shown to the press. But then Steve Jobs came along and threw section 3.1.3 into the iPhone licensing terms and … well … Adobe and Conde Nast were pretty much fucked. So fast forward to this moment in time and the best short term solution they could come up with was some jury rigged XML based layout framework and an epic shit ton of images.

The Wired app isn’t alone in this weird architectural choice either. The PopSci+ magazine is based on a very similar architecture. There are also other magazines that work along the same lines, or simply go the route of PDFs with a customized PDF viewer application.

The problem with these XML + images architectures is that they are essentially reinventing HTML with no added benefit. When I showed the Wired app to a colleague of mine, someone I consider to be one of the top HTML/Javascript developers in NYC, his assessment was the same: Why the heck didn’t they use HTML5? We stepped through each “page” of the Wired application, looked at each interactive piece – but failed to find anything that ruled out the use of HTML and JavaScript.

The argument might be that it needs to be cross platform – the very thing Adobe and Conde Nast were banking on by going with Flash – but guess what? For all of the tablets about to fall on the heads of consumers in the coming years, each one of them uses WebKit. If anything was built for this type of application, it most certainly is WebKit. And even for harder interactivity puzzles – in terms of how do we do X and Y – one can easily hook into WebKit to enable that stuff that might otherwise be more difficult to do in straight HTML + CSS + JavaScript. I have yet to see anything in any magazine application on the iPad that would really require this though.

So why didn’t they choose HTML5 and build a custom viewer application around WebKit? It comes down to either a sense of desperation, a sense of Adobe overselling a bad idea or simply a dumb technology decision. Possibly all three. It certainly isn’t a development challenge and it certainly isn’t because WebKit isn’t capable. I had a thought that perhaps memory management was an issue, but by going with HTML5/WebKit, you wouldn’t be showing pages and pages of huge images – you’d actually be able to build those pages the right way. And doing it this way, in my professional opinion, the magazine itself would be slashed dramatically in size, as well as acting and reacting in ways familiar to people who’ve been browsing the web for the last 15+ years. Furthermore, the cost savings from a production standpoint would be drastically lower as Wired already maintains a staff of web developers. There wouldn’t be an impetus for Adobe to create some “solution” at Conde Nast’s expense and a lot of the great interactivity you saw in the YouTube videos of their prototype could very easily come to life.

But as it stands now, the Wired iPad app is even far behind their own website. That’s embarrassing. Did anyone at Conde Nast look at this and wonder why someone would choose to use this over their very own website? That iPad – unless you are in a subway – is constantly connected to the intertubehighway. That fact alone makes one wonder what the point of the whole thing is. Specifically since they’ve not done any sort of interactivity or visual presentation that I think anyone can say is amazing. Sure, it’s a print designers wet dream – but it really should be a consumer’s wet dream. And it most certainly is not that.

So, from a technical perspective, I think what we are looking at is the result of equal parts desperation and ignorance. Desperation on the part of Adobe to carry forward their relationship with Conde Nast in this new publishing market and ignorance on the part of their development team for ignoring the best solution to their “No Flash Allowed” problem: HTML5.

Is This The Future For Magazine Publishing?

I hope not.

I actually think it’s a huge step backwards and I think the wrong people are working on the problem – just like the wrong people were working on the web problem back in the day. Sure, we corrected course and we’re seeing the web done correctly more and more these days – but can the magazine publishing industry afford to get this wrong for any amount of time? Once could argue that the internet is quickly making their industry irrelevant. By the time an article is published in Time, I’ve read six or seven different takes on the same story on the web well before it hits the newsstands. I don’t think that’s a unique or new insight. But now you want me to download 500MB a month just so some print designer can have pixel perfect layouts with custom fonts?

Unfortunately, as long as Conde Nast allows Adobe to dupe them into believing Adobe has a solution, it’s going to fail. They need to go outside the box to get this right, and all the technology to do it is sitting right there in front of them. And they’ve been using it very well … until now when they’ve chosen not to even use it all.

Update

People have been mentioning that you can’t do application specific fonts with the WebKit browser. Not sure why.

Here is a simple iPad app that loads up a custom open type font, and then displays an html file in a UIWebView with that custom font: http://github.com/jawngee/iPadFontExample

So it can be done. Enjoy.

http://empty-pockets.org jawngee

What?

What part sounds like Adobe AIR?
http://empty-pockets.org jawngee

The problem with fully justified text is that it has been shown to be incredibly difficult for people with cognitive and learning disabilities to read. Dyslexics, in particular, have great difficulty reading justified text.

http://www.dyslexia-parent.com/mag35.html
http://juicystudio.com/article/cognitive-impair…
http://www.rnib.org.uk/professionals/webaccessi…
http://empty-pockets.org jawngee

This shouldn't dissuade you from getting one – there are plenty of good reasons to own one. I've completely cut down on laptop usage at home because of it.
http://empty-pockets.org jawngee

I call bullshit.

They could have used PDF's with cached prerendering.

Popular Mechanics's magazine is 40 megs.
http://empty-pockets.org jawngee

You're telling me Conde Nast couldn't license fonts? Specifically ones designed for WIRED?
http://empty-pockets.org jawngee

Yet Popular Mechanics comes out a month later with a 40 meg magazine with – what looks like – more interactivity, plus updates itself when you're connected to the internet?

One of us is going to have a hard time defending ourselves when that hits the app store. My guess is that person will be you.
http://empty-pockets.org jawngee

Go for it.
http://empty-pockets.org jawngee

My point is, and was and forever will be, print designers shouldn't be designing this stuff to begin with.

Sorry if that offends you, but I was in the thick of it during the first dotcom bubble when print designers had the exact same mentality regarding the web. And it was a nightmare.

That's not to say you aren't one of those special multi-discipline guys that can do it all, but it's pretty rare.
http://empty-pockets.org jawngee

Then yer iPad must be fubar'd. I wrote the post on an ipad. I'm writing these comments on it as well.
JulesLt

Even with custom fonts, web typography still lags some way behind that offered by Pages, let alone InDesign – and I can't see a good way out of that impasse (either browsers need to add in really complicated text layout engines (H&J for all languages), or we need a more PDF-like spec for absolute positioning of individual letters, ligatures, etc).

Or we stick with inferior typography as the price of flexible text (the current web way).
gareth1090

The bit i quoted. I probably should have said: “hmmm sounds like it could/should be Adobe AIR to me.”

AIR is meant to be an easy way to merge online and offline content and allow the flashplayer access to things it doesn't normally get like file system, write files, local storage blah blah blah. Sounds like an ideal solution for magazine apps which might want access to dynamic content off the net mixed with assets inside the app. Plus you can pretty much take an existing website and convert it to a desktop application with very little rejigging.

Shame AIR isn't allowed on iphone or ipad.
appleipads

Thank for your kindness for posting such information.
keep posting!

ipad ap
troygilbert

There's a lot more to the fidelity of the magazine's presentation than
just the availability of the same font. Even if there wasn't,
embedding fonts is not free, they must be specifically licensed for
that purpose and not all fonts are.
http://novastormsoftware.com Jfm429

AIR is Adobe's last hope to try to force a flawed, dying platform (Fla$h) onto our systems. I've used a few AIR applications before, and all I can say is that they're a poor excuse for a “native” app. Problems like standard shortcuts failing to work and one app somehow wanting read/write access to my Applications directory. (It never got it; I'm not that stupid). The sooner AIR dies, along with Fla$h, the better.
http://www.whatisjasongoldstein.com Jason Goldstein

The video, first draft, as requested:
http://vimeo.com/12282674
http://www.facebook.com/people/Wade-Harrell/100000849232605 Wade Harrell

That was a one off done over an extended period of time by a dedicated digital design/production house.

To churn that out every week, or even every month, is a daunting task. Could it be done? Sure. Will it? Not very realistic.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Wade-Harrell/100000849232605 Wade Harrell

If you were a long-time Flash programmer then you would be cursing Macromedia and not Adobe. Of the WYSIWYG HTML editors to ever be on the market the only company to ever have a decent one has been Adobe, and that one was dreadful. Macromedia's is the one you are probably thinking of, and it was even worse.

Adobe was also the company that kept SVG alive for many years, you know, the vector part of HTML5…

If you know Flash, don't assume you know Adobe.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Wade-Harrell/100000849232605 Wade Harrell

you speak of HTML5 like it is magic pixie dust. It is STILL HTML! Seriously, it really is. HyperText Markup Language… content producers are still going to jam as many ads on the page as they can, they are still going to try and drive as many page refreshes as possible to get more impressions, it does not change with a revision number.

Until there is a shift in thinking that digital content is just as deserving of high quality presentation as print then you could just as well be talking about HTML23. Even with CSS3 it is not trivial to get layouts as complex as a print centric tool (i.e. InDesign) will provide. Perhaps instead of scorn for Adobe over Macromedia's legacy we should recognize that they are the one company that stands a chance of making a really great tool for digital layout; they know SVG, they know WYSIWYG HTML4…. they COULD pull it off.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Wade-Harrell/100000849232605 Wade Harrell

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldWideWeb
actually, although misguided, JohnDoey is technically correct about the first Web Browser

Mosaic was perhaps the first cross platform browser, but Tim Berners-Lee worked on a NeXT box when he created the web http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web#His…

shame Jobs did not stay at NeXT, his cult dogma is setting the industry back decades
http://www.facebook.com/people/Wade-Harrell/100000849232605 Wade Harrell

nice work, commercial or just a proof of concept?
http://www.whatisjasongoldstein.com Jason Goldstein

Thank you. It's a concept for the moment. I'm looking to commercialize it; it's just a matter of finding a first adopter.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Wade-Harrell/100000849232605 Wade Harrell

Chances are it would take $120 million in additional development to get the ots-os app to do exactly what is required meet their needs. Sure, it may get to 70% right away, but that last 30% will take longer and cost more to develop than building the whole thing from scratch.

There are some software systems that are poor candidates for off the shelf, when there are many moving parts, an extensive list of support systems, and very specific requirements the generic product is just going to fall flat. When you adopt one of these, at the end of the day you find yourself cutting corners to do your work their (the software developers) way instead of doing it the way you know it should be done. That's pretty dumb imho.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Wade-Harrell/100000849232605 Wade Harrell

Shame that SVG's text support never really evolved beyond graphical layout of individual characters. Wordwrap is a killer for reusable layout. I love SVG, but I can not recommend it to my clients as a total layout solution atm. There are hacky workarounds, but for now it is down to pregenerating huge chunks of text instead of feeding it in dynamically :/
http://www.facebook.com/people/Wade-Harrell/100000849232605 Wade Harrell

oh come on, Apple has specifically changed their terms to block 3rd party app building. You know damned well the intent was to export the air version of Adobe's Wired to a native iProduct app. What you are being critical of is the quick workaround solution to just get something out there.

If Apple was so keen on HTML5 and it is as magic as you want to make it out to be then they would shut down the app store.

These two formerly sweetheart companies started to diverge back when Apple released its own video editing software to undercut Premier/AE. The Flash iProduct story has equal part blame on both sides. Profit from the app store that would have been undercut by Flash is not to be dismissed. The animosity had been simmering for a while and is now at a boil.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Wade-Harrell/100000849232605 Wade Harrell

But isn't the point of almost all of CSS3s innovations to get the web to look more like print? Why would that be the case if not to better emulate the layout freedom offered by print design?
http://www.facebook.com/people/Wade-Harrell/100000849232605 Wade Harrell

high quality, zoomable, images take space too. count the pixels… for video take the size of the frame and multiply by the frame rate time the duration in seconds. now take the size of the images used for the magazine (height by width for each image) and add that all up.

The author of this article wisely points out that you should be able to subtract from that any area that has text or solid colors. Similar to the approach used in PDF (another Adobe product).
http://www.facebook.com/people/Wade-Harrell/100000849232605 Wade Harrell

authoring, yes… design, not so much (dreamweaver?!?). InDesign export to SVG, CSS3, HTML is what needs to happen. I see no reason Adobe could not do it either.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Wade-Harrell/100000849232605 Wade Harrell

read up on SVG, been 'there' for over 10 years… Adobe even thought so themselves before they bought Macromedia and acquired Flash.
http://www.universalindie.com Universal Indie Records

I'm VERYYYY interested in this. I published a high quality hip hop magazine did two really great issues but it was too expensive so I moved to the web. I'd love to the first hip hop music magazine to do something like this.
Daver

Okay, here is another comment from an arrogant geek in the continuing war of raw programming (remember those old grey type pages that excitede some many geeks during the mosaic daze? bo-ring!!) versus the thinking of visual designers. Okay, so maybe Wired is a little unweildy and predictable in this early iteration of e-publishing. BTW: There IS a process in innovation, and it sometimes starts with where we left off (even if it is back in the '90's). I would like to remind the writer that some interactive publication designers, such as myself, have found flash to be a Godscend to visualization of our ideas. We aren't programming geniuses, many of us at least, and I, for one have an issue with these HTML 5 snobs.

So, sorry, guys, just be a little patient…the true excitement in e-publishing is just starting to happen. And it probably will happen in HTML 5 or WebKit (what ever that is–pardon my ignorance) Sit back and enjoy the ride and let's all cooperate. We're all in it together, whether we're programmers or mere designers.
http://www.rosebud.fr Apotter

Hello, sorry yes they do – we are a small French technology company and we are currently updating one of our products – eGate – (originally created for generating XML from Xpress and Indesign articles) so that layout artists can build their tablet versions in Indesign. But we don't generate images – we do HTML 5. With the Wired/Adobe version – where is Search ? where is zooming ? Frankly I agree with the author of this article, going with images was a lame decision. But okay with me, Adobe just shot itself in the foot. :/>
iflyhigh

Yes, to get the type closer to print in terms of control. But that doesn't mean print designers should be doing it because there is also more there for usability/interaction, other functional areas that go beyond making something look pretty.
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http://www.universalindie.com Universal Indie Records

If you're a smaller publisher I'd suggest going the html5/web route because it seems that as of now.. they solutions are only priced for the big players.

I contacted one of WoodWing's partners about the cost of their solution (used for the iPad version of Time Magazine) and here was our interaction:

ME: Hello,
I'm writing to inquire about the cost of WoodWing digital magazine solution. Understand that I'm not a large publisher, simple a graphic designer that would like to also publish his fanzine in digital form so cost is the deciding factor in whether or not this is the solution I will utilize as opposed to going with a strictly web based CSS3/HTML5 approach.

PARTNER: Hi Chris,
I understand that you are needing some pricing for WoodWing's Digital Magazine Solution. Just to give you an idea of the pricing – for entry level it will run you about $14k which includes software, maintenance, and services (installation, training, etc…). Please let me know if you would like to discuss further.

ME: So basically everything is geared toward the Enterprise level…. there's no solution for the little guy, correct?

PARTNER: This is the bundle price for one user. The price was much higher, but WoodWing realized that we needed pricing for one users or smaller companies. The bundle price includes Content Station, Enterprise and Digital Magazine – Content Station and Enterprise are required to run Digital Magazine.
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http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=655187293 Amber Sexton

I work freelance for a different publisher in a non technical function on a different iPad magazine app, and I think one of the things totally missed in this discussion is the ability to create the product without restaffing a magazine office with programmers. The magazine I'm working at is a weekly. Magazine staffs do not include web programmers, they do have websites, but that staff is smaller, and separate as a website is just very different from a mag. And the iPad versions of mags that I've seen, with the exception of VF which is not trying to do anything, they are more like magazines than the web, a lot more, and it's in many ways a more satisfying visual experience. Magazines are about visuals, that's one of the important things about their experience.

Using a purchased add on to inDesign, and managing workflow in inCopy allows a magazine to use software that all the page designers already know how to use to repackage the same content, with bonuses like video and audio, photo galleries, e-commerce without major retraining or large numbers of new hires.

A magazine usually involves passing the same files through multiple depts where each puts in their text, or credits, or design with images, links etc. Most of these people are writers, graphic designers, photo editors, copy editors and imaging specialists. This last group is probably the most like to have programming skills. You have get everyone to create this content and contribute their part every week. If you use something that makes inDesign turn out a product that can be read on a tablet, then you can just make the same people you have do more work that resembles what they are used to doing somewhat, with just a couple more freelancers here and there.

Perhaps they should have chosen a program that would make inDesign files into HTML5, but programming HTML5 from scratch would be an insane level of effort for people who already are turning out a print edition simultaneously. I'm stressing that, a profitable print magazine is being turned out simultaneously, on the same schedule, by the same people. You need to make this process the most like the current process possible to make it viable for a national magazine to make iPad apps. The point is always the content, making it interesting, delivering it on schedule using the people who know how to make this content.

My experience with the mag apps, is they are pleasantly different from the web. The web has a lot of flinging things around the visual field you are looking at. The web can cause you to be distracted from what you are currently reading and go google or follow a link and be at any other website in the world. It's on a computer which usally has icons and other things in your visual field. An iPad app mag takes up the whole visual field, it doesn't have a lot of things in it that take you completely out of the app. You have to turn the ad pages like you would in a mag. It's true the interaction seems a little bit gimmicky for the moment, but there is something about the tactile, and the visuals that are a really nice way to get images and text to your eyes.

No one who wants the content is going to be griping about the language used, although file sizes they may not be happy about.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=655187293 Amber Sexton

I work freelance for a different publisher in a non technical function on a different iPad magazine app, and I think one of the things totally missed in this discussion is the ability to create the product without restaffing a magazine office with programmers. The magazine I'm working at is a weekly. Magazine staffs do not include web programmers, they do have websites, but that staff is smaller, and separate as a website is just very different from a mag. And the iPad versions of mags that I've seen, with the exception of VF which is not trying to do anything, they are more like magazines than the web, a lot more, and it's in many ways a more satisfying visual experience. Magazines are about visuals, that's one of the important things about their experience.

Using a purchased add on to inDesign, and managing workflow in inCopy allows a magazine to use software that all the page designers already know how to use to repackage the same content, with bonuses like video and audio, photo galleries, e-commerce without major retraining or large numbers of new hires.

A magazine usually involves passing the same files through multiple depts where each puts in their text, or credits, or design with images, links etc. Most of these people are writers, graphic designers, photo editors, copy editors and imaging specialists. This last group is probably the most like to have programming skills. You have get everyone to create this content and contribute their part every week. If you use something that makes inDesign turn out a product that can be read on a tablet, then you can just make the same people you have do more work that resembles what they are used to doing somewhat, with just a couple more freelancers here and there.

Perhaps they should have chosen a program that would make inDesign files into HTML5, but programming HTML5 from scratch would be an insane level of effort for people who already are turning out a print edition simultaneously. I'm stressing that, a profitable print magazine is being turned out simultaneously, on the same schedule, by the same people. You need to make this process the most like the current process possible to make it viable for a national magazine to make iPad apps. The point is always the content, making it interesting, delivering it on schedule using the people who know how to make this content.

My experience with the mag apps, is they are pleasantly different from the web. The web has a lot of flinging things around the visual field you are looking at. The web can cause you to be distracted from what you are currently reading and go google or follow a link and be at any other website in the world. It's on a computer which usally has icons and other things in your visual field. An iPad app mag takes up the whole visual field, it doesn't have a lot of things in it that take you completely out of the app. You have to turn the ad pages like you would in a mag. It's true the interaction seems a little bit gimmicky for the moment, but there is something about the tactile, and the visuals that are a really nice way to get images and text to your eyes.

No one who wants the content is going to be griping about the language used, although file sizes they may not be happy about.
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Anonymous

I agree that html5 and JavaScript should be what these interactive magazines are made of. All that being said why doesn’t the iPad enable flash? The Wired app sucks, no doubt but Flyp magazine was great and it failed. I think Flyp was the best interactive magazine out there and it was made with Flash. I just don’t think Adobe should be blamed for the Wired app.
Anonymous

Why is HTML5 becoming so popular?
Dante Vargas

Typography *IS* essential. Lets be honest no one who has an IPAD is driven more by the content it offers. Plan and simple. Yes I understand that content is what matters but you have to look at the big picture. The whole point behind the WIRED APP behind any brand APP is to keep your brand relevant and in front of your target audience.

Most people running over each other to buy the next IPHONE or the next IPAD don’t care about content they care about having the newest flashy-est thing on the market. That being said in this example TYPOGRAPHY is essential. This demographic doesn’t care about the content they care about entertainment.

This is the reason why they choose what looks better rather than what functions better.

500MB for Goddamn fonts might seem stupid? But its those fonts that grab their attention and make the page look nice. It’s a fucking ipad for fuck sake you realize the main people buying these things are rich people with money to blow. They don’t care about content they’ll pay any mount of money to be entertained.

Why in the hell would any normal person want yet another tool to let them do the same thing their phone does or laptop or desktop? Why because they made you think you needed it
http://mo.notono.us Oskar Austegard

Revisiting this with 18 months hindsight: Just for the record – Vogue (as of Dec 2011), Rolling Stone (as of Sep 2011), and Playboy (as of May 2011) are all now published as Html5 – not just the current issue, but EVERY issue ever published, the entire archive. Because of the need to publish older issues, the platform used by these magazines does still use image-based representations of the individual pages, with much the same benefits and tradeoffs mentioned below. But it does not necessitate any lengthy download – with a decent internet connection and wifi, ANY issue can be loaded on an iPad in ~4 seconds. The trick of course is that you are online, and the magazine is effectively being streamed on demand. Downsides are limited interactivity and the need to be online at all times.

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