There’s no doubt that the iPad is a superb delivery device for magazines, books, and browsing the net. Magazines in particular work really well in this new format. The large uncluttered screen allows for well designed magazine layouts, without limitation in typography or illustration, and introduces a whole new dimension of interactivity.
However, there is a downside to this. As yet, there is no common, more efficient delivery method. Unlike books, which can be purchased and downloaded through either Apples’ iBooks app or Amazons’ Kindle, each magazine packages their own downloader — and those downloads can be huge. There are only so many 500Mb issues of Wired that you can fit even on the largest iPad.
We’re almost there, and this is definitely the device to take us there!
- Cost of the device – iPads are clearly prohibitively expensive for the majority of folks, limiting the market
- Only a handful of truly interactive Magazines, such as Wired
- Delivery format: current crop of interactive magazines are very large in size, filling up a lot of space on the iPad