“Expect to see publishers launch visually stunning versions of their magazines with swooping typography, video insets, CNN iReporter-style news uploads, social media overlays—whatever it takes to make you think you’re seeing a magazine or newspaper like never before, so much so you’ll even want to pay for it”
I guess, based on the reports I have read, that’s what Apple has more or less delivered.
“Based on the demo of the Times, it feels more like a print edition than any previous digital attempt at reproducing a newspaper.” – Old media New tricks
So has Apple revolutionised publishing as we know it and will it be enough to save the newspapers and amagazines?
The key of course is the user experience. The industrial design and the interface. The whole package.
What Apple has done for the publishing industry is to take the old touch screen interactive kiosk from the early 1990’s and repackaged it as a light weight hand held “newspad”.
The industrial design is nothing revolutionary. It’s just a super sized iPod or iPhone. It’s a brand extension rather than a revolution. But it does look and feel like a 21st Century eMagazine and think that’s what makes it so appealing to the publishing industry. It looks and feels like something they are familiar with. Pretty much the same way the Bugatti Veyron is a 21st Century version of the 1930′s Bugatti Type 55.
So what about the user interface?
Well the magazine style GUI is probably more of a reflection of the ability of Apple’s engineers and designers to repackage old technology in new clothes than any revolutionary new GUI breakthrough. After all if there is no multitasking capability in the OS how can you multitask? You don’t. So you have to find other ways to keep the user amused.
Your opinion on how revolutionary this media platform is will largely depend on your appreciation of the industrial design elements of the package. After all the so called eBook experience has been a round for over 20 years (Think: Hypercard, Toolbook, Authorware or Macromind Director).
Pseudo “magazine” GUI’s were tried 20 years ago when diskettes, CD-ROM and laptop presenters were all the rage. FLINK! blew them out of the water when the web came along and I suspect it will do the same again. After all, why would you pay for a subscription to thumb through pseudo magazine pages when you can Ctrl OCXVZS all the content fragments you want for free online using a web browser?
As GigaOm points out in Will the iPad Help Media? Possibly. Save Media? No.
“Has the iPhone changed the traditional print media business? Not at all — unless you think selling an app for your publication (as Conde Nast has for GQ) is a game-changer”.
The reality the newspaper, magazine and book publishing industries desperately want it to work and so I suspect they will try very hard to make the iPad another one of Apple’s success stories. This is probably why we are seeing publishers trying to restrict access to web based content (e.g. Introducing Pay Walls). It is also why Apple has entered into relationships with five major publishers — Hachette, Penguin, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Macmillan (See The New York Times) – and built the iBookstore (see TUAW).
However you suspect that deep down the publishers realise the Apple iPad creates opportunities andnot solutions for the industry (See Poynter). So back to the original question. Will Apple’s iPad save print media?
The easiest way to answer that question is to ask yourself another question. Did iTunes save the Music industry? The answer is of course no. But what it has done is made Apple a market leader in the music publishing and distribution industry.
Similarly the iPhone is more Games platform than mobile phone and it is allowing Apple to rapidly become a market leader in the games publishing and distribution industry.
Clearly Apple has the publishing and distribution industry on its radar and I so suspect we’ll be talking about Apple as a market leader yet another long established medium in a couple of year’s time.
So we now have a mobile music platform, a mobile phone platform, a mobile games platform and a mobile magazine platform… How many other companies can claim to have entered into 4 new industries inside a decade and become a market leader in each one?
So what’s next for Apple?
Whatever it is I suspect that, with the media industry ongoing support, Apple’s New Kingdom for Content could very well become the new Disneyland.
[Update 4-2-2010]
“The irresistible appeal, it seems to me, ‘of cool new toys’ like the Apple iPad is that they can give Murdoch back his newspapers. Forget the pesky internet. The New York Times app on iPad looks like a newspaper. It’s got layout. It’s got sections. It’s even got pages. Of course you can insert video and audio, but it’s a newspaper” – ABC TV How Rupert quit worrying and learned to love the iPad
[Update 8-3-2010]
“No matter how many iPads the Apple sells, the Web will always be the bigger market. “There are 2 billion people on the Web,” he says. “The iPad will be a huge success if it sells 5 million units.” – Marc Andreessen, Advice To Old Media: “Burn The Boats”
[update 18-9-2010]
The iPad is transforming media firms, and frustrating them – The Economist
[update 21-9-2010]
Once they’ve cut a deal, they could wind up in the same place: sitting in a corner counting their digital pennies, while Apple builds the business that they should have built themselves. – GigaOm: Publishers Should Be Careful What They Wish For
[update 10-10-2010]
Wired’s app provides a slick interface to the magazine, but no way of actually sharing it, or of linking it to related content somewhere else — not even to Wired’s own website. It’s like an interactive CD-ROM from the 1990s. – GigaOm Too Many Magazine Apps Are Still Walled Gardens
john
January 29, 2010
Why i don’t want a iPad :
iPad is so ugly !
iPad doesn’t support flash !
iPad doesn’t have camera !
iPad doesn’t support multitasking !
iPad have a 4/3 screen…