I've pretty much ignored the entire concept of iPad magazines (via Newsstand) until I got my iPad III. Right now I'm trying out the free 7 day trial of The Guar

I've pretty much ignored the entire concept of iPad magazines (via Newsstand) until I got my iPad III. Right now I'm trying out the free 7 day trial of The Guardian, and I'm impressed. It's £9.99/month, so I'm still debating if it's worth it, but after 4 days I'm leaning towards yes. Why? Well, in contradiction of the original article's charges, it does innovate and provide more than just a static page by page experience. You can navigate in a page-by-page sense, but it also groups subjects, provides links to other articles, and has a top level navigation. The front page [https://img.skitch.com/20120321-jg1fn7y9u4ktw7ktx229uygnja.png https://img.skitch.com/20120321-jg1fn7y9u4ktw7ktx229uygnja.p...] does a great job of highlighting interesting subjects that day, and where an article has a video it can be played inline. In many ways it's basically a heavily device-oriented website, but it has the advantage that all the content is downloaded automatically each day (without me having to remember to download it whilst on wifi before I head onto the tube). Also, unlike many of the magazines on Newsstand, it actually embeds their gorgeous Guardian Egyptian Text typeface [https://img.skitch.com/20120321-1xb6ybrcyem76rw29569tf9kp5.png https://img.skitch.com/20120321-1xb6ybrcyem76rw29569tf9kp5.p...], so even though most of the graphics aren't retina-resolution yet, the text is still beautiful to read. Contrast this experience with Edge magazine. I've been reading this in print since 1995, and it's always been a high-production quality publication. I'd expect the iPad experience to match, but it doesn't even come close. Apparently one of the oft-mentioned magazines which simply bundles up a bunch of JPEGs, I could probably get past that were it not for the horrible way it loads each page, first apparently using a low-resolution image resized to fit, then gradually drawing in the full-resolution image in tiles [https://img.skitch.com/20120321-kam5qxxn3rens7a1x534jgyidh.png https://img.skitch.com/20120321-kam5qxxn3rens7a1x534jgyidh.p...]. This happens with every single page transition, even with pages you've already visited, meaning that switching between two pages of a gatefold article is an incredibly irritating process. Also, as it's a resized image, the text isn't especially clear, particularly when you compare to the high standard The Guardian sets. The way I look at it, if old-world print publications want to survive the transition to digital, then they can't expect to get away with the latter, but instead should be striving towards the former. Make a good product and people will buy it. Try and push rubbish and when you finally discover you have to stop the physical presses, the virtual product won't stand up to scrutiny.