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To me, the biggest problem is "magazines as apps". Magazines should be in a common file format that won't lock you in to a particular platform.
by RexRollman 14y ago
To me, the biggest problem is "magazines as apps". Magazines should be in a common file format that won't lock you in to a particular platform.
- dsr_ 14y agoHow do I upvote this eleventy times? "Magazines" are a specific form for delivering content that evolved out of the technological limitations of paper printing, the economics of delivery, and the whim of the market. Delivering them on floppy disks was tried, didn't work. Delivering them on CDs was tried, didn't work. These days, most magazines have web sites -- in some cases, the paper appendix has withered away, or is not as current as the online version. That's as it should be. It's nice that they were experimenting with bundling their magazine up as an app, but unless they have a focus aligned with the delivery platform (i.e. MacUser being distributed through the Mac OS X store, iTunes Music Review via the obvious) there's no good reason to do it that way.
- dendory 14y agoWe solved this problem many years ago with PDF.
- cytzol 14y agoDo PDFs scale to mobile phone sizes? I've tried reading PDFs on my phone and it's possible, but not a pleasant experience.
- petercooper 14y agoNo, PDF is basically digital 'paper.' However, publisher-end tools and workflows can produce multiple PDFs from the same content for different form factors. HTML5 and related technologies probably have the most promise in this sector though due to the large amount of cross-device styling and customization that can be done with CSS3 and JavaScript.
- pi18n 14y agoPDF's don't even work well on my Kindle, let alone my phone. Half of the PDF's I have for research are taller than my screen at a readable size, but inexplicably two-column. PDF is not the ultimate solution to portable documents.
- pretoriusB 14y ago>PDF's don't even work well on my Kindle, let alone my phone. Then your Kindle is not a full featured reading device. The Kindle's opted to imitate a black and white textual book (the e-paper thing), when future ebooks can are will be much more than that.
- andybak 14y agoDid you mispell 'HTML'?
- andybak 14y agoDid you mispell 'HTML'?
- dariopy 14y agoThen how would they bundle all sort of crap-spyware to their "content"?
- craig552uk 14y agoThis is exactly the problem the web was invented to solve. A lot of apps are just a desperate attempt to get brands in front of eye balls.