Magazines with Zinio on ipad looks SOOOOO good!!

[athlonkmf]

Zinio is already known for the very good price for digital magazines. But the desktop programs are far from perfect. Very slow, and resource hungry.

They have an ipad app too, which wasn't working very well. It took 2-3 seconds to render a page. This week there was an update which minimized to rendering process making the app very usable. (there are still some quirks)

But the quality is sooooo good. I have a paper subscription of national geographics. Great pictures, but on paper it isn't really good, you get an ugly fold in the middle which reflects light.

On the ipad it looks superb, text are crisp and sharp, but the photo's... wow



This one is in landscape (2 pages at once). I'm staring at the screen much longer than I'd read the paper version. It looks so stunning.

[dmaul1114]

May have to download it again and check it out on my girlfriend's iPad.

The delay in page rendering killed it for me.

Though I also have little interest in just getting true representations of the print magazines on the iPad as the screen is too small.

I'd love to see more magazines made specifically for the iPad that get the magazine experience done as right as the NY Times app does the newspaper experience. Compared to the USA Today which I really dislike the format.

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by dmaul1114

... I'd love to see more magazines made specifically for the iPad ....

The big problem with this is that we will get more fragmentation, which will ultimately result in lower quality, given the limited resources publishers have.

Ideally, we should be viewing these on an 11" screen.

Otherwise, we are making the argument from the The Good Soldier Švejk:

"It's not that the hat is too small, it's that your head is too big."

[dmaul1114]

Not necessarily. Tablet based magazines just need to be in a format that is more re-scalable to screen sizes.

I should have said I'd love to see magazines made specifically for tablets rather than the iPad--as that's what I meant.

Be more like websites and not just essentially PDFs of the print version that are fixed to a certain size.

As there will never be a standard screen size for tablets, so publishers will have to find a way to do layouts that can work on a variety of screen sizes.

And then add in things like in article videos etc.--great for news magazines, movie/tv/video game magazines etc.

Again, I just have little interest in digital reproductions of print magazines which I've quit reading already anyway. Take advantage of the tablet form, and they can get my business back. Once I have a tablet of course!

[Maggie Leung]

Yes, I found National Geographic gorgeous on Zinio.

[scottjl]

Originally Posted by Sonist

The big problem with this is that we will get more fragmentation, which will ultimately result in lower quality, given the limited resources publishers have.

I kind of doubt this. Zinio has been around a while and has reader software for a number of platforms, I believe they use the same file for each platform, the magazine isn't really formatted just for the iPad.

[tomsem]

The workflow for generating content for iPad/iPhone is different than that used for the other readers (which is basically PDF). That's why the selection of magazines is not as broad, and limited to 'top choices'.

[scottjl]

ah. thanks for the info. i checked out zinio years ago on the mac platform, wasn't impressed, and never looked back. i loaded up their ipad app for all of 2 minutes, saw how slow it was, and deleted it. i, incorrectly, assumed it used the same content as their other platforms. wonder why they didn't leverage that.

to their credit, their prices do seem to be far cheaper than print magazines, which is incentive to buy from them, i just wasn't impressed with their delivery method.

anyone here a regular zineo subscriber..? care to give us a detailed review (likes, dislikes, etc) of the zineo app?

[The Old Man]

I like the Zino app very much and have so far subscribed to two mags. One problem they they promise to fix - but so far haven't - there is no way to delete a magazine.

[scottjl]

Originally Posted by The Old Man

I like the Zino app very much and have so far subscribed to two mags. One problem they they promise to fix - but so far haven't - there is no way to delete a magazine.

ouch. you'd think that would be one of the first features!

what about speed of the app? i only looked at it very briefly but i thought it was scrolling very slowly. zoom levels? any ability to copy out interesting articles?

[Fotoman]

Deleting downloaded mags is already supported although the thumbnail of the mag will remain behind showing you that you own that issue and can re-DL if you wish. When you press "Edit" in the library each issue that is resident in the iPad will have a pop-up superimposed telling you how much space it's using. A good system, IMHO.

The speed of rendering has already been improved although its method of rendering that gives you a low-rezz preview milliseconds before the full-rezz rendering can be annoying to some (me.)

My biggest annoyance is that I've had Zinio subscriptions for nearly a year and my back issues (pre March) are not yet visible in my iPad library although I can easily access them wih my PC app or even through Safari on the iPad.

The frequency of updates to the app bodes well though.

[Crowl]

Originally Posted by dmaul1114

Not necessarily. Tablet based magazines just need to be in a format that is more re-scalable to screen sizes.

I should have said I'd love to see magazines made specifically for tablets rather than the iPad--as that's what I meant.

Be more like websites and not just essentially PDFs of the print version that are fixed to a certain size.

As there will never be a standard screen size for tablets, so publishers will have to find a way to do layouts that can work on a variety of screen sizes.

I don't know if you get them in the states, but certainly in the uk you often have magazines producing a normal edition and a pocket-sized version and the layouts seem fine even on the magazine that is half the size of the other.

And then add in things like in article videos etc.--great for news magazines, movie/tv/video game magazines etc.

Again, I just have little interest in digital reproductions of print magazines which I've quit reading already anyway. Take advantage of the tablet form, and they can get my business back. Once I have a tablet of course!

I am happy to see enhanced content, but if you aren't actually interested enough in the content to consider buying the paper magazine then enhanced presentation probably isn't going to be enough to win people back.

[shiffy]

I tried out Zinio when it first came out for the ipad and though it looked nice, decided against using it because the speed of rendering the page after a turn was much too slow. I kept the app on my ipad, however, in order to see if they would update it. They've now updated it twice -- the first didn't address the issues I had, but the last substantially improved things and I've now subscribed to a couple of magazines (National Geographic and Sporting News Daily Edition). National Geographic looks great and also has some interactive features that you can't get in print.

Only thing I don't like is that at least with some magazines - such as, Sporting News daily edition - the text columns occur right on the fold (with part of the column on one page, part on the other). I would assume that this is the magazine publisher's issue, not Zinio's, but don't know. This is only an issue if you view it in portrait -- in landscape, you see the two facing pages at once. It's not terrible, however, as the app let's you slide enough of the page over so that you can see the full column (but only if you continue to keep your finger on the screen -- once you lift your finger, it'll go back to the previous page -- and if you slide too much, it'll jump to the next/prior page, depending which way you are sliding). Still, I'd prefer that all text in a column be on one page.

[The Old Man]

Originally Posted by Fotoman

Deleting downloaded mags is already supported although the thumbnail of the mag will remain behind showing you that you own that issue and can re-DL if you wish. When you press "Edit" in the library each issue that is resident in the iPad will have a pop-up superimposed telling you how much space it's using. A good system, IMHO.

Yes, but the remaining images includes all the "free" or sample mags and they can't be deleted or am I missing something? Eventually you will have several screens filled with mag images that you never ordered or cared about. They have a Store option that lets you browse the available mags. Why should I see all the mags they are pushing in the Library view when all I want are the mags to which I subscribed?

[Fotoman]

Originally Posted by The Old Man

Yes, but the remaining images includes all the "free" or sample mags and they can't be deleted or am I missing something? Eventually you will have several screens filled with mag images that you never ordered or cared about. They have a Store option that lets you browse the available mags. Why should I see all the mags they are pushing in the Library view when all I want are the mags to which I subscribed?

That's a fair complaint. Personally, I'm focusing on bugging them about my back issues but I can see how the leftover thumbnails of their promotions can become progressively more irritating. Feedback your thoughts.