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Old 08-23-2012, 12:29 PM   #63
Harmon
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Quote:
Originally Posted by david_e View Post
I've even given up my monthly stop for magazines as they're all available digitally.
This is one switch I am in the process of switching back from. I have an iPad3, with the great resolution etc, but somehow, I just can't read mags on the iPad.

I have subscriptions to nine magazines. They come to me via Zinio and Apple's Newstand. They include major magazines and niche magazines. All of them basically ape the magazine format, without availing themselves of the possibilities inherent in the digital world.

For example:

1. If you've tried out the DC Comics app, you know that by an appropriate tap, you can go panel by panel through the comic. The panels refit to the screen, taking into account the orientation of the device. Yet not a single one of the mags I get makes it possible to adjust the content in any similar fashion. About the best you can do is unpinch to enlarge the page, then move it around to the place where you want it.

2. The ability to share articles, or even copy & quote paragraphs or sentences, does not exist. It seems to me that the people who publish these magazines simply don't grasp that "sharing" is targeted advertising for the magazine. For instance, it should be simple to allow clipping & sharing, while at the same time including advertisements and subscription come-ons. And why don't the publishers allow each subscriber to "share" an issue in its entirety to a couple of other people, as "free samples" or simply to recognize that digital magazines which are "passed around" might lead to new subscribers (ala all those blow-in suscription cards in pmags)?

3. There's no "interactivity" connection. No built in "letter to the editor" functionality. No comments functionality, either in the issue itself, or linked to a web page.

4. None of the magazines have an interactive contents page - they are all linear. I have to page through to what I want to read. I don't understand why the apps aren't designed so that you can tap a contents entry to go directly to the article, and then return to the table of contents. I don't understand why the reader can't select a view which gives him only the first page of each article, and allows him to page through those first pages, then drill down into a specific article by taping that first page. I don't understand why the reader can't select scrolling or pagination as the method to read an article.

5. Why don't these magazines, via their apps, allow the reader to select articles of interest from all issues of the magazine, as well as issues of other magazines, to be compiled in one "favorites" section, ala Pocket or Instapaper? That is, why don't these magazines allow for "clipping and storing" articles of interest?

6. And why can't they be printed? The reader should be allowed to select and print, for instance, recipes contained in an article.

Now, perhaps some magazines are doing these sorts of things, but not the ones I have. The ones I have are simply transferring the pmag to the digital world, and in the process, making the mags MORE linear rather than less, and leave them with LESS immediate accessibility & functionality than a pmag has.

So I am gradually drifting back to the paper versions.
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