But while I’m fine bringing a magazine into the tub with me, I wouldn’t dare do the same with my iPad.įinally, I find reading magazines on an iPad frustrating. And I like taking hot baths occasionally when I do so, I like to read. I do, however, like to toss one or two magazines in it if I’m going to have some down time or or if I’m traveling on a train. I don’t tend to carry my iPad in my knapsack when I’m out. But if the process isn’t frictionless, I don’t want it.Īll too often, Newsstand downloads flake out. I don’t think my bandwidth is the only problem that wouldn’t explain why downloads of certain magazines fail more than others. The New Republic in particular was so frustrating that I simply gave up and cancelled my subscription. I have a slow Internet connection, and downloads often stop, fail, or result in corruption issues I then need to redownload them.įew of my magazines offer automatic downloads for those that do, they simply don’t work. For many of the Newsstand magazines I read (which happen to be built on the same platform), downloads are frequently flaky. The second big problem I have is with downloads. Sure, I could configure push notifications for each title, but I don’t: They’re unreliable, and when I have a dozen or more notifications on my lock screen, I scroll through them, register the important ones, then move on if one of them is for a magazine that I’m not going to read right away, chances are I’ll forget it altogether. I’m not the only one who finds the app-as-enclosing-folder model an impediment to reading Macworld’s Jason Snell But when it’s hidden away in that folder, I don’t. If each magazine app lived on my home screen, I’d be more likely to open it. Because it’s an app-that’s-really-a-folder, which houses multiple individual magazine apps, I often don’t know that I have new issues. Which is, of course, the case with Newsstand. For example, I’m a long-time reader of The New Yorker you can get a print subscription for $110 a year, but the digital version is only $60. So the savings of subscribing digitally-to U.S. magazines tend to be even pricier, and subscriptions to them aren’t discounted the way they are in the States. magazines I want to read are really expensive because of shipping costs, I can’t benefit from those dollar-an-issue offers that Americans can. In particular, magazines could be cheaper. I thought that the iPad-plus-Newsstand combo would offer me several advantages over the traditional paper model. I like magazines, I read several of them regularly, and have done so for many years. But while I still feel that tablets will come to change the way we consume “print” media, the current solution for magazines on the iPad-Apple’s Newsstand app-simply doesn’t work. I wrote that “the most important feature it may contain will be the ability to save the press from its demise.” I was bullish about the future of publishing on tablets. Back in 2010, shortly before the iPad was announced, When the iPad first came out, I was really excited about its potential as a replacement for paper magazines.
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