Wired's iPad edition arrives, converted from Flash by Adobe | Hacker News Reader

Wired's iPad edition arrives, converted from Flash by Adobe

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23 pointsevo_925 comments

TBH, I think 5$/issue is a bit steep. In Canada I currently pay 40$/yr for my print subscription and I know that an American Print subscription is 20$/yr, so the price difference is pretty substantial.

I will be keeping my print subscription until prices are more reasonable.

I'm in the same boat, $40/year as a Canuck.

I'd like both, and would pay $60/year for that.

I'm expecting Wired will do something that motivates current print subscribers to keep the magazine and also grab the iPad version.

That said, the iPad experience is really nice. It's a hefty download as all the media is included (like the Toy Story 3 clip on the front page), but it's so well done.

Did you see the video? This isn't just a PDF of the magazine, it's a 530 MB presentation with video and interactive 3D graphics. I would pay more than $5 for this.

It's only $10/year in the US if you snag it off Amazon. $5/issue is nuts especially considering there are no printing or mailing costs.

So basically, the print version is the advertising-supported version. Because there are still a lot of print advertisers who they need to please by keeping their circulation numbers up. It's a weird digital/physical arbitrage.

Normally the digital version of something costs less but people's perceived value is far lower. Now we have a digital version of a magazine with a higher perceived value that costs significantly more. Well, if that was going to happen, it's fitting that it should be Wired who brings that to market.

But yet the digital version is still loaded with ads.

I'd buy it if I'm getting on a plane. Other than that, I just read their website.

Yeah, that's the key thing: in comparison to the print product, it's attractive to me.

But if I can get the info I'm looking for from their free no-storage website (and 30 seconds later bounce to another website, as we web folks are wont to do), it's really hard for me to get motivated to remember to go buy a $4.99 1 GB (500 MB on my iPad, 500 MB on my Mac where iTunes lives) app every month.

How can they successfully compete with themselves? And yet they can't shut off their free website and become utterly irrelevant.

So we have:

Translated from Flash to Objective-C by hand: OK

Translated from Flash to Objective-C by computer program: Not OK

The good news, I guess, is that Apple is apparently confirming that "originally written in Objective-C" doesn't mean "the first concrete representation of the program was in Objective-C", which means people are free to prototype an app in whatever language they want, as long as they totally rewrite it in Objective-C by hand.

> Translated from Flash to Objective-C by computer program: Not OK

Assuming you're referring to the CS5 feature, it converts Flash to byte-code, not Objective-C.

While it's true that CS5 converts Flash to bytecode, Apple's rejection of RunRev's proposal suggests that Flash programs would have been rejected even if CS5 had translated to Objective-C.

http://www.runrev.com/company/runrev-blog/revmobile-and-appl...

No we don't, we have:

Rewritten in Objective-C: OK

Translated from Flash to Objective-C by computer program: Not OK

It's like the difference between hiring a translator and using Google translate or hiring a typist versus using speech recognition.

[Edited for clarity: meant to change translated by hand to rewritten by intelligent human, and keep the second one the same].

I don't see how "Machine translation" is any different than "Translated from Flash to Objective-C by computer program".

It isn't, the change I made was from translated by human to rewritten by human, and the distinguishing bit of that change is human versus machine.

The parent was implying some kind of double standard where the "computing device" doing the change made a difference but shouldn't, and I was pointing out that the human isn't "mechanically translating", but "reinterpreting / rewriting". I just didn't write it out very clearly that the second one is the same. Will edit.

The original cross-compile from AIR may have had its own optimization issues. But oh, the irony if the speed at which Adobe has had to port this to Objective-C has resulted in a more sluggish app!

Fortunately, it looks like the native app is actually an improvement. Look at the video from February: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/02/the-wired-ipad-app-a-... The paging, zooming, and scrolling really does look smoother to me.

I feel like the $5 price tag plus advertisements might be a result of Wired passing on the cost of Adobe's misfortune to the consumer.

Or, you know, they planned to charge from the start.

All the individual issue magazines are $5, whether Wired or Pop Sci or whoever.

I have a strange feeling we've been here before: Are Magazine apps going to be the new Flash website?

Ha... I definitely get what you mean. Others have compared these "rich site" apps to CD-ROM, another dis.

I think they are generally uninteresting, and not "the future," but could be an OK short-term product idea for legacy media companies. (But not business model)

Old-school publishing companies have lots customers who might not exercise the same effort in discovery that you and i do.

Let's compare to familiar territory: tech companies:

Shrinking technology paradigms (giant life cycle desktop OS's like Microsoft Windows, Sun's SPARC) can launch new products, and make money off of shrinking, but existing customers. That doesn't mean they're being realistic about how to survive the future. Or that these "short burst" products are a good use of their time. (Sun maybe spent too much time denying SPARC's disappearance. MS seems to be doing just fine with Windows 7.)

Coming back to magazine apps... it's a short-term blast kind of thinking. Sometimes those things work out great, and get you enough money to survive to the next era... sometime it doesn't. I won't buy 'em. But depending on what else is going on inside of their organization, I don't necessarily blame msm for trying it out.

I'm also thinking that the actual production of interactive material is, when done relevantly, extremely time consuming. Can the cost of programming and interaction design stay on budget? Will $5 per issue be able to sustain this type of setup?

Also, I'm trying to remember the last time when an interactive infographic was enlightening... [remembering] nope, I can't remember!

For magazine and paper news journalism, I think they can improve their market by going further into the video medium, not the interactive medium.

It's really very well done. Lots of obvious spots where it's 1.0 (can't select text, lots of ads for iPhone apps that don't link to the store [fail!], some interactions are nonobvious or a little clunky), but the experience is fantastic.

Unlike most Flash websites, the tablet Wired is generally a genuine improvement over dead-tree, merging the interactivity of the web site with the design and browsability of the magazine with the UX capabilities of the iPad. Really, it's an accomplishment.

Too bad most of Wired's content is so resoundingly meh...

Edit: It's worth noting that 99% of the iPad magazine apps are roughly comparable to Flash websites: gain a little glitz, lose a lot of usability. The Wired magazine is the first one I've felt really nails it.

"Too bad most of Wired's content is so resoundingly meh..."

Guess I know where they should really spend their time and money!

Pretty cool that Adobe came through with an approvable version of the Wired app after the 3.3.1 change. I'm sure it was originally going to be one of the flagship examples of the CS5 export to iPhone functionality.

Remember multimedia CD magazines? I wonder if over-the-air distribution will make the business model work this time.

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