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