The Magazine: For geeks like us. By Marco Arment | Hacker News Reader

The Magazine: For geeks like us. By Marco Arment

itunes.apple.com

84 pointsbloodberet59 comments

> "The Magazine: For geeks like us"

... geeks "like us" who only care about iOS and are willing to pay for content. Just to be accurate.

Not that there's anything wrong with paying for content. Every time you're confronted by an ad that you didn't volunteer to look at, you're paying for content.

But iOS-only seems like quite a limitation, and seems to contradict "for geeks like us" as the headline appears in HN.

I don't have a problem paying for content, but I do have a problem with IOS-only. Even though I own an iPad, I like to have access to my reading material in multiple places. I spend a bunch more time looking at my Kindle, for example, and prefer the reading experience there to the iPad.

A decade ago, something like this published in the closed formats of the time (MS Word, maybe) would have met with a huge backlash. Today, it seems like Apple have convinced the market that 'closed' is OK, because it's well-designed and a little bit shiny. I think it's a real step backward, especially given the great open standards that are available (like HTML5) and other tools which give similar control with more accessibility (like PDF).

I also share the concern with an iOS-only model, but give him a break: it's just a 2 months proof-of-concept.

He needs critical mass in order to make this sustainable in the long term - without having to resort to ads, sponsored reviews and all sorts of ways to keep the quality.

The choice for iOS for the initial platform seems obvious: it's much easier to monetize quickly. And it's easy to add Kindle, Android, HTML5 and others later on - at the cost of maintaining multiple versions, provided that there's enough interested paying subscribers to justify the effort.

I think that's exactly the right approach, and a real step forward.

> I think that's exactly the right approach, and a real step forward.

I disagree. I think, sales issues aside, that open standards like HTML5 offer enough to give a good reading experience on most devices. Where it doesn't, that's typically because the device doesn't support the format, rather than the converse.

As for how monetizing this is going to work for Marco, I don't know. Maybe iOS-only is the only way he could get that to work, and that's the right choice for him. If that's true, I still think it's unfortunate.

> ..open standards like HTML5 offer enough to give a > good reading experience on most devices

It doesn't matter if it's HTML5 or whatever. If they don't find a sustainable model, then the magazine will not exist and you won't have the content - open or otherwise.

Second: content trump format. But while the focus is on content, the format is equally pleasant, better than most other magazines that spend a good amount of energy trying to imitate their tree-based predecessors.

> Maybe iOS-only is the only way he could get that to work, and that's the right choice for him. > If that's true, I still think it's unfortunate.

To me the only unfortunate thing is for this experiment to fail. Marco is a great writer, and his proposal seems honest and has merit.

Do you think a multi-platform launch would have been possible with about the same effort? That’s the important question here. Also take into account developer experience and what skills Marco Arment has.

We are talking about a small project with limited resources and a developer with a certain skill set. I don’t think you can ignore that.

You can certainly ask for support on more devices and be disappointed that the magazine in the offered format isn’t a good fit for your devices – but I do not understand the apparent moral condemnation of that decision. It seems harmless and morally neutral to me – maybe ill-advised (in that it might doom the magazine), but not morally problematic.

Really? Do we really have to make up stuff now in excuse? The guy runs an Apple blog.

I don’t really understand what you want to say. Do you honestly believe that he didn’t make the magazine multi-platform out of spite? That’s just ridiculous.

And the guy has a successful iOS app which recently launched an Android version. So your point is?

> Today, it seems like Apple have convinced the market that 'closed' is OK ...

Yes, to the degree that Microsoft has decided to imitate the Apple model. It seems Microsoft has closed Windows 8 to third-part applications (except pre-existing ones operating in compatibility mode). All Windows 8 apps that depend on Windows 8 features can only be gotten from Microsoft directly, in an obvious imitation of the App store:

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/10/developers-windows-8/

What's worse, these cyber-birdcages seem wildly popular.

It's certainly iOS-first, but I don't see any indication that it's iOS-only. Given the iPad's position in the tablet market, it will be a while before magazine style publications (which are natural for the form-factor) give equal priority to Android.

>It's certainly iOS-first, but I don't see any indication that it's iOS-only.

You know exactly what he meant, no need to play word games.

>Given the iPad's position in the tablet market, it will be a while before magazine style publications (which are natural for the form-factor) give equal priority to Android.

It's text.

Also, considering it took 4 years for Instapaper to make it to Android, skepticism is more than warranted.

It doesn't surprise me that it takes an AAA iOS developer to finally make a good iOS magazine. It always struck me that Newsstand was a wasted potential: full of good publications trying to squeeze their paper format into an app instead of releasing the same content in a better format.

Does anybody know of "good" Newsstand apps? This might be the first.

I personally think Apple should release a more aggressive Newsstand API and a best practices guide: e.g. by all means customise your design and experience but that doesn't mean you should release an app crammed full of pngs that weighs half a gig. Newsstand apps should be low bandwidth and text-centric. Why can't I search all my magazines from a central location? Why can't I see a central list of articles I've favourited from a variety of publications? As it stands, the only way to do this is with an RSS reader or Instapaper. I'd be happy to pay for quality journalism if it was in a format that's convenient and sensible.

Not all of us magazine makers are coders. For a lot of us, its all about the words, not the format. My little iPad-only travel magazine isn't even in Newsstand because I have no idea how to code it, but our articles have won awards. The technology is not as important as the content. I wish I could do all those things you mentioned, but the fact is I have no idea how. A big magazine might be able to do them, but it requires a total revamp of business practices and a restructuring of workflow. And that's hard when a magazine is staffed by people who will lose their jobs when digital magazines take off.

And that's precisely why Apple should be releasing an API to help you :) to reduce the burden of coding something yourself. That's one of the big problems right now. A lot of magazines are using Adobe InDesign to publish their iOS magazine apps, because that's all they know how to use but it's not helping anyone because, instead of making something new, Adobe bolted-on iOS publishing to a tool designed to make paper products. Someone else needs to step in and provide an appropriate tool that publishers (big or small) can use.

I think it's fair to say we all want to see a way good journalism can exist in a digital world. There's no reason these people need lose their jobs if we can crack this problem.

As an aside, care to share a link to your travel magazine? I'd be interested in checking it out. I'm travelling to Japan for the first time tomorrow.

Yeah, people have been using InDesign for ages. Its unrealistic to expect those same people to learn how to code, which means hiring an entirely new team just to design the magazine for another medium. We're lucky in that we only publish for the iPad. Here's the link btw: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/overnight-buses-magazine/id49...

P.S. Have fun in Japan, let me know if you by any chance come back with a long, well written travel essay.

The New Yorker is pretty good now. It's available in Retina from a certain issue a few months back, too. What bothers me is that I don't have any way to make annotations, but that's what happens when you don't see a more universal framework for Newsstand magazines.

The Wired monthly releases are consistently excellent, but they're half a gig.

Half a gig per issue is exactly why I consider them subpar.

Interesting. First of all it's very nicely designed and after reading the introduction I like the philosophy behind it. Taking the Instapaper approach of focussing on text is interesting. While images and graphics can often enhance content having nice, plain text on a device the size of the iPhone makes much more sense. So first impressions of it are good. Hopefully the content is just as good.

Update:

After reading a couple of the articles it seems pretty high quality and justifies the price. It's also only the second good Newsstand app I've used (The New York Times is the other). I've tried several others and they are just 100's of space consuming images, difficult to read especially on the iPhone.

Agree. It's refreshing to see something simple and focused on the content: no images, no videos, no fancy infographics, and none of the 'bloatware' that permeates the magazine industry.

Each issue of Wired is now 500+ MB (due to the Retina displays). If you're on 3G or at a public WiFi, it probably takes more time to download than to read the 2-3 articles you're interested.

In hindsight, you wouldn't expect anything different from Marco. Really hope he succeeds.

> Agree. It's refreshing to see something simple and focused on the content: no images, no videos, no fancy infographics, and none of the 'bloatware' that permeates the magazine industry.

HN is also like that.

The Guardian UK have a lovely iPad app, but the iPhone app isn't nearly as good.

I'd love to see this as a webapp. I'm one of those folks that just doesn't use apps or even sign in to my apple account. I'm sure more of my kind exist.

EDIT: Whoops I see this has paid in-app purchases. I wonder if there's something out there that can offer as seamless an experience as iTunes in-app purchases for webapps.

Yeah, it's pretty depressing when the only reason a magazine is iOS only is because it uses Apple payments.

I guess that was Apple's end goal, but it's just a sad state of affairs. And even if they wanted to use some other option... Apple would block it on iOS.

Have you looked at the digital goods API for Google Wallet?

Docs: https://developers.google.com/in-app-payments/

Demos: https://developers.google.com/in-app-payments/docs/samples

Someone should build a service on top of Stripe to do this.

Stripe for payment, Persona for auth.

Another victim is seduced by a leading "The", causing any attempt to reference this publication to become a tragedy of grammar.

Look, man. Unique naming is hard in the Age of Google. And it could be worse, it could be "the.magazi.ne".

Unique naming is easy. For example, he could have called it "D12792B3-4D86-4E84-8B3C-13DBA7593282". Coming up with unique names that are also useful and good is perhaps somewhat harder.

The Strokes, The Walkmen and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs would like to have a word with you.

And especially "The The".

The Who?

The Beatles?

They're not called "The Band" though are they

No, but "The Band" was.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Band

Looks interesting. Finally, a use for the dreaded un-removable "Newsstand" icon on my iPhone.

It seems like I am the target audience for this. I listen to his podcast, follow his blog, and read tons of other Apple & tech blogs. And use Instapaper.

But I really have no desire to pay a monthly fee for more articles. So I guess I'm opting out of this one.

I'd really like to give this a shot but am only interested in trying it on my iPad which can't get iOS6, so unfortunately, rather than passing on this, I am being left behind.

It's worth sending that feedback to Marco. He has said in Build and Analyze that the iOS 5 version is written (just disabled currently) and he is curious whether he should release support for it in a version rev or if he can abandon it.

It's worth trying on your iPhone (if you have one). It uses the text-only approach of Instapaper so screen-size doesn't affect usability the way it does in standard magazine apps.

Too bad it is iOS6 only, leaving my iPad 1 out in the cold.

Yes, this is a misstep for an app of this nature. Instapaper needs to support the iPad 1 for another cycle.

Wait, iPad 1 supports iOS6 no?

No, it doesn't. Marco has been talking a lot on his podcast about dropping support for the iPad 1 for Instapaper as well in order to use some of the new iOS6 features.

Wow, I didn't know he was planning to drop support for the 1st gen iPad. Bad news. :(

I think he said it would have made it easier if he could use the iOS 6 features, but he wasn't planning on dropping support for iPad 1 yet/

From what I recall he said he'll drop the support for iPad 1 with the next big Instapaper release.

No, but I can't for the life of me figure out what technical reason is preventing Apple from allowing this.

If an iPhone 3GS can run iOS6, I am perplexed why the same can't be true for the iPad 1.

They were still selling the 3GS until just a few weeks ago; it would have annoyed many customers if iOS 6 wasn't released for the device. The first-gen iPad, on the other hand, stopped being sold when the iPad 2 was released in March 2011.

iOS 5 also doesn't run all that great on the iPad, so I'm sure that played into the decision not to offer iOS 6 as well. The 256MB of RAM paired with the large screen seems to be the biggest cause for this. The 3GS' hardware isn't great, but it's only powering a 320*480 display

I imagine they don't see it worth the effort to squeeze iOS 6 into the iPad's 256MB RAM.

(I know the 3GS also has 256MB of RAM but it's display resolution is much lower).

The ipad1 has a larger screen which strains the gpu more than the 3gs does. (that is the paraphrased reasoning iirc)

The 3GS effectively has better hardware than the iPad 1.

CPU, RAM, etc. are basically the same, but the iPad has to drive about five times as many pixels. Thus it effectively has much less RAM, an underpowered CPU/GPU, etc.

It's an odd and unintuitive situation, but despite being newer than the 3GS, the original iPad is ultimately a less powerful device, when it comes to which apps and OS releases it can support.

I'm sure Apple could support iOS 6 if they wanted to, but I imagine they decided that it wasn't worth the tradeoffs (e.g. poor performance, RAM available to apps, resulting stability or lack thereof).

Nope.

All the articles are available on-line at http://the-magazine.org/1 which is useful for sharing and reading on other devices.

I wonder how much evil it would be to create an RSS feed for it.

Those are excerpts :/

This mostly seems to be a magazine for Apple afficionados. And thats a terrible thing, because there is nothing geeky about that company or even company worship.

Newsstand?

ugh!

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