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The Magazine

marco.org

317 pointsrkudeshi231 comments

On the one hand I'm very excited by this; I see Marco as an interesting writer/speaker, when it comes to iOS development or when he geeks out about whatever gear he's recently bought. I also expect him to be a great editor, so I'd gladly pay money for a magazine put together by him.

But on the other hand...I'm really wondering why this needs to be an iOS app. Written content is perfect for publishing on the web, I really don't think you'll be running into any speed issues when you release this as a web magazine. And even if you would, why not make the content available both native and on the web?

I'm aware that Marco is an iOS developer, and that a lot of his readers (myself included) will have iOS devices, but for the sake of the open web I'm still slightly disappointed.

Because charging for content on the web doesn't work. While I love the web and wait for a day when we can do micropayments or deep-linking with paywalls or something, the biggest advance someone could make today is to demonstrate a digital-only business model.

Well, it's not clear that charging for articles on iOS really works either. Is anyone making money there? Certainly lots of Smurfberries being sold, but articles?

It seems that that's what he's trying to figure out, as explained on the linked introductory post.[0] He's figuring out what is and isn't necessary in building and distributing a digital magazine.

[0]: http://the-magazine.org/1/foreword

LWN seems to be doing fine, they also have a geek audience. The Humble Bundle also seems to be doing just fine without DRM.

I think with quality content people would pay for it. Not enough to make anyone rich, but certainly enough to fund the publication. By targeting iOS only he is missing out on a huge part of the geek universe as potential customers.

Marco Arment just uses the tools he likes to use. I think it’s as simple as that. I don’t think building a website (with paywall, payment processor, etc.) is his idea of fun. By doing it the way he did it he keeps it simple and makes it possible to let this continue to be a one man operation.

It’s very much an experiment and if it doesn’t work he will stop (http://the-magazine.org/1/foreword). That’s it. It’s not an affirmation of the supremacy of iOS as a publishing platform or a subtle diss at Android. It just is.

If it makes enough money on iOS, I'm sure it will be ported to other platforms.

That's what the world needs, a magazine that needs to be "ported".

Heh. Worse: web pages that need to be "ported" (e.g., to old versions of IE).

>LWN seems to be doing fine

So, how do we know they are doing fine? It seems they have a bare bones website with some news. Looking at a sponsors page, I see a single company. I don't see any signs of them making real money.

Do we have any info on their financials?

Jon does post roughly annual updates as dredmorbius pointed out; this is the last one I could find on a quick search: https://lwn.net/Articles/504952/ That's probably slightly more positive than others, which typically seem to be along the lines of "scraping by, subscriber counts are roughly static".

(Please consider subscribing by the way! Lwn is a fantastic resource in my opinion, and I'd hate for it to go away).

Much as I appreciate LWN (and subscribe), my understanding is that it is losing money. Jon posts periodic updates on this.

At least you don't lose access to LWN just because you upgraded your OS or switched platforms.

Talk to me about G+ and chromium getting fubared due to Debian bug #682616.

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=682616

Edit: clarifying, G+ tends to strongly favor chromium, and the latter's broken as of my most recent update.

But, yeah.

There's a difference between a bug and being tied to a platform for one application. To be fair, you can always switch to another OS (or even another distro) and use chromium.

While I largely agree (and have found that G+ actually is pretty usable under FF16), the point I was highlighting is that Google are (for somewhat understandable reasons) pushing very hard at the concept of what a Web browser is, and what it's used for (they really, really want it to be an app platform, not just a media presentation tool), to the extent that their site degrades significantly under other browsers. Which creates a pain point when Google's own browser fails to function under my preferred OS.

And I don't really see scrapping that OS just to use a single website. There are other alternatives (VMs, etc.), but they're not particularly attractive either.

The IOS6 specificity of The Magazine really is pretty brain-damaged though.

I think that this is one of the instances it could work, especially with his audience. Hell, I'd buy it and my experience with anything Apple-related is zilch (thus I can't pay for it).

> Because charging for content on the web doesn't work.

Yes it does, but the competition is extreme and not very many people are good at making it an honest-to-god business with profit.

If you are good at it, you make money hand-over-fist at the moment.

Are you talking about information products or paywalls or something else entirely?

I believe he is talking about the web's equivalent of newspaper or magazine. Like whole magazine published as a website, where users would pay for each "issue" or monthly access. This model doesn't work, with maybe a few very rare exceptions.

>If you are good at it, you make money hand-over-fist at the moment.

I don't know of any web news site (that's what we're discussing, we're not talking about the general case of "charging for content on the web", e.g software, music, video, etc) that makes money "hand-over-fist". Quite the opposite.

And the "if you're good at it" is tautological fluff --if you are talking about web news outlets.

If you have problems monetizing a news site with quality content and readers interested in it, then it's proof that "charging for content on the web doesn't work", not that "you're not good at it". In content providing, "good at it" just means: the content is good, and a fair number of readers want to read it.

On the web, this has only worked with ad-supported sites (which means you need to attract many many readers, and thus lower the quality of the copy/make it more generic, to do so) or with vertical, industry specific content for audiences that can afford it (the Economist, for example).

To what industry is The Economist specific?

It's called "The Economist".

So, a not so wild guess would be: the finance industry, and business and policy circles second, that is Washington, Wall Street, Soho and the like guys, with wannabe "sophisticated" money grubbers an influential third.

Not really. It's like Newsweek or Time, but more international, and more in depth. It's certainly skewed towards the financial, but it's really just a news periodical.

I think the name (a holdover from the 1800's) puts a lot of people off. As bcbrown said, it is really just the news magazine for smart people. There is a section on Finance and Economics, but it isn't any bigger than the Science section, say.

It would probably appeal to many HN readers, as it has a global, smart outlook. They cover things you don't hear about elsewhere. It is my primary source for news (I listen to the audio edition each week on my commute.)

In previous decades, yes, but it's moved substantially from that view to more of a world events and analysis.

It's about reach versus monetization. The web lets you build a great audience very fast. The iPad comparatively has a much smaller audience, albeit a potent one.

The introductory article talks about what it's going to talk about and that it's for people "who love the Internet... and even coffee" which doesn't excited me much but either way, given the attention on this HN post, I would like to get a taste of the goods. Any sample articles would be nice otherwise it's a complete toss in the dark for me.

I agree. I think the biggest friction point for magazines on the web is that consumers are very wary of paying a recurring subscription for something as nebulous as "access". Just needing to remember a login id/password for a payed service kills the customer experience. So containerizing content in a way that consumers retain the right to old content, centralizing the billing, and distributing it in the Newsstand (as opposed to relying on already over-used channels like e-mail alerts) seems to attack many of the web's biggest shortcomings to me.

"... Because charging for content on the web doesn't work. ..."

How much would you pay for a magazine? Wonder if there's a market for printing magazines that use an iOS/web framework like zine ~ http://blog.zeen.com/2012/09/18/the-way-you-zeen-futuremed-u...

So he can charge you.

I think what iOS brings to the table here is Newsstand and its subscription model. This is probably more important than any technical layout advantages. The open web is great, but I think its also valuable to experiment with a platform where writers can get paid by readers instead of advertisers. An independent player might have a better chance at that on Newsstand than on the open web.

This is slightly off topic, ... but does anyone feel that Newsstand does not actually bring much to the table? I wish Apple had written Newsstand as a new "special Home Screen page" (like Spotlight). It could have the iBooks backdrop and show iBooks + magazines + Safari Reading List on there. The iPad would be a killer reading machine. :(

Instead, Newsstand is a folder that non-users hate (undeletable) and users probably don't love either, because who would put all the magazines they regularly read into a folder, given a choice?

Just my (frustrated) speculation though.

Exactly, there's no reason for this to be an app, other than the new business model. It's just a blog in an app, not a magazine. In fact, the content will either be from already-free web archives, or will be published later on the web for free. It is just a way to generate revenue from new/old blog posts on top of the web revenue.

>But on the other hand...I'm really wondering why this needs to be an iOS app. Written content is perfect for publishing on the web, I really don't think you'll be running into any speed issues when you release this as a web magazine.

Speed? No. But you'll run into monetization issues, especially if you don't want to attract the lowest common denominator, and intend on quality articles that get fewer eyeballs (= less ad revenue).

It's very sad for me.

Marco, I love your insights. I would love to pay you and (by extension) pay the great writers you will find.

But I can't. I've wanted to get into the Apple ecosystem for years, but the hardware is simply too expensive. I've spent hours scanning eBay, NewEgg, and other outlets. Even dated Apple hardware is terribly expensive. I can't justify spending $150 for a 3GS, or $350 for an iPad 1. So I'll have to wait until your content is available on a platform that is easier to procure.

Yes, yes, it's better to do one platform right than to stretch yourself too thin. Certainly don't hamstring yourself in this fashion. Sadly, I confess that I feel like you've passed judgment on me for not having an Apple device, but I'll ignore that feeling. You do not bear the blame for this situation.

So all the best to you, Marco. Let me know if and when you make your content available on the Web or Android. Then I can pay you.

If you are having such a hard time come up with $200 to buy into the ecosystem, I'm sure you have other priorities than paying $2 per month for 8 articles that you may or may not find interesting.

> Sadly, I confess that I feel like you've passed judgment on me for not having an Apple device, but I'll ignore that feeling. You do not bear the blame for this situation.

I think you're reading into this move a bit too much. :) No personal offense is meant (I assume), I'm guessing it's just a matter of developer preference & experience and a knowledge of his target demo. Maybe not 80% of his target demographic who might pay for his magazine own an iOS device, but it very well may be close. In any event, no one's condemning you for not owning an iphone. :)

Instapaper for iPad is almost ethereal in the brilliance of its reading experience. I assume he wanted to maintain that level of quality for his new product.

I was very excited about this, so I tried installing it on my iPhone 4S, with iOS5, and it says:

    This app requires iOS 6.

Really?! Already?? :( I didn't upgrade because I want to keep my maps app. I hope Marco changes it to be iOS 5-compatible, since I know a lot of people who aren't upgrading to iOS 6 until it has decent maps.

He talked about this over multiple episodes on Build & Analyze. You would be shocked at the iOS 6 adoption numbers.

Apparently I'm the only guy still using a first-generation iPad.

Oh well.

I have one too actually, but I don't care because I'm not into paid ipad magazines.

Are you into free ones? shameless plug

Worked. Downloading... Nicely done!

Sweeeeet! I hope you enjoy it. The article on Rwanda in the first issue just won an award, so be sure to check that out.

You're clearly waiting for someone to put this link into the thread: http://www.overnightbuses.com/

Secretly, yes. :)

I have a first generation iPad, too. I had some magazine subscriptions on the iPad that I got for free because I was a subscriber of the physical magazine. With the exception of traveling, I preferred the real magazine. The metaphor of how ads are displayed in physical magazines, paging, etc. didn't carry over well for me in the iPad.

While travelling, I thought it would be cool to have access to a library of magazines to peruse. I ended up mostly just watching videos.

There's only 15 million of you, if I recall correctly, and most of them have already coughed up more for the retina one. But there are 70 million iPad 2's and 3's, and I read on MacRumors that Apple expects to sell at least 10 million "mini" iPads in Q4 (not to mention a few more millions of iPad 2's and 3's, and a gazillion more iPad 4's when they introduce them), and almost all of them (except a few who are cranky about the maps, which would soon be forgotten when Google releases its maps app) are on iOS 6.

I too am starting a new iPad app, and it'll be iOS 6 only - because it'll be released early next year, and because it's really, really easier to only target iOS 6 as there have been many improvements in the APIs that literally cuts development time in half.

Most people don't care about maps on iPad nearly as much as on iPhone. I don't think limiting to iOS6 on iPad should be so bad.

Based on what he's said on his podcast, that isn't going to happen

Marco talked about his decision to require iOS 6 in previous episodes of Build and Analyze.

He wanted to try requiring iOS 6, because it would help him write cleaner code internally, but he actually has a version of the app that will work with iOS 5. Depending on adoption of the iOS 6 version, he may or may not "revert" support back to iOS 5.

The adoption rate for iOS6 has been amazing compared to previous versions that weren't OTA. Over 60% in less than a month (according to a statistically significant and diverse user base source: http://david-smith.org/iosversionstats/). I recall seeing some iOS5-only apps when it was adopted this widely after a few months.

OTOH, that graph sure has plateaued at around 60% for the last week. I think there is a fairly significant group of iPhone owners who just don't care about OS updates and never even notice that indicator on Settings telling you that you can update.

Or this: http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/05/after-early-boom-new-number...

Sure, it's slowed down - everyone has gotten the pop-up by now telling them to OTA update so those that are left didn't want to right away. But that just puts us in the same boat we used to be; a slower adoption rate as we wait for them to manually do it.

If they don't care, that's fine. They'll start to care as more things go iOS6 only. Just like people stay on XP forever until there's a reason to upgrade.

But 60% of the user base (including those who can't update like iPad 1, not just 60% of eligible) in less than a month? As a dev that make me really really happy and not scoff at considering going iOS6 only.

Oh definitely it's a good adoption rate. I just think a lot of people were thinking "60% in a week! We'll be at 90% in a month!" and that seems overly optimistic at this point. And if it plateaus at 70%, how many developers are willing to cut off 30% of their customer base?

History has shown that won't be the case. We might not be at 90% by the end of the month but mark my words, the exponential growth of iPhone sales in which each new model eclipses the entirety of iPhone sales up to that point has a pretty drastic effect on the old OS percentages.

The combination of the iPad, iPad mini, iPhone 5, and new iPod touch all running iOS 6 and the aggressive older device update strategy means we are pretty much assured 90% by the end of this year, if not sooner. With the notable exception of the original iPad, the iOS devices that can't run/won't run iOS 6 are a drop in the bucket.

The other thing to note is that as devices get older, users tend to enjoy them less and therefore screw around on them less. This naturally results in less app usage, less browser usage, appearing in less statistics, etc...

So while the exact percentage of all iOS devices running iOS 6 might take longer than a year to hit 90%, I suspect app developers will have a fairly different picture painted for them by their personal usage statistics.

Apps that have hundreds of thousands of daily users are already seeing over 80% of their users are on iOS 6 and this is only after 21 days of it being available.

Any app I make from now on will be iOS 6 and up. The amount of time I spend not having to worry about iOS 5 bugs and testing allow me to add more features that will reach the majority of iOS users.

Spending tens (or possibly hundreds) of hours to make something that already works in iOS 6 work in iOS 5 to reach a small subset of iOS users is not worth it for most developers.

What are some specific differences between iOS 5 and iOS 6, when it comes to app development?

The biggest by a long shot for me is UICollectionView. The open source drop-in replacement to get it working on sub iOS 6 is a fantastic effort, but it's not there yet (animation).

One thing that I find incredibly fast and easy to do on iOS6 vs. iOS5 is implementing post-to-Facebook (and Weibo) using the new Social Framework. In iOS5, you would have to

- Register your app on Facebook

- Integrate the FB SDK (or maybe a third-party wrapper)

- Implement various authentication/delegates/callbacks

- Test that you did all of these things correctly

This might not sound like a big deal but it does save some time.

Not that I disagree that iOS 5 was obsolete the second that iOS 6 was released (the numbers agree with us), but...

    if (NSClassFromString(@"UICollectionView")) // or something that makes a lot more sense, but that came to mind immediately
    {
        // facebook stuff
    }

    // Twitter.framework stuff

Uicollectionview was already mentioned, so I'll add autolayout to the list. Incredibly useful feature that gets rid of a lot of brittle code.

Aside from UICollectionView and AutoLayout that were mentioned, there is much easier way to localize the app (one storyboard and many "strings" files, more ways to easily customize UI elements, and a few ARC things (no more manually managing dispatch queues, zeroing weak references, etc.)

and a few ARC things

According to this document [1]: ARC is fully supported in iOS 5, and there aren't any iOS-6-only Objective-C features.

http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#releasenotes/Objecti...

There are a few iOS 6 ARC specific features. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12730202/do-you-need-to-r...

Yeah. GCD queues are now Objective-C classes IIRC.

If you have an iOS developer account you can view the What's New document at https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/releasenotes/General...

For this particular app, attributed strings are probably going to be the big thing.

iPad 1 is stuck on iOS 5, which is 17 million units according to this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPad

And there are over 400 million iOS devices. If you think you can get a large enough percentage of iPad 1 users to make it worth you while then develop for it. I'd much rather spend my time ensuring it works well on 300+ million other devices.

I smell some false dichotomy here. I don't know much about iOS development, but it sounds baffling to hear that iOS 6 is so different that it would take "hundred of hours" just to make sure the app is usable on the previous release.

As always, depends what you're doing, but this is not a crazy statement.

There are certainly fewer bombshells in iOS6 than iOS 5, but it's no stretch to say that adopting iOS 5 early on was worth 100s of hours -- it had huge improvements for dev.

Also keep in mind that the fewer OS versions you target the less testing you have to do.

And what makes you think this "stuck in iPad 1" user base is the target for a paid for tech geek Magazine by Marco?

I still only have my iPad 1. I don't use it often enough (maybe 10 hours a year) to justify getting a newer one.

I mean, it's good entertainment on a plane, but otherwise it's just a handy thing to lend to non-technical people who are uncomfortable with keyboards. If I'm not in front of my computer, my phone is more useful for getting to the web.

It sounds like you don't use it enough to justify having that one!

... but basically what you said backs up the target audience argument.

>If I'm not in front of my computer, my phone is more useful for getting to the web.

Outside the house maybe.

In the bedroom/sofa/crapper the iPad cannot be beat by the phone or the laptop, though.

What it does is, it frees you from having to be tied to a chair and office in your own house, for browsing, checking your mail and reading stuff.

what I find really weird is why iOS 6 doesn't run on iPad 1? I know there's an issue with memory, but I think if you disable background apps you essentially get past that.

Apps that have hundreds of thousands of daily users are already seeing over 80% of their users are on iOS 6

Link(s) please.

I work on ScoreMobile and we're at 79%. Probably over 80% by now.

60% of Pocket users in five days. http://getpocket.com/blog/2012/09/more-than-60-of-pockets-da...

http://david-smith.org/iosversionstats/

http://insights.chitika.com/2012/ios-by-device/

The Build & Analyze podcasts (which the author of The Magazine hosts) has talked about it multiple times http://5by5.tv/buildanalyze/96

I do appear to have overstated the 80% number but at this point in time but by the end of the year I'd be shocked if it wasn't over 80% based on the rate of adoption and then number of iPhone 5 being sold.

The folks behind Discovr Music say they're at 77% iOS 6 adoption: http://discovr.info/2012/10/discovr-ios-6-adoption-tops-77-i...

What about iOS6 is necessary to display plain text in a magazine format? Was displaying plan text impossible to do before the miracle that is iOS6? It sure sounds like it based on these comments that a text based magazine can only be available on iOS6.

Actually iOS 6 does introduce a set of new APIs for attributed strings that would make something like this a lot more performant and obviate the need to use web views. I wouldn't be surprised if that was one of the driving factors in making that the minimum target.

Well, a lot _easier_, anyway; you could in principle do it with Core Text before, and Marco probably has experience in this. He did mention on his podcast that he'd consider an iOS5 version if iOS6 exclusivity is a problem.

I would be agreeing with the other commenters suggesting that iOS6 adoption rates are good and blah, blah if I didn't have an iPad 1! Since I do, I'm fucked on this, and it's a bummer.

This is why I decided last week to sell my first gen iPad to Gazelle for $160. (Not intended to be a plug: see also Amazon, Apple, craigslist, eBay, uSell, and others.)

I am going to live without an iPad until this mini/nano/Air thing shows up, hopefully soon, and put the dollars toward one of those.

Or you can just wait a month until the authors post the content on their own site. Not unlike having HBO: you pay a premium for content available on HBO's terms, or wait a while until they eventually release it for digital download. In both cases, the choice is entirely on you.

You should actually try out iOS 6 maps: I find them to be much better than the original Google maps.

They're faster, use less data, and are much smoother. The directions are also a lot easier to follow since it adds turn by turn and you get to see the (animated) directions on the lock screen.

Next months cover story "Defending my choice of iOS to launch this magazine"

I am amused that by appealing to the tech audience Marco set his release up to be nitpicked not for content or concept but by platform choice. Fitting but almost too meta.

I think at least part of the reaction to his platform choice is the way he is branding and positioning it. Calling it simply "The Magazine" for "geeks like us" is bound to ruffle some feathers, because there are a lot of geeks out there (disclaimer: I am certainly one of them) who think that Apple, despite their admittedly unmatched ability to create delightful hardware designs, is the primary negative actor out there when it comes to limiting what "geeks like us" are allowed to do with our hardware. And to be clear, I'm not some card-carrying member of the FSF or anything, I think Stallman is far too extremist, but I agree with him as far as Apple's negative influence on computing freedom is concerned.

Had this been initially positioned with the iOS slant it will surely have given the backer and the exclusive platform it will exist for, I doubt you'd be seeing nearly as much grumbling about it.

This is the same Marco who doesn't know anyone who uses a PC to develop. "Geeks like us" means a much different thing to him than to a lot of people.

It is also the same guy able to speak about his server design decisions and for instance about his new SNB Xeons. So I guess even if he doesn't use PC he remotely connects to non-OSX systems. Moreover, I'm not living in the bay area or new york but even where I am, I see less and less PC around me. Myself, I personally use a PC but it runs OS X.

>I think Stallman is far too extremist

The more I see of Apple, Microsoft, and others, the less I think so. I certainly don't see eye-to-eye with him on everything, but it's becoming clear to me that we need alternatives that fit his criteria.

Cell phone and tablet operating systems that are completely open, easy to modify (and easy to distribute modifications), and easy to use from a consumer point of view would change my world. I'd use it in a heartbeat, and I dearly hope this is what Firefox OS will be.

I'd like to see a world that's more accommodating for Stallman. I'd also like to see a world that's less accommodating for Facebook et al.

>> "Cell phone and tablet operating systems that are completely open, easy to modify (and easy to distribute modifications), and easy to use from a consumer point of view would change my world. I'd use it in a heartbeat, and I dearly hope this is what Firefox OS will be."

This is something most people would be excited to use. Problem is, it isn't going to happen. I would love it to but look at what happened on the desktop. Mobile looks like it's going the same way. From a consumer stand point closed is usually better - there are fewer problems, better service and little setup. People want this even more on a phone than they did on a PC.

A cheap device with tremendous ease of use and explicit details about security and how to deal with it would appeal to a set of informed consumers, and appeal wildly to a broad set of developers and hackers. I don't see a failure to gain traction among the "average" consumer to be a real problem with execution.

Cyanogenmod should fit most of your needs http://www.cyanogenmod.com

I mistakenly left off a key part-- it needs to manufactured with those goals in mind. Thank you, though. I'll certainly consider this if a viable alternative never arrives, but I'm downgrading from an awful Alcatel Android device to a "dumbphone" (and dropping my data plan) next week.

Ruffle the feathers of those proving the truth in the generation of self-entitlement.

What ruffles my feathers is the name itself--couldn't Marco find something a bit more imaginative and perhaps less pretentious than The Magazine? Or maybe he was aping Gruber with his The Talk Show... Or is it just some uber-geek inside joke?

Sounds good, I'd love to give it a try, but it appears to be tied to iOS. Confining what appears be minimalist text content to an app on a single platform seems a bit silly.

From what I understand, it uses Newsstand.

I don't use Android (so, please, correct me if I'm wrong), but I don't think Android has a single, unified Newsstand-like app to handle subscriptions and that kind of thing.

Google Play Magazines

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...

Well, there you go.

(I googled 'android newsstand alternative' to no avail).

Yea, I guess it is weird that this doesn't exist on Android.

Unfortunately US only at the moment.

Not sure what I find more irritating. US only or iOS only.

Both really. It's all one big step backwards.

Lots of apps and services and programs are US only or iOS only. It's just that few of them are the talk of HN on a Thursday morning.

I find the people that complain about 'US only' to be the most irritating.

Either move to the US already or code up your own.

Cool idea. I will move to US so I can read The Magazine. ;-)

It was released in Australia this week. I have to think other places are coming pretty soon.

Thanks for the link - just what I was looking for. Unfortunately it isn't available in the UK.

Isn't Google Play Magazines much different than Newstand? As I understand it Newstand is more of a folder and a framework for periodical applications, while Google Play Magazine is more akin to Google Books or Kindle in which you deliver content to them in a specific format and their application displays that content.

If I'm not wrong, Newstand allows for much more control of the user experience since you build the application yourself.

How is it silly? As he's stated numerous times before:

1. He is not an Android developer. He is an individual iOS developer. He doesn't have a fleet of freely-available Android developers at his command.

2. He doesn't have much free time, he spends a lot of time developing his iOS apps or doing his podcasts/website writing which provide him with substantial income.

3. He doesn't see an adequate business reason to support Android (profit vs skills or outsourcing vs annoyances).

Within the context he's laid out, why should he support Android?

I also think along the same lines as grandparent, however I would not suggest Android (as you seem to think), but the most obvious platform for news/magazines (text and images): html5.

But:

1. He did pay to have an Instapaper Android app developed.

2. Being the editor for a magazine seems like it will take up a lot of time to me (even though he seems blase about it). Finding writers, chasing them down at deadline time, etc.

3. The parent didn't mention Android. I think a lot of people would be happy with a web option.

He did not pay to have an Instapaper app developed for Android, the company that developed it did so on their own dime and he only gets a cut of the sale price.

People keep mentioning a web option, but Marco just has to use Newsstand on iOS and not care about billing, logins or what have you. He does some of these things with Instapaper, so he would have a good idea of the time and hassle involved.

You don't need to "support" any platform. It's a fucking blog that you have to pay for. HTTP Basic Auth and Recurly/Chargify/your favorite payment provider here and you "support" every platform in existence.

A magazine is not an 'app' and does not need to be treated as such.

Type-setting, layout, user experience. A magazine is not an app, but a magazine can be an app.

Sounds easy, you should go build it!

Seriously, sorry for the snark but that has been done and it is just not what Marco is doing here and now.

It is his experiment, and he is clearly willing to own its failure or success.

And clearly other people are willing to own their own opinions on his "experiment".

So we're just going to ignore the established purchasing habits of those with accounts that have pre-registered credit cards for argument's sake?

> A magazine is not an 'app' and does not need to be treated as such.

Ask anyone who is currently trying to stay afloat in the magazine industry and I think you'll get quite a different answer. I wouldn't be surprised if most magazines have almost all their growth in the past year or two thanks to redefining magazines as apps.

> why should he support Android?

Because a huge portion of his potential audience is inaccessible, due to his platform choice.

Maybe he doesn't care. There is no obligation when creating a product to reach the widest audience possible. Everyone when making mobile apps draws the support line somewhere.

Absolutely true. It's his decision which platforms he releases on. It just seems like such a waste of potential audience - iPhone isn't dominant any more, there are at least as many people on Android (especially us hackers) - and it does suck being on the Android side and not having access to this. But it's totally his decision.

you forgot 0. He's an Apple fanboy. The other reasons are just after the fact justifications.

So then where are the Android fans launching magazines exclusive to that platform if it's such a lucrative market and iOS exclusivity is motivated only by fanboyism?

Take a page out of Marco's book then. He built Instapaper, an app for taking content out it's original repository and redisplaying it an alternate format. Somebody just needs to get a subscription to The Magazine and copy the content into an iOS5/Android/Web friendly app for republication, he should be cool with it. You could call the app InstaMarco :)

Instapaper is no different than web browsers that reformat pages according to the user's wishes by changing fonts and colors, hiding ads or saving to an archive. The Instapaper server only saves the URL, title and maybe some other metadata; it does not store the contents of pages.

It does store the web page content. Among other reasons, it gets around paywalls, logins, etc. by uploading the page when you click your bookmarklet.

Okay, I didn't know that.

I think ksherlock is wrong. Marco explained somewhere that he doesn't store for a url the content only once (like the url serves as a hash), but stores the content of a page for every account uniquely (his database is somewhat 200 GB). I also did find this:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2336332

> Instapaper honors access. If you have access to that Article it will save it, if not then you won't get it.

But only when one has already access, doesn't it? When one hits a paywall without access and clicks the bookmarklet it would only show the login page in instapaper.

This is not correct; the bookmarklet sends along the contents of your browser at the time you click it. Thus it can get around paywalls without having to have your login info.

I believe Marco has said on his podcast that URLs added via the API do get slurped from his servers, but I'm not 100% certain on that.

In general, trying to sell content on the web is problematic. Lots of people who'll be willing to pay $1.99 a month for this by clicking a button, knowing that they can cancel the subscription trivially (and will be reminded by Apple that they have it every month), will not be so happy to pay $1.99 a month where they have to spend time filling in a credit card form, with considerable uncertainty about how they can cancel.

Hopefully platform exclusive stuff like this doesn't become popular.

Become popular? It's the state of nature of computing. Cross-platform is only a recent phenomenon.

I don't remember it ever being common to have to buy hardware from a specific vendor in order to read the news, a magazine or a book.

It's common for sources of entertainment and/or information to be platform-specific.

I don't think this is true (game consoles notwithstanding). Throughout history, there have been but a few mediums in use at a single time. Most of the time, all these platforms were supported. (Now, it's any number of content distributers on the web, DVD/CD and Blu Ray. 10 years ago, it was DVD and VHS.) The notion of products bound to a specific platform or medium rose primarily with the popularization of consumer computing, and software likely remains the most platform-specific content available.

So you owned a PC and not a Mac in the late 80s/90s then?

Hopefully other platforms will develop ecosystems and service platforms attractive to stuff like this.

I think the exclusivity factor to iOS might be part of the marketing angle.

"Did you read that latest article in The Magazine? Oh, I forgot you had an Android phone. Well then..... so I hear Angry Birds has a new game out."

Wasn't this why the internet was invented, to disseminate information in a platform agnostic fashion?

Being an app is just to provide a revenue source; if it was a web blog then it would be open to everyone for free. This is the free market at work, if you prefer free blogs then don't pay for it, if you want to pay for content that is very likely found elsewhere for free then the convenience is there in the app. It's the curation that you're paying for.

I hid newstand because I believe that everything I ever could possibly want to read is on the internet for free anyway.

It's why the World Wide Web was created.

The Internet is an underlying communications platform that was intended to be a set of robust, fault-tolerant, and distributed computer networks.

The WWW is specifically the intersection of HTML (markup) and HTTP (transport protocol) for document sharing over an underlying network protocol (generally TCP/IP on the Internet).

I would be all over this if there was a Kindle option. I don't like reading on LCD screens, especially when I have a gadget that is 100% dedicated to reading.

That would be very nice.

I primarily read Instapaper (Marco's more well-known creation) on my Kindle rather than my tablets or phone.

For all of the integration between Instapaper and Kindle, I think that it's a possibility.

Yeah, it's odd considering Marco already produces very nice Kindle articles out of Instapaper, so he's familiar with the format. And Kindle supports subscriptions.

In The Magazine FAQ Marco says he's looking at the options for Kindle. I'd be surprised if there's not a plan towards having it given Marco seems to be a very big fan of the e-ink Kindles.

This looks like material that I'd really like to read. Unfortunately I have no way to access it, since I don't own an iOS device.

I wonder why Marco wants to limit his readership to relatively small intersection between iOS 6 device owners and people who are interested in the subject matter. Isn't this rather restricting for him?

(edit: iOS 6)

What if he did have a big launch, with an app for android and a web version? What if it was a big failure and he lost more money than he made? Would that have made sense? This is a new product that he is testing the waters with. He chose the quickest and most effective way of doing this.

iOS is probably the easiest platform on which to do a subscription publication and reach a large audience. People are often unwilling to pay for subscription content on the web because they have to fill in a credit card form, and there can be problems with cancelling, and Android's subscription magazine thingy is US-only.

Protip: If you're searching in the app store, don't type "The Magazine", it won't come up. Instead use "The Magazine Marco" if you want to download.

Protip: If you're coming up with a name for your new app, don't choose such a ubiquitous name as "The Magazine".

An effective SEO strategy, mobile or web, will be a nightmare to develop/implement.

Counterpoint: maybe just name it what you think is the best name and assume you'll be able to figure out the rest.

Heh... my primary objection to the name "the magazine" is how unbelievably pompous it is. It implies that the magazine is a new concept that he created. Perhaps he can get a software patent on this new- what do you call it "mak-ah-seen" thing. :)

> It implies that the magazine is a new concept that he created.

Not really, it's more like The Transit App or Mail.app. Neither entity is trying to act like they invented transit or mailing. It's just a way of keeping it simple. IMO it's significantly more pompous to shit all over something because of the name.

Am I completely crazy or is there no way to cancel a subscription? I subscribed, but only to give it a shot during the 7 day trial. Currently it is set to auto-renew and charge me $1.99 after 7 days.

edit: Found out how to do it http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4098

What a RIDICULOUS process. I shouldn't have to google to find out how to do it in the first place.

Apple sends me an email periodically with a link to manage my Netflix and Hulu Plus subscriptions before they renew and charge me.

I haven't paid for anything on Newstand but I imagine it might work similarly.

It publishes four articles every two weeks for $1.99 per month with a 7-day free trial.

If I get a 7-day trial, how do I know that those 7 days will coincide with the 14 day article release cycle? This doesn't line up, as though it were designed to be confusing.

That sentence is worded strangely - talking about a future project you're organizing as though it's an object of someone else's which already exists. It sounds impersonal and odd. How about:

"The Magazine will publish eight articles per month at a price of $1.99, and we offer a one week free trial."

According to the App Store description, you get access to all back issues with the 7-day free trial.

So the optimal behavior is to wait a few months to use your free trial.

I guess it all depends on the person, but optimizing the optimal application of two one dollar bills is unlikely ever to be an optimal optimization of most of the target demographic's time, whether they realize it or not.

If I try it now, I get to see four articles for free. If I try it in two months (if it's still around), I get 16 articles for free. That seems like a much better sample of the content -- especially since if I was the publisher I would use my best articles for the launch and they might not be typical.

Sure, but you're withholding support to save two dollars. Most people's time is more valuable than that.

Indeed the full rate is close to a couple of ad-supported-magazine subscriptions, or less than 1 hour of pay for most of HN. My point was more about the confused wording of the value proposition than the value itself. Confused people spend money less than confident people.

Having just built a bathroom, I can say that in my situation, confused people spend way more money. Certainty with decisions is way cheaper in a building scenario.

A bathroom is a necessity, or a project where you have a definite end goal in mind. An entertainment magazine can simply be ignored in favor of other content.

This is neither here nor there, but I don't understand your "1 hour of pay" comment. Although it was ambiguous, I'm going to interpret it to mean that "most of HN" makes more than 24$ (equivalent to a one year subscription) per hour. I think that this is a gross exaggeration and fairly presumptuous. It find it doubtful that the majority of people on HN make such a sum.

Most people don't pull in money hand-over-fist. For many, 24$ is a non-trivial expense. If not in actuality than in perception.

Really? There's a marketing opportunity missed! Let's revise that sentence again:

"The Magazine will publish eight articles per month at a price of $1.99, and the one week free trial gives full access to back issues."

Why didn't he call his new magazine "The Echo Chamber"?

That’s accurate. Articles are peppered with first person pronouns. Minimalist on presentation AND content, sadly.

For those of you wondering why The Magazine is on iOS (first) and not a website, the answer is simple. Marco is just replicating the successful Instapaper business model:

http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-Readability-and-Instapaper...

You mean, "I sell an app for money, then I spend less than I make." This seems like a quite different business model than what's he's trying here, with a free app but paid subscriptions and paying authors and such.

The Instapaper model is much simpler... but it's clear Marco doesn't really like it much any more, since you only make money by selling the app once but it costs you to support those users forever. So "spend less than I make" eventually gets very difficult if sales trail off.

This is totally the same as Instapaper but instead of an app, it's magazine issues. All paid-subscriptions magazines still appear as free apps on iOS, but they either offer a free sample or a free trial.

In this case, it's a free trial, which makes sense when it's the first issue! But don't be surprised if The Magazine switches to a free sample. That's especially worth noting if you're expecting to optimize for a free trial.

My point is that Marco doesn't have any expertise selling advertising, as many would like him to do, and does have a lot of experience selling through the App Store. He's just keeping the business model as constant as possible.

Doing it as an iOS app like this also prevents you from doing "Share to Pocket / Readability" like you would be able to with a website -- keeps you from scraping the content out of the publishers site.

Ironic, eh?

Yeah, he should actively support his competitors...

And that word. I do not think it means what you think it means...

There was no suggestion above to add Pocket or Readability support to the iOS app, just that by picking iOS, he chose a distribution platform that keeps apps much like his own from scraping the content.

If all publications worked this way, Instapaper couldn't exist.

Why not support them? Pocket/Instapaper/Readability support is pretty much a given in most content apps these days. And blocking others from your content definitely goes against the spirit of Instapaper.

It is reminiscent of Microsoft's strategy tax. Making a product worse cause it may harm your other businesses.

It sure does have a Share to Instapaper button though.

Try searching for "The Magazine" in the App Store. Shows you how well Apple's search algorithms work. App Store SEO is a black box, and I'm not even sure how Marco would improve his ranking with a name like "The Magazine." *Note - iPad 1 can see the app in the App Store, but can't use it as it requires iOS 6.

It is a bit ambiguous, but I found it by searching for "the magazine geeks".

I guess we'll find out how far Apple is behind Google when it comes to search. I couldn't find the ranking for "The Magazine" because it was too far back. But presumably as it becomes more popular, it should move up in the rankings.

For example, when people search on Google, the pages that get clicked on move up in the rankings, until the most useful page it at the top. Hopefully, as people search for "The Magazine" and then download it it will move up in the rankings. But if it doesn't, it shows you how far behind Apple is. I think Google has done this for almost a decade.

I only partially agree. My suspicion is that the search algorithm -- like many text search algorithms -- drops articles, leaving only "magazine" as the search term, and then suddenly your algorithm is hosed. I think Apple should prioritize a title which, when you drop its articles, is an exact match for the search term, but I've seen other people argue that Apple needs to take into account popularity and star ratings in the result order, which they probably do. And at this point "The Magazine" isn't going to be nearly as popular as other things with "magazine" in the title.

While I appreciate the Zen nature of The Magazine as a title, for search algorithms it may be the equivalent of naming your company "There" (a place I worked at briefly): it's very clever, but it's damn hard to search for.

I think its improving, its within a few screens of the top search results. Not sure if because its getting good ratings or more downloads or if Apple is adjusting the results so that people who search for "The Magazine" will actually find the magazine. Currently at 1:15 pm, Oct 11 its at #54 on the iPad and #39 for the iPhone.

Thank you for making this comment so I didn't have to.

Obviously Marco's business plan will be to build up anticipation and demand on other platforms and announce them over time. But I don't see how that will work if the content stays invisible. He will probably need to periodically release sample articles on the web to generate buzz, notice he already did this for the Foreword article.

400 million iOS devices counts as "invisible" to you? I don't think you're really his target audience.

I figured I'd try it out, but lost my enthusiasm after unsuccessfully attempting to search for the app for five minutes.

Next time pick a distinctive name.

I've just been looking through the most popular Newsstand apps, and it suddenly occurred to me what's wrong with it: all the thumbnails are of print magazine covers, and they're all too small to read! If that doesn't scream "doing it wrong" I don't know what does.

The cover's meant to advertise the issue and make me want to buy it and I can't even read it. Why does Newsstand not have a "In this issue" tab when you preview the app? Why do I have to buy the whole issue instead of just an article? Why can't I have a central list of articles, that I can search, and favourite and share? The Newsstand API isn't aggressive enough. It needs to bring these publications into the future before we lose them.

Traditional print publications, which are producing quality journalism, need to adapt to new technology and release something like what Marco's doing here instead of trying to cram their paper format into an app with all the cruft that that entails.

> Why does Newsstand not have a "In this issue" tab when you preview the app?

You can download the app and preview the magazine.

> Why do I have to buy the whole issue instead of just an article?

Because nobody sells content like this, it's not just limited to magazines.

> Why can't I have a central list of articles, that I can search, and favourite and share?

Because magazine companies are trapped in the past.

I'm assuming most people on this thread have the Newsstand app buried on the last page and have explored how to remove it completely.

Sounds like Hacker News but on iOS and curated by Marco. While I'm sure he's a great guy, I get something pretty similar for free, right here.

Hacker Monthly (that publishes only entries appeared here in HN) now has an iPad app as well, I know it because it was developed by the company of my close friends where I'm an advisor and shareholder. They also provide an Android version for the same publishing platform.

You get something similar but completely different. Content is the king on this one, and if people are writing exclusive articles then you're either not going to see them for a month or at all.

I'll be downvoted for saying it, but this may be where the bloom comes off Marco's rose.

And, this comment's relevant to the HN crowd: most (if not all) successful entrepreneurs owe something to outside factors, but can develop a sort of "survivorship bias," whereby they feel like they're unduly sierra hotel.

Marco made a great app in Instapaper. Is his business and tech sector acumen as good as Instapaper?

We'll see.

First - this is easily, beyond a shadow of a doubt, one the best online Magazine App for the iPad. It's ironic how Time, New Yorker, Popular Mechanics, National Geographic - all offer such horrible experiences that I've deleted them from my iPad. Only NYT and "The Economist" aren't totally crappy (Though neither of them download in that background on my iOS 6 iPad 3... Grrr - But I bet Marco's App supports background downloading.)

Second - The article on Volatiles and Stables was worth an entire years subscription by itself. Marco made it easy for us to copy/paste the text - didn't trap the content like all those crappy magazine systems normally do. I've been madly copying that article and forwarding it to everyone in the company, with a prominent link to "The Magazine".

I'm guessing that He'll get at least 10 direct new subscriptions through me alone. WHo knows how many indirect subscriptions...

This could be great. Most digital magazines are terrible; while this won't solve the biggest problem (the magazine itself is a superior technology for reading), it could go a long ways towards a better reading experience. NEW YORKER I'M LOOKING AT YOU.

Is there any chance the writing will be any good, compared to the long-standing, excellent journalism that already exists? I'll keep getting my quality journalism from New Yorker, The Nation, The Guardian, etc.

> a modern iOS Newsstand publication for geeks like us that’s loosely about technology, but also gives tech writers a venue to explore other topics that like-minded geeks might find interesting.

Maybe there's a market for magazine type media. It seems so backwards and nostalgic. Print imposed restrictions on size, format, timelyness, access, single voice (no comments), among others. The description of "The Magazine" sounds like what HN or Reddit already is.

Also something so pretentious to call itself "The Magazine" is gonna be filled with poseur hacks. Wired already fills that role.

Print restrictions? Let's talk about side-by-side articles, bundling commentary essays with the main feature, boxed info and the whole shebang of stuff that just doesn't seem to work on the internet (and I sorta doubt it will work on tablets, but I'll give it a try). It's stuff that's basically possible thanks to two things: the magazine and broadsheet formats, and extensive editing.

Just because Internet is modern doesn't mean it doesn't come with restrictions of it's own. Even automated syndication things like Flipboard managed to emulate the look of a magazine, but not the feature that is editing and selection of content by someone competent, but who you only sort-of agree with.

Periodicals as applications is a silly idea, IMHO. I can't bring myself to support this, even though I am a happy Instapaper user.

Why is it a silly idea? Could you explain further?

In my opinion, this is like creating a magazine that can only be read while sitting in an Eames chair.

What an awesome line.

You mean like a radio show that is only on a special satellite radio?

I believe that content should be written for a platform. Which is why putting magazines on newsstand by putting images in an application hasn't sold well. This content targets the iOS using audience and is written for the format.

The tools iOS provide will at least allow them to test if selling an iOS only publication works.

> Read this, plus more, in The Magazine’s app for iPad®, iPhone®, and iPod touch®. Start your free, 1-week trial.

http://i.imgur.com/bINgC.png

What's with the "®"s? Seems like something Marco would complain about on B&A. (Also, that entire button should be clickable.)

It looks like boilerplate or c/p'd text. Note that "touch" is not capitalized either. This is too sloppy for Marco - or a serious indictment of the editorial standard we can expect.

Apple doesn't capitalize the T in iPod touch.

http://www.apple.com/ipod-touch/

That doesn't necessarily mean tech writers shouldn't though.

Of course it does. What justification would they have for using a different name capitalisation for the product?

It's fairly common. For instance, the NY Times style is to use "iPod Touch", "iPod Nano", and "Mac Mini" despite Apple's desires. The justification is that a proper noun in all lowercase can lead to unclear or ambiguous sentences.

Then they do so incorrectly, as Apple's list of registered trademarks clearly specifies the lowercase second word for these devices. [0]

So when the NY Times writes iPod Touch® [1] as they do on their mobile apps page they're not using the registered trademark as intended. It would be as incorrect as writing 'Blackberry' or 'MicroSoft'.

Apple is pretty touchy about this, with Section 4 of their 'Rules for Proper Use of Apple Trademarks' saying:

4. Always spell and capitalize Apple’s trademarks exactly as they are shown in the Apple Trademark List. Do not shorten or abbreviate Apple product names. Do not make up names that contain Apple trademarks. [2]

Obviously the enforcement of all that legalese is questionable and Apple has yet to burn down the doors of the NY Times, but I think it's fair to say that for the rest of us it would be correct to accept that not all company and product names follow grammatical rules and that when writing about them we should spell and capitalise them as the company intended rather than as we'd prefer.

[0] http://www.apple.com/legal/trademark/appletmlist.html

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/services/mobile/apps/

[2] http://www.apple.com/legal/trademark/guidelinesfor3rdparties...

Funny thing is that it doesn't seem like the actual registered trademark includes capitalization choice. They are all shown as all-caps in the PTOs database, for instance: Word Mark ITUNES MATCH

I believe the trademark is registered regardless of capitalisation, otherwise we'd have ridiculous situations like GoOgLe being non-infringing. So 'iTunes Match' is protected whether it's spelled 'ITUNES MATCH', 'iTUNES match' or whatever other combination you want.

That is however a separate issue to a company's preferred usage of its mark, where it has the prerogative to specify a preferred capitalisation. Again, the examples of 'Blackberry' and 'MicroSoft' being incorrect are relevant here.

As an aside, I love that we got into a debate on this. In what other community would such needless minutiae take up anyone's time? :)

I commonly see the misspelling "MicroSoft". Does anyone know if it was ever spelled that way? Originally it was "Micro-Soft", but did they ever use the intercaps form?

People commonly misspell "Xcode" and "Xbox", but I really hate it when they write "MAC" to refer Apple's Macintosh. It's not an acronym!

Apple also tries to promote the use of dropping the "the" and just referring to iPod, iPad, iPhone, etc. Should we also do this too, in deference to Apple?

"iPod touch" is the correct capitalization. http://www.apple.com/ipod-touch/

Interesting. The first search result on my search was capitalized, but now it isn't. Maybe I searched on DDG instead of Google and got a weird result.

I wonder whether they'll follow a style manual, though. I find it weird that "The Magazine" isn't italicized, but maybe they're following one that prefers magazine titles non-italicized.

EDIT: I think it was indeed DDG, which uses Wikipedia's weird autocapitalized titles. Or autotitle()'d, if you're a Python guy. I was too focused on the capitalization of the "t" that I didn't notice the erroneously capitalized "IPod".

The content is basically long-form hacker news, only made worse because now it's 'curated' with whatever lofty theoretical mission 'The Magazine' espouses. Nice looking app but those four articles bored me to the point of canceling my 7 day trial.

I don't see why this could not be released as a web app:

1. Access from any device; 2. Charging via PayPal isn't worse if not better than the App Store.

I can't seem to get the "start your free trial" link to function from the "Introduction" article.

That just launched the in-app purchase alert for me. Then when I paid I swiped right to access the menu. It could be that you have in-app purchase disabled on your device.

We want a kindle version !

if its for IOS only then I cant access it. Also, I question the "geeks like us" part. Why not just publish it as a downloadable PDF or EPUB or something along those lines ?

> Also, I question the "geeks like us" part.

If you question it, then you aren't who he is talking to.

For the record, it's not like he's claiming ownership of the word geek and assigning it a strict definition that involves owning an iOS device. He's saying it's designed for geeks like "us". A cross section of both "like Marco", and a geek.

Not exactly something to question.

> Why not just publish it as a downloadable PDF or EPUB or something along those lines ?

Because charging for it becomes much harder, it requires users to do more work, and it bypasses the hundreds of millions of iTunes accounts with credit cards already attached, something that has already been demonstrated to shoot up subscription rates.

Hopefully he can succeed where The Daily has failed.

I can't see to get the App Store URL to work.

I would be interested in a paid RSS option.

Is the content good?

>Introducing The Magazine: a modern iOS Newsstand publication for geeks like us that’s loosely about technology, but also gives tech writers a venue to explore other topics that like-minded geeks might find interesting.

So, also boring stuff about brewing coffee and typefaces?

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