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Comment by JCB_K | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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...

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.

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. :)

So he can charge you.

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.

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.

>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).

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