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Conde Nast brings The New Yorker to iPad, seven other magazines by month's end

Tim Stevens — Mon, 09 May 2011 09:35:00 EST

Yet another print powerhouse is bringing its wares to the iPad, all lining up neatly ahead of Apple's upcoming WWDC. First it was Time, then it was Hearst, and now Condè Nast is joining the fun with very similar terms to the other two. Starting this week with The New Yorker, digital versions will be available for free to current print edition subscribers. For new subscribers it's $5.99 per month or $59.99 a year, which gets you 47 issues. Seven other magazines from the publisher are coming by the end of May, including Wired and Vanity Fair, priced at $1.99 each or $19.99 annually. That matches up perfectly with the earlier announcements, meaning Apple and the publishers seem to finally be getting along. Isn't it nice when everyone gets along?

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Conde Nast brings The New Yorker to iPad, seven other magazines by month's end originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 May 2011 09:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iPad magazine sales numbers show steep decline over a few short months

Laura June — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 12:21:00 EST

Uh oh. Since its debut, the iPad has been variously hailed as the final nail in the coffin of all physical media and the savior of the magazine and newspaper industries. A few magazines, such as Wired, had truly impressive digital launches, with over 100,000 downloads of its first issue in June. It doesn't seem, however, that the stellar start was in any way sustainable. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, which collects magazine circulation data from companies willing to furnish numbers, all iPad magazines have seen fall offs in downloads over the past few months. Wired was averaging 31,000 downloads from July through September, had 22,000 and 23,000 respectively in October and November. Other magazines have seen similar declines: Vanity Fair sold 8,700 downloads of its November issue, down from an average of about 10,500 from August through October; GQ sold 11,000 copies, its worst showing yet. Now, not all magazines release their numbers, of course -- including The New Yorker, People, and Esquire -- but the numbers we do have seem to be indicating a trend of general decline after a short burst of excitement.

iPad magazine sales numbers show steep decline over a few short months originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Dec 2010 12:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Entelligence: Wired or tired?

Michael Gartenberg — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 17:30:00 EST

Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he'll explore where our industry is and where it's going -- on both micro and macro levels -- with the unique wit and insight only he can provide.

In the mid 90s, a friend of mine was involved in a project to recreate magazines like Time on CD-ROM for the multimedia PCs of the era. The results were pretty cool, but the CD-ROM versions of the publications hardly replaced their print counterparts. Content has since moved from optical disk to the web, and now the allure of tablet devices has created a market for specific newspaper and magazine apps -- the number one paid app for iPad is a digital version of Wired, which sold about 1,000 copies an hour the first day it was launched. While it's a much better effort than some of the other efforts, more than anything Wired for iPad shows the weaknesses of media apps and demonstrates how the tablet remains a still-imperfect medium to deliver this type of content.

Wired's efforts, like the CD-ROM efforts of the past, by has some cool features. A video clip of Toy Story 3 graces the cover and there are various interactive features, but more than anything else, it feels like a scanned in copy of the paper mag. Although navigation is better than most iPad magazines, it's still never clear when a screen should be scrolled down or just swiped horizontally.

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Entelligence: Wired or tired? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 13 Jun 2010 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Adobe's Digital Publishing Platform behind Wired app, uses CS5 tools and will be available to all

Paul Miller — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 10:19:00 EST

So, despite all that hubbub about Flash, Adobe managed to still deliver iPad magazine publishing tools to Wired after all... and it's not stopping there. Adobe's "digital viewer software" is the crux, which Adobe says it built in Apple's Objective C and will continue to maintain for the iPad while considering other platforms like the iPhone. Meanwhile, anything built matching this vaguely defined spec (Adobe's keeping a lot of details close to its chest right now) will be able to publish to this iPad reader software, along with any Flash 10.1 or AIR 2-compliant devices. HTML 5 will also come in to play somehow. Adobe will be releasing the publishing tech to Adobe Labs later this year, but you'll have to have Adobe InDesign CS5 to take advantage of it. Of course, none of this really solves the debate over 3rd party development tools for building iPad and iPhone apps, but it seems to sidestep it pretty handily.

Adobe's Digital Publishing Platform behind Wired app, uses CS5 tools and will be available to all originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Jun 2010 10:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Conde Nast stakes out 'leadership position' on iPad

Thomas Ricker — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 04:06:00 EST

This isn't the 80s anymore. It's not good enough to just pump out lusty hardware like the Walkman in order to drive generous profit streams. In the modern age of consumer electronics, it takes content and an entire ecosystem of software and services to keep customers locked in and buying your gear. That's why we're paying close attention to content deals for the suddenly hot tablet category of devices. Conde Nast has been teasing custom content for next generation tablets for months, lead by mock-ups of its Wired magazine property. So it's no surprise to hear Charles H. Townsend, president and CEO of Conde Nast say he wants to "take a leadership position," on Apple's iPad. According to the New York Times, the company will announce plans today (via an internal company memo) for its first custom iPad digital pubs: the April issue of GQ (there's already an iPhone app for that), followed by the June issues of Wired and Vanity Fair, and then The New Yorker and Glamour sometime in the summer. This first cut represents a broad swath of demographics as Conde Nast trials Apple's newest platform in order to see what works. We should also expect a variety of prices and advertising models during the initial experimentation period. Also noteworthy is Conde Nast's two-track development approach: the iPad version of Wired will be developed with Adobe (as we heard) but the others will be developed internally -- all the digital mags will be available via iTunes although Wired will also be made available in "non-iTunes formats." Assuming it finds a model that works, then Conde Nast plans to digitize other magazines in the fall.

Conde Nast stakes out 'leadership position' on iPad originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Mar 2010 04:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Wired's tablet app goes on show: developed on AIR, heading to the iPad (video)

Vlad Savov — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 05:11:00 EST

Mmm, digital magazines. They are the little bites of paid-for content that all the publishers believe we should be deeply enthralled with. Hoping to show us why exactly it is that we should all care (and pay) for prepackaged digital content is Wired's latest and most comprehensive demo of its tablet app on an unspecified 16:9 device. Setting aside hopefuls like the Joojoo and Adam for a moment, it is clear that this is ultimately intended for Apple's iPad -- the device that stands by far the biggest chance of making the digimag concept a commercial success. Interesting choice of development partner, then, as Condé Nast has opted to use Adobe's AIR platform for the underlying mechanics. Adobe promises its Packager for iPhone, part of CS5, will allow devs to easily port AIR apps to run natively on the iPad, but until Apple gives its official assent to the final code, nothing is guaranteed -- and Packager hasn't even officially shipped yet. As far as the app goes, it'll come with Twitter and Facebook integration, and navigation is geared toward the touching and swiping model so prevalent today. See it on video after the break.

Continue reading Wired's tablet app goes on show: developed on AIR, heading to the iPad (video)

Wired's tablet app goes on show: developed on AIR, heading to the iPad (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 17 Feb 2010 05:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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