New+Notable
04.04.10
iPad: What's Your Review?
At first you notice the small things: how fast it really is; how the logo on the back helps you hold it with one hand; how intuitive it is to use. After playing with the iPad for a few days now, dissing it for being a big iPod touch is like dissing a convertible because the roof folds down.Its not a perfect device--there's a lot it does not do. It is a great one to consume content--its definitely a sofa-based device. While I found it a little uncomfortable trying to type a long email on your lap, I did find the iPad to be very easy to lean back with to surf and read with in the living room (anyone tested bathroom reading with it yet?).
Have you had a chance to play with the iPad? Downloaded any Apps?
Have you read the news with from Apps from USA Today, WSJ, or NY Times? Booked a flight to your next shoot with Kayak? Sketched a layout with SketchBook? Flipped through an issue of TIME, Pop Sci, Outside or GQ? Killed time reading a Marvel comic or watching an ABC TV show?
Lets hear from you. Whats you're take?
Update:
NYTime.com is reporting on WIRED's iPad debut. Read the story here and download the app here, and then let us know your thoughts.
[Updated: 05.26.10]
See related stories:
Apple iPad: It's Real--includes video prototypes from Wired & Interview
Played with one for about 30 minutes today.
+ Beautiful hi-res screen. Makes your laptop or monitor look decades out-of-date. Detailed for crisp text reading. Photos, comics, books and magazines look drop-dead gorgeous. No more fussing about off-white or thin paper stock. No more crabbing about the CMYK color spectrum. Images just look killer, even your regular old personal photos.
+ After flipping through a few comics, books and magazines, I have to say it was pleasurable simply being able to read these on the device, regardless of interactivity. Magazines in particular just look stunning. Very fun to page through and easy to zoom in and out. In fact, publications are probably better off not including interactivity until they're ready to do it in a smart, useful way (e.g. the Elements app). It's very easy to cram in useless interactivity when it's not worth the bother. (Ever use BD-Live while watching a Blu-Ray movie?)
- Smaller than I expected. The visible screen is maybe 6" by 8"?
- Heavier than I expected. A pound-and-a-half in one hand gets to you after 10 minutes.
- Publications would really benefit from some kind of overarching storefront. It's a bit of a mess right now. There's individual "tool" apps, full publication apps, publication web sites, then straight PDF-style copies of the magazine in the Zinio app. The Zinio app has a lot of titles, but not the easiest interface to find what you're looking for.
I like the Cool Hunting app. Although it's not a pure "print to iPad" transition, I think it's a nice look at how news can be delivered with style that doesn't sacrifice substance.
Great apps:
GQ (nicely done... best magazine app)
Yahoo
USA Today
Not so great:
Unimpressed by the Popular Science app... hard to navigate and not that much content.
The iPad is like Mr. Jobs said, "magical"... at easter lunch I had everyone crowded around me, owwing and ahhing.
I really enjoyed the Popular Science app, sure it was a little tricky finding some of the content (navigation is the biggest challenge for all these apps right now) but man was it fun exploring. I LOVE the way they hid the TOC at the bottom "underneath" the page (use 2 fingers to lift the page and find it!) and the way they are exploiting the functionality of scrolling text over an image and snapping diagram call-outs in place as you move them over the illustration is really smart. I especially love how they don't feel restricted by the size of each cell, for example the opener of the "How it Works" feature is one loooooooong horizontal scroll that takes up 3 screens to lead you into the story.
Above all Pop Sci works for me because its fearless! Its experimenting with this exciting new device and because we have no idea yet of the reader's habits and have no research to prove that the readers love/hate scrolling up/down vs left/right or using one finger to navigate to a page or 2 fingers to navigate to the next section, now is the time to be brave, smart designers and above all have some fun!
Neil - I gave Popular Science another shot. Very enjoyable. You were right... Thanks for making me a believer.
MagCulture shares a video demo of TIME, GQ, and POP SCI:
http://magculture.com/blog/?p=6160
POP SCI seems to be really turning the corner on what a magazine on a tablet could be. GQ and TIME seem like early web versions of posting the "multimedia" issue online.
There have been some very interesting discussions recently about the iPad and other such devices and their impact, not only on publication design, but also about the impact on publication designers. These links will take you two articles. One speaks about the future relevance of publication designers and the other is more about the big players and how well they're playing together ... or not. Interesting stuff ...
http://www.printmag.com/Article/Jobs-Saves
http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=143335
My new business venture, Invisions Technical Arts LLC launched its website today. Invisions Technical Arts LLC designs custom apps for the iPad.
To find out more visit www.invisionsta.com
I can say as a publication designer I like working with the iPad. One small headache out of the way... the printer. Also we are using Apple's SDK not Adobe to develop our apps.
Here is my initial iPad review:
http://jeffsingerphotography.com/blog/2010/04/16/ipad-the-future-of-everything-everywhere/
Jeff
Jeff,
Good point with the pricing problem... I have all the magazine apps out now and feel the pricing and business models are not working.
What EW has done is made their Must List available for free (Good find Josh). I am under the impression (put forth by Joe Zeff) that magazines need to offer smaller sections of their editorial content for 99 cents or less. People are familiar with the iTunes music pricing... give them that.
Below is a link to our almost completed iPad app:
http://www.invisionsta.com/theProduct.html
I think short sections of magazines can fit perfectly into our app frame work.
SI unveiled a version using HTML5 yesterday at Google (with another Terry McDonell video!):
http://tcrn.ch/aTZ8yp
This one's for laptops, desktops AND tablets...
I saw the SI HTML5 yesterday. Wow... brilliant evolution of the original idea. Being able to work cross-platform is genius.
Is anyone else out there working on tablet content?
You might have seen this, you might not have. Worth looking into if you have the time. download the PDF. Pretty interesting.
http://www.nngroup.com/reports/mobile/ipad/
from the site: "This report is based on usability studies with real users, reporting how they actually used a broad variety of iPad apps as well as websites accessed on the iPad.
We are making this report available for free to support our loyal audience of usability enthusiasts by providing them with early empirical data about iPad usability. This report is less thorough than our normal research reports and does not contain as many detailed and actionable design guidelines as we usually provide. We decided to publish the report anyway (as a donation to the community) because all experience from the last 30 years of usability shows that early usability findings have disproportionally large impact on design projects. "
Andrea,
Thank you x 10. Great report, very useful! Some interesting points. My team will definitely take it into consideration moving forward.
WIRED drops Flash and launches on the iPad. Each issue/app is $4.99 (same as print). NYTimes has a short article on the app here:
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/26/wired-introduces-a-rich-ipad-app/?src=twt&twt=NYTimesAd
Download the app here:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wired-magazine/id373903654?mt=8
Must. Download. Of. The. Day.
User reviews are gushing ... waiting for it to download. Would love to know more about this mysterious InDesign extension that magically converts layouts to tablet-friendly code.
More on the Wired app from Adobe (Nice little video at the bottom):
http://blogs.adobe.com/digitalpublishing/2010/05/introducing_wired_magazine_on_ipad.html