Since Apple feel like they deserve 30% of every copy you get during the subscription, i'd say no.
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Adobe's Digital Publishing Suite to Support Newsstand for iOS 5
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Since Apple feel like they deserve 30% of every copy you get during the subscription, i'd say no.
Well, you and your edgy torrent kiddie friends obviously won't. But it's ok because you're cool, living the "whatever" lifestyle to the fullest.
[EDIT:
Oh, right. Forgot about that.]
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Sigh. This is exactly the wrong way to do this.
iOS needs a background download scheduler API, not this limited excuse for one that's restricted only to magazine subscriptions using in-app purchases. This is now basically at a point where Apple are saying devs can only use certain iOS APIs that don't touch Apple servers if they're willing to hand over 30% of their profits.
Fair play to Adobe for trying to create tools to make it work, but ultimately the subscription charge cut in in-app purchases is going to cripple the market for this - there's still no way to get an FT style HTML5 web app to update automatically either.
This sort of thing is very bad for the platform in the long term, and is an example of Apple putting their own internal politics above the users need.
Phazer
iOS needs a background download scheduler API, not this limited excuse for one that's restricted only to magazine subscriptions using in-app purchases. This is now basically at a point where Apple are saying devs can only use certain iOS APIs that don't touch Apple servers if they're willing to hand over 30% of their profits.
Fair play to Adobe for trying to create tools to make it work, but ultimately the subscription charge cut in in-app purchases is going to cripple the market for this - there's still no way to get an FT style HTML5 web app to update automatically either.
This sort of thing is very bad for the platform in the long term, and is an example of Apple putting their own internal politics above the users need.
Phazer
Since the Zinio app still supports in-app purchasing, they must already be giving Apple its 30%.
Not really
It's not flash-based. It's not even Flash-compatible, and it's not purported to be.
No the new Suite is not a paid upgrade; it is a paid service separate from any other Adobe service/software, and you have to contact Adobe directly to inquire about special pricing per monthly and annual downloads.
Will it be flash based?
Adobe's purchase of Macromedia made them lazy.
Is this new Suite a paid upgrade for premium or master collection 5.5 owners?
Or do you need to have their new subscription service?
It's not flash-based. It's not even Flash-compatible, and it's not purported to be.
No the new Suite is not a paid upgrade; it is a paid service separate from any other Adobe service/software, and you have to contact Adobe directly to inquire about special pricing per monthly and annual downloads.
Adobe Support
What rock have you been hiding under the past 20 years? Adobe has been a leading software developer for Apple and the Mac for 25 years. Open your eyes and get a clue.
What rock have you been hiding under the past 20 years? Adobe has been a leading software developer for Apple and the Mac for 25 years. Open your eyes and get a clue.
Digital Distribution to Save Magazines?
I'm really skeptical about "Digital Distribution" being the salvation for publishers. Has anyone researched the Adobe distribution system? From my reading of Adobe's terms it seems to me that for each issue there is a $10,000 up front fee plus an incremental "per download" fee. Add on top of that Apple taking a 30% cut for purchases.
How are smaller magazines supposed to afford this? How are the big publishers perceiving this? It seems that Apple is making the "Newstand" app non-removable as a way to help save the publishers...however with all the new costs associated with digital distribution I'm not sure how much help it'll be (especially considering that they're not going to get rid of their paper distribution yet so having an iPad app is an additional cost).
Do we have any publishers in the Macrumors forum? What do you guys think?
I'm really skeptical about "Digital Distribution" being the salvation for publishers. Has anyone researched the Adobe distribution system? From my reading of Adobe's terms it seems to me that for each issue there is a $10,000 up front fee plus an incremental "per download" fee. Add on top of that Apple taking a 30% cut for purchases.
How are smaller magazines supposed to afford this? How are the big publishers perceiving this? It seems that Apple is making the "Newstand" app non-removable as a way to help save the publishers...however with all the new costs associated with digital distribution I'm not sure how much help it'll be (especially considering that they're not going to get rid of their paper distribution yet so having an iPad app is an additional cost).
Do we have any publishers in the Macrumors forum? What do you guys think?
So is Newstand going to act just like folders? When you get more than 12 subscriptions, does it automatically create another Newstand icon??? I don't understand why Apple doesn't create the ability to scroll within a folder. It's annoying to have to create 3 separate folders for my games!
Adobe's DPS is a *bug factory*
I am a New Yorker subscriber (one of those DPS using Conde Nast publications) and the thing is PATHETIC. Huge file sizes (~150 MB) for issues that are 90% text, crashes constantly, stalls while loading new issues and you can't change the font size(!!!) because all the text is actually a bunch of JPEGs of text...
Dear magazine publishers -- please avoid Adobe's tools like the plague and hire some highly competent Cocoa Touch programmers to make a native iPad app. for you.
I am a New Yorker subscriber (one of those DPS using Conde Nast publications) and the thing is PATHETIC. Huge file sizes (~150 MB) for issues that are 90% text, crashes constantly, stalls while loading new issues and you can't change the font size(!!!) because all the text is actually a bunch of JPEGs of text...
Dear magazine publishers -- please avoid Adobe's tools like the plague and hire some highly competent Cocoa Touch programmers to make a native iPad app. for you.
Let me get this straight. You are saying a paltry $10,000 fee is going to be the deal breaker for digital publishing? Are you even aware of how much it costs to actually print a magazine? The equipment alone makes that little 10K laughably cheap. And that's before you get into all the other stuff involved in publishing a print edition and all the middle players involved getting their cuts.
The only thing holding digital publishing of magazines back right now is an effective distribution system and Newstand as the distribution system combined with Adobe's Digital Publishing Suite tightly integrated is like manna from heaven for publishers wanting to make the jump.
Really the only thing left is for Apple to continue selling more iPads to continue growing the addressable market.
Not a viable solution for the majority of publishers. What publishers want is a way to create their content up to a certain point (I.E. a general design layout with the art created and the content edited) and then choose which technology it will deploy to.
The scenario you're speaking of is most likely too costly to pull off. For example, our bosses expect us to deliver this type of technology in addition to what we are doing already (print and web) with the same amount of staff. Hiring another programmer or two simply isn't going to happen.
I don't think Adobe's system is as bad as you allude. They're patching and tweaking at a pretty fast rate currently, and I expect the bugs to decline. The only point I concede is on the file size, but a publisher could easily make that online content instead of offline embedded. That really has more to do with the New Yorker's approach than Adobe's system being busted. The overall system isn't ideal, but it's getting better.
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Publishers rarely own the printing equipment. It's usually a contracted printer. But yeah, printing a magazine is more pricy than the digital distribution by quite a margin.
And the system is probably less than $10,000 for smaller subscription bases. Probably closer to the 5-6k range.
(You can distribute single files for free without paying for anything other than the software btw. Limited, but very useful for testing or one off presentations.)
I was the production director at a magazine that had a 15 year publishing run. You don't buy printing equipment. You send your job to a printer (like RR Donnelley, for example), and they print it. You don't even need to visit for press checks anymore. Log in, upload PDFs of each page, and approve a virtual proof.
The largest cost in magazine printing is, paper, followed by mailing.
That said, the bigger publishers aren't going to use Adobe's system, because it is too constraining, and Adobe is asking for too much money on top of what Apple is asking for.
The concept would actually be a really good one for very small indie publishers, except that it costs WAY too much for them.
Our magazine shut down because it didn't make sense to pay postage and paper costs for a slowly-decreasing subscriber base (~70K at the peak). There was talk of moving all digital (this was 3 years ago) and continuing on, but advertisers will not pay $3000-$5000 per page for a magazine with XXK digital "subscribers," and people just won't pay for a digital version of most magazines like they will a physical version.
Maybe someday, but I can tell you that it makes more sense at this point to sell individual articles for 1-2 dollars as a secure PDF on a website than it does to buy in to Adobe and Apple's publishing schema.
If someone wants to read an indepth article on making salsa, or salsa dancing, or some guy named Ortego Salsa, they are more likely to pay 2 dollars for one article download than they are to pay 20 dollars for a subscription to a magazine they've never heard of that happens to have an article they might want to read.
And people don't give gift subscriptions to digital magazines because there is no incentive...anyone who would do that is smart enough to know that they should just give someone an iTunes or Amazon gift card, instead.
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The problem isn't actually the DPS, it's the way the New Yorker has been using it. They are afraid of people ripping their text out and posting it all over the internet, so they are converting their indesign pages to images, then importing them into a new document for DPS. That results in huge file sizes and slow loading times.
Basically, they don't want to use DPS, but they are being forced to by their parent company, so they are fine with seeing it fail, as long as it doesn't cost them too much money, and doesn't let their content get out for free.
Hey, we used to have a contract with RR Donnelley. (I definitely don't miss the onsite press checks.^_^)
Unfortunately, they sent printing to India to save on costs. Yeah it's definitely cheaper, but they aren't proactive problem solvers and often ship late. (As much as 2 weeks in some cases. That's for a monthly magazine BTW.) You get what you pay for.
Why do you as a consumer give a rats ass what Apples get from the price of a subscription? Has this stopped you from buying any of the apps?
Thank you!
Thank you for your input and sharing your story. My wife worked for a local women's publication and I can say that $10k is a big chunk for them. The magazine only made about $30k a month (in the good days) and the cost of printing/shipping takes about half that money...then you have to pay employees. I didn't see any discounts on Adobe's site for smaller publishers.
What worries me is that in the case of a small publisher, the cost of digital distribution (at least through Adobe) seems to be as much as physical distribution and that strikes me as absurd. Just wait until digital distribution is more ubiquitous...Adobe is going to leverage their monopoly in the design software market to increase the up-front and per-issue price. It's a real shame for the indie publishers because otherwise digital distribution could be really neat. Instead it appears that only the big corporations will be able to publish digitally in the future so really nothing has changed.
Thank you for your input and sharing your story. My wife worked for a local women's publication and I can say that $10k is a big chunk for them. The magazine only made about $30k a month (in the good days) and the cost of printing/shipping takes about half that money...then you have to pay employees. I didn't see any discounts on Adobe's site for smaller publishers.
What worries me is that in the case of a small publisher, the cost of digital distribution (at least through Adobe) seems to be as much as physical distribution and that strikes me as absurd. Just wait until digital distribution is more ubiquitous...Adobe is going to leverage their monopoly in the design software market to increase the up-front and per-issue price. It's a real shame for the indie publishers because otherwise digital distribution could be really neat. Instead it appears that only the big corporations will be able to publish digitally in the future so really nothing has changed.
Thank you for your input and sharing your story. My wife worked for a local women's publication and I can say that $10k is a big chunk for them. The magazine only made about $30k a month (in the good days) and the cost of printing/shipping takes about half that money...then you have to pay employees. I didn't see any discounts on Adobe's site for smaller publishers.
What worries me is that in the case of a small publisher, the cost of digital distribution (at least through Adobe) seems to be as much as physical distribution and that strikes me as absurd. Just wait until digital distribution is more ubiquitous...Adobe is going to leverage their monopoly in the design software market to increase the up-front and per-issue price. It's a real shame for the indie publishers because otherwise digital distribution could be really neat. Instead it appears that only the big corporations will be able to publish digitally in the future so really nothing has changed.
You are correct! No doubt about it. Adobe's price for digital publish is out of the question for most indie publishers. And IMO, that's exactly how the big publishers want it. They don't want this new way of business to be accessible to indie publishers.
It's my understanding (going by what Adobe employees have shared on their own forums) that they have another delivery idea in the works for those who want to hand off a stand alone file for free. Or something in the middle. They're understandably nebulous at this point, but something should be forthcoming soon, which claims to address your concern.
Had you cared to actually read that post you'd know it was in reply to my question whether Zinio subs might work with Newsstand or not.
well, after the initial launch of the DPS, they got a LOT of negative feedback about the price and the general structure of the system from a financial standpoint, and the "solution" was the $699+ a month subscription model.
"enterprise" was the original DPS system, and they never planned on making anything else. The public outcry at the cost forced them to offer the "pro" version, which is limited in some ways, and is a minimum of $699 a month, with a 12 month security deposit required (LOL) for the first year.
The response to that was an INCREASE in complaints, because it became clear that Adobe was clueless about what their clients really needed, and what's more, they didn't really care.
I've resigned myself to accepting that PDF is pretty much the best choice for the near future.
Someone's going to figure out a way to quickly and easily convert idml into functional, pretty html5, and adobe is going to be regretting their choices. It's just a matter of time.
This is news to me. Can you give me an example of a DPS publication where text is text, file sizes are small, fonts are re-sizable, etc.? I thought that all Conde Nast iPad publications were were a bunch of text pictures like the New Yorker.
A good counterexample is The Economist, which has a first rate iPad app, and I'll bet anything that it is a native iOS app.
This is Conde Nast we are talking about -- a large, high budget organization. To give you an idea of the budgets involved the recent NY Times digital initiative which included the iPad app and the porous nytimes.com paywall was $40 million -- with that you can hire dozens of first rate programers.
Sorry but online content is not viable -- it has to be off line/embedded -- I expect to be able to read the New Yorker on my daily subway commute as well as the occasional beach house vacation far from all internet connectivity. The file size can be simply reduced by not reproducing text as JPEGs -- keeping it text!
And if DPS is any good as you claim, please point to an example that shows it off in a good light -- the New Yorker and Wired sure as hell don't -- both are a crash happy mess of strung together JPEGs. Once you've started using The Economist iPad you will accept nothing less -- and companies like Conde Nast can damn well afford to produce something every bit as good as The Economist.
Sorry, I think this is a bad example, because I expect this to be a break even or net loss prospect. It certainly won't rescue them from their current woes anyway.
http://www.bnet.com/blog/technology...all-working-for-ya-no-we-didnt-think-so/11936
I'm certainly not implying Adobe's solution is perfect or even as good as the examples you give. What I am saying is it's a perfectly reasonable solution for small to medium sized businesses.
It's a very new platform (just got out of beta less than half a year ago) and I expect to see it have marked improvements.
Wired is OK, but I have more issues with how their designs lead you through the layout than any crashing issues. (It's been pretty stable in my use, but that's circumstantial at best.)
I don't see anything wrong with having the MAJORITY of the content loaded onto the tablet and then leaving that 5 minute video for the web to be downloaded. That's why things like Wired have a 560 meg download when it could be 1/4 that. You can still keep 95% of the interactivity and leave that last 5% of giant media files that takes up the majority of the app for the wi-fi connection. That won't change if you're doing a custom app through dozen programmers or if you use an off the shelf solution.