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One Vision for Magazine Content on the Apple Tablet

Honestly, if the main selling point of this device is e-reading, there are going to be a whole lot of angry people. I think it would be Apples biggest disappointment ever.
 
Vulpinemac said:
Every time a new article comes out about the rumored Apple Tablet, it seems the same old naysayers have to chime up with all the same excuses why a Tablet will never work simply because they are so narrow-minded that they can't conceive that there might be an enormous market for these in the enterprise, military, law enforcement and yes, even in the home. Honestly, anywhere you would find a pad of paper, a device like this could serve the same purpose.

Consider:
  1. The foreman of a manufacturing plant walks from station to station down the assembly line, inspecting, monitoring and annotating his checklist at each stop, with an automatic time stamp for each note. With wireless technology, the notes are immediately entered into his desktop computer and logged, eliminating the need to copy his notations and making his job significantly more efficient.
  2. A policeman writes up his report on a traffic stop, accident, burglary or other incident while away from his vehicle, perhaps even photographing evidence at the time for later use in court.
  3. Your wife is making dinner or preparing for a party when she discovers that she lacks some ingredients from her recipe, she taps the name of the ingredient and begins annotating a shopping list direct from the screen and carries the tablet along without ever having to write anything down on paper. As she's shopping, all she needs to do is tap the item to check off what she's picked up and soon she's on her way home without forgetting anything she went out after.
  4. The doctor makes his rounds of his patients, annotating their condition and linking to the equpment monitoring the patient's vitals, getting a snapshot of each one in passing without having to take any manual notes. He can focus on the patient and present a much better bedside manner while simultaneously updating prescriptions or recommending other changes to the patient's care -- without having to roll around a big cart and having to turn away to type on a keyboard.

In summary, the usefulness of such a device goes far beyond a mere ebook/emagazine reader. Steve Jobs may have said Apple has no interest in the 'Netbook' market, but that doesn't mean he can't create something that will replace the netbook.
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Just like there are those that are optimistic, there are those who love negativity. Don't let it get to ya. They will be on line before you . . :D
 
crees! said:
Adobe's CS5 version of Flash allows you to build native iPhone apps. So the claim of this zine running on multiple tablets could be that for an Apple device it runs as a native app, all other platforms are Flash-based.
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Interesting... This certainly negates a lot of claims that Adobe spends little development time on ensuring Apple compatibility.
 
Boring! Sorry to sound harsh, but you people comparing it to the Kindle/Nook and saying its light years away from it are total morons. Talk about comparing apples to oranges (no pun intended!). :rolleyes:

This is more interesting:

Apple Care voiding warranties of smokers

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10402711-71.html

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/11/21/smoking_may_void_applecare_warranty.html

ru5kc8.jpg
 
Imagine...

A lot of people carry and read magazines around with them throughout their day. Now, imagine carrying with you a magazine that could change into another magazine when you were through with it, or into a newspaper, or into any of your student text books, or into a media player. This magazine would be interactive and include supplimental media content. It will allow you to take notes and clip content to share. It could also turn into a face to face video phone that you can take anywhere and instantly turn on and off. It will become a peripheral tablet for your desktop from which you can literally drag items across with your fingers to your full display if you like.

This is what I envision for this device. It will run an OS powerful enough to all of these in a touch-friendly and intuitive environment. You will not even notice the OS is there, it will not be full OSX nor iphone OS, it will be unique and it will boot immediately upon hitting the "on" button.

My thoughts.
 
primmstereo said:
A lot of people carry and read magazines around with them throughout their day. Now, imagine carrying with you a magazine that could change into another magazine when you were through with it, or into a newspaper, or into any of your student text books, or into a media player. This magazine would be interactive and include supplimental media content. It will allow you to take notes and clip content to share. It could also turn into a face to face video phone that you can take anywhere and instantly turn on and off. It will become a peripheral tablet for your desktop from which you can literally drag items across with your fingers to your full display if you like.

This is what I envision for this device. It will run an OS powerful enough to all of these in a touch-friendly and intuitive environment. You will not even notice the OS is there, it will not be full OSX nor iphone OS, it will be unique and it will boot immediately upon hitting the "on" button.

My thoughts.
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Good thoughts . . :D
 
primmstereo said:
... imagine carrying with you a magazine that could change into another magazine when you were through with it, or into a newspaper, or into any of your student text books, or into a media player. This magazine would be interactive and include supplimental media content. It will allow you to take notes and clip content to share. It could also turn into a face to face video phone that you can take anywhere and instantly turn on and off....
Click to expand...

Sounds like a macbook.

s.
 
It's funny for them to design content for a product that doesn't exist :confused:

All the sheeps are watching..if just an ebook reader/media tablet then it's meh.

If full OSX integration then it's a definite BUY..baaa...baaa.. :D
 
KnightWRX said:
Guess why it's selling so well versus "other tablets", because if people need to carry around a backpack or bag, they'll just drag around a laptop. ;)
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Around half the adult population often carries around a bag without a laptop in it... e.g. most women. Laptop is way to big, heavy and slow.
 
firewood said:
Around half the adult population often carries around a bag without a laptop in it... e.g. most women. Laptop is way to big, heavy and slow.
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The tablet won't fit inside a purse, sorry. And I'm willing to bet a laptop will be significantly faster than a mobile tablet to boot. Combine all that with having to carry it in a laptop bag...
 
Multi-function with lots of surprises

Clearly, an Apple iTablet will be a multi-function device. Competing with Kindle, Nook et. all will only be one aspect of it. Will it "save" the publishing industry? Possibly not. That industry is so deeply out of synch with modern life that perhaps nothing or no one can save it. Buy a magazine off the shelf, tear off the pages with advertisements and then take note of what is left. Can you say that you got your money's worth?

Managing a 10" iTablet throughout the day might be an interesting challenge. It may give rise to a whole new line of products. Mine will be attached to my left forearm and connected my left hand such that I can control it with gestures. I've always admired those Comic Book characters with death ray devices on their forearms.

Others will use the touch sensitive back to achieve the same end while holding the iTablet in both hands, game controller style. Some will even learn to touch type using this interface. Still others will write on the screen using their fingers and a new version of short hand called "butter fingers."

There will be lots of little surprises like this. It's going to be fun -- really.
 
re: just a magazine on a screen

I didn't get that from the demo. If you noticed the graph they displayed, for example? It looked like the bars on the graph could change to reflect the content the user was interested in seeing. That's actually a pretty good example of a place where reading on a tablet could offer a superior experience to reading print copy. (They could allow interactive statistics, where the user sees a graph or chart that adjusts to a piece of data he/she inputs, or they make the chart change as the reader scrolls down different columns of a page, vs. having to display 2 different charts simultaneously.)

And also, though it wasn't shown in this demo, it seems obvious they could incorporate video. So for example, when you scroll over to an advertising page that advertises a new movie or video game, it could open up a little "preview" window showing a video clip of it.

Truthfully, I can't really imagine how any of these e-readers are going to offer anything THAT revolutionary. I think what we're going to wind up with is exactly what you suggest; a cross between traditional print media and web content. The biggest difference may simply be the "smoothness" of its operation, because everything is happening "offline" and isn't tied to translating a bunch of HTML code coupled with various web plug-ins that get launched.


MatthewCobb said:
This looks OK, but it is just a magazine on a screen. The really interesting thing will come when some bright spark works out a combination of print and web content that would show off the possibilities of the tablet - if Jobs ever OKs it - and provide ordinary folk a reason to buy it.
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re: smoking

No, not only is that totally off-topic for THIS discussion thread, but I read about that a few days ago and you're talking about 2 isolated cases - AND both are cases where we're not able to see photos or get any detailed information about what the techs actually saw inside those machines.

I guarantee that if a system had overheating problems due to the fans being all clogged up with gunk, and said gunk was much harder to clean off and looked far worse than what is "expected" for systems they service, they'd have every reason to claim the repair wasn't covered under warranty.

Did they need to site OSHA and complain specifically about it being "hazardous"? Not really ... but maybe the techs felt they needed to "go there" to get their point across and ensure Apple corporate didn't reverse their decision and force them to go back and deal with the ultra-nasty systems?


macshill said:
Boring! Sorry to sound harsh, but you people comparing it to the Kindle/Nook and saying its light years away from it are total morons. Talk about comparing apples to oranges (no pun intended!). :rolleyes:

This is more interesting:

Apple Care voiding warranties of smokers

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10402711-71.html

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/11/21/smoking_may_void_applecare_warranty.html

ru5kc8.jpg
Click to expand...
 
I find the prospect of an Apple Tablet with a strong emphasis on eBooks and eMagazines *very* exciting. I am an avid cook and having Fine Cooking magazine digitally delivered to a device such as what has been pictured is very exciting. I imagine the device will also be able to store archives of previous years which is the icing on the cake! I'm also an avid surfer and I would gladly throw down the ducats to get both Surfer and Surfing magazine digitally delivered. The ability to incorporate videos, interviews etc. into digitally delivered content would add a whole new dimension to magazines and secure my subscriptions for years to come.

Whether or not this device natively runs OS X is irrelevant to me. As I've mentioned in this thread and similar threads, it is easy enough to run OS X through a VNC client. I currently have a VNC client installed on my desktop and the app. Jadu installed on my iPhone, which gives full access to my desktop on my iPhone. BTW...when I say "full access" I mean the ability to create/modify Word, Excel documents or do anything I would normally do on my desktop only on my iPhone...and no, I am not an uber-geek. Point being, if you want OS X on your iPhone or iPad, there's an app. for that!
 
I foresee the death of the traditional website.

If Apple create a magazine publishing framework that allows end users to create a web magazine simply and effortlessly then the days of the traditional website are numbered.

Funny how things go in cycles.

I think LP framework in iTunes is the 'prototype' for such a concept.

I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't create a 'magazine stand' in iTunes and a Mac development application to publish to it.

It's like the app store all over again - but for magazines and newspapers. Naturally this time they'll allow your magazine to sit on your own domain as well but served from Apples new billion dollar server farm (Ahem, that's what it's going to be for !)
 
Flash-based "flipbooks" have been around for a few years now -- they are an utter failure (though there are enough companies promoting them that I wouldn't be surprised to find someone that would reply here claiming that they are, in fact, a success.)

Why haven't they caught on? Because the flipbook tries to duplicate the "magazine experience" online -- that is like trying to duplicate the magazine experience on TV, or radio.

The fact is that reading on a screen is a different medium than print, so it requires new thinking and a new approach that matches the medium. As an example, think about early television, where the TV producers took old radio programs and tried to duplicate them on TV -- some were successful simply because the new medium of television was a novelty. But this was a dead end.

A tablet won't save the newspaper or magazine industry, but it might create a whole new medium -- and that might save or create some new jobs for "old" media folk (like myself!).

Newspapers and magazines might disappear, then again they might not. Did TV kill off radio, or movies?
 
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