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The Magazine: For geeks like us. By Marco Arment

itunes.apple.com

31–40 of 62 posts

Re: The Magazine: For geeks like us. By Marco Arment

#31
> "The Magazine: For geeks like us"

... geeks "like us" who only care about iOS and are willing to pay for content. Just to be accurate.

Not that there's anything wrong with paying for content. Every time you're confronted by an ad that you didn't volunteer to look at, you're paying for content.

But iOS-only seems like quite a limitation, and seems to contradict "for geeks like us" as the headline appears in HN.

Re: The Magazine: For geeks like us. By Marco Arment

#32
post #21

It doesn't surprise me that it takes an AAA iOS developer to finally make a good iOS magazine. It always struck me that Newsstand was a wasted potential: full of good publications trying to squeeze their paper format into an app instead of releasing the same content in a better format. Does anybody know of "good" Newsstand apps? This might be the first. I personally think Apple should release a more aggressive Newsst…

Not all of us magazine makers are coders. For a lot of us, its all about the words, not the format. My little iPad-only travel magazine isn't even in Newsstand because I have no idea how to code it, but our articles have won awards. The technology is not as important as the content. I wish I could do all those things you mentioned, but the fact is I have no idea how. A big magazine might be able to do them, but it re…

And that's precisely why Apple should be releasing an API to help you :) to reduce the burden of coding something yourself. That's one of the big problems right now. A lot of magazines are using Adobe InDesign to publish their iOS magazine apps, because that's all they know how to use but it's not helping anyone because, instead of making something new, Adobe bolted-on iOS publishing to a tool designed to make paper products. Someone else needs to step in and provide an appropriate tool that publishers (big or small) can use.

I think it's fair to say we all want to see a way good journalism can exist in a digital world. There's no reason these people need lose their jobs if we can crack this problem.

As an aside, care to share a link to your travel magazine? I'd be interested in checking it out. I'm travelling to Japan for the first time tomorrow.

Re: The Magazine: For geeks like us. By Marco Arment

#33

Another victim is seduced by a leading "The", causing any attempt to reference this publication to become a tragedy of grammar.

Look, man. Unique naming is hard in the Age of Google. And it could be worse, it could be "the.magazi.ne".

Unique naming is easy. For example, he could have called it "D12792B3-4D86-4E84-8B3C-13DBA7593282". Coming up with unique names that are also useful and good is perhaps somewhat harder.

Re: The Magazine: For geeks like us. By Marco Arment

#34
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, iPad 1 supports iOS6 no?

No, but I can't for the life of me figure out what technical reason is preventing Apple from allowing this. If an iPhone 3GS can run iOS6, I am perplexed why the same can't be true for the iPad 1.

The 3GS effectively has better hardware than the iPad 1.

CPU, RAM, etc. are basically the same, but the iPad has to drive about five times as many pixels. Thus it effectively has much less RAM, an underpowered CPU/GPU, etc.

It's an odd and unintuitive situation, but despite being newer than the 3GS, the original iPad is ultimately a less powerful device, when it comes to which apps and OS releases it can support.

I'm sure Apple could support iOS 6 if they wanted to, but I imagine they decided that it wasn't worth the tradeoffs (e.g. poor performance, RAM available to apps, resulting stability or lack thereof).

Re: The Magazine: For geeks like us. By Marco Arment

#35
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all of us magazine makers are coders. For a lot of us, its all about the words, not the format. My little iPad-only travel magazine isn't even in Newsstand because I have no idea how to code it, but our articles have won awards. The technology is not as important as the content. I wish I could do all those things you mentioned, but the fact is I have no idea how. A big magazine might be able to do them, but it re…

And that's precisely why Apple should be releasing an API to help you :) to reduce the burden of coding something yourself. That's one of the big problems right now. A lot of magazines are using Adobe InDesign to publish their iOS magazine apps, because that's all they know how to use but it's not helping anyone because, instead of making something new, Adobe bolted-on iOS publishing to a tool designed to make paper…

Yeah, people have been using InDesign for ages. Its unrealistic to expect those same people to learn how to code, which means hiring an entirely new team just to design the magazine for another medium. We're lucky in that we only publish for the iPad. Here's the link btw: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/overnight-buses-magazine/id49...

P.S. Have fun in Japan, let me know if you by any chance come back with a long, well written travel essay.

Re: The Magazine: For geeks like us. By Marco Arment

#36
post #31

> "The Magazine: For geeks like us" ... geeks "like us" who only care about iOS and are willing to pay for content. Just to be accurate. Not that there's anything wrong with paying for content. Every time you're confronted by an ad that you didn't volunteer to look at, you're paying for content. But iOS-only seems like quite a limitation, and seems to contradict "for geeks like us" as the headline appears in HN.

I don't have a problem paying for content, but I do have a problem with IOS-only. Even though I own an iPad, I like to have access to my reading material in multiple places. I spend a bunch more time looking at my Kindle, for example, and prefer the reading experience there to the iPad.

A decade ago, something like this published in the closed formats of the time (MS Word, maybe) would have met with a huge backlash. Today, it seems like Apple have convinced the market that 'closed' is OK, because it's well-designed and a little bit shiny. I think it's a real step backward, especially given the great open standards that are available (like HTML5) and other tools which give similar control with more accessibility (like PDF).

Re: The Magazine: For geeks like us. By Marco Arment

#38

Another victim is seduced by a leading "The", causing any attempt to reference this publication to become a tragedy of grammar.

The Strokes, The Walkmen and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs would like to have a word with you.

They're not called "The Band" though are they

Re: The Magazine: For geeks like us. By Marco Arment

#39
post #21

It doesn't surprise me that it takes an AAA iOS developer to finally make a good iOS magazine. It always struck me that Newsstand was a wasted potential: full of good publications trying to squeeze their paper format into an app instead of releasing the same content in a better format. Does anybody know of "good" Newsstand apps? This might be the first. I personally think Apple should release a more aggressive Newsst…

The Wired monthly releases are consistently excellent, but they're half a gig.

Re: The Magazine: For geeks like us. By Marco Arment

#40

Another victim is seduced by a leading "The", causing any attempt to reference this publication to become a tragedy of grammar.

The Strokes, The Walkmen and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs would like to have a word with you.

And especially "The The".
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