Disappointed with magazines on the iPad? You’re not alone. A lot of people have been pretty disappointed with digital magazine offerings from major publishers over the last couple of months. Wired busted onto the iPad scene like gangbusters, but after that, it’s been a lot of cloning and poorly implemented magazine editions. Turns out, Apple may have noticed the lack of decent digital magazines as well, because rumor on the street has it that they’re working on an Xcode template to help developers create digital magazines.
Adobe has already tossed their hat into the ring with Digital Editions, an application that’s built to help publishers jump directly into the eBook and eMagazine world, while still using the tools they’ve grown accustomed to. They’ve gained a lot of traction in the market already, but an official offering from Apple might close the gap substantially.
I’m not going to lie—we’ve tossed around creating a digital magazine for the iPad, but as it stands, it’s just not cost-effective for us yet. If Apple were to create a simple template, and support in something like Pages, we’d be more than willing to throw our hat in the ring. As it stands now, a successful magazine not only needs great writers, but now it needs editors, graphic designers, videographers, photographers and programmers. Apple already has a bunch of applications that address things like videography and photography, as well as “desktop publishing,” so if they could wrap all of their applications up with a pretty bow that lets users publish digital magazines to the iPad, they might see a lot of innovation from startups and independent publishers.
Take a business like Beatweek as a prime example. Their digital magazine is great already, but it’d be even better if Apple helped them easily get their product into a digital magazine format and onto the iPad. Currently they’re publishing their magazine as a “podcast” in the iTunes store. The digital magazine is delivered to readers through iTunes as a PDF. While it’s been a great model to this point, hopefully Apple’s got publishers like Beatweek in mind with their Xcode “template.”
Article Via Electronista
