Questions: Magazine-style Content on the iPad

Hi everyone. I'm new here, don't consider myself a geek, nor am I an Apple user (I'm a PC/open source person so I hope you won't hold that against me). I am a content creator (automotive and travel editor) and am seeing immediate impact on my business coming from tablets in general and iPads in particular. I would like to ask your help.

In addition to being the editor of a traditional magazine (Chevy Enthusiast), I also am the editorial director of a website (Automotive Traveler) and we are beta testing a new non-Flash viewer designed to display magazine-style content. But it is content with a small difference. Since we have no plans for a print version, the content is designed landscape-style rather than portrait-style (like a traditional magazine or website). These layouts are designed from the start to be displayed on 4x3 or 16x9 laptops and now, the iPad. (From the start we decided to eliminate the Flash animated flipping pages seen in other digital magazines so that our viewer would work on an iPad.) You can say that our viewer is platform and browser agnostic.


Since I don't currently own an iPad (when I test new layouts I head to my local Best Buy five minutes from my home to see if I have any issues that need to be addressed) I would like to ask your help. One of the things I've already noticed on the iPad is that there appears to be no full-screen option like found on a PC when hitting F11. It's my understanding that in order to view content in a browser full screen on the iPad, you have to buy a third party browser through the App Store, like the Atomic Browser. Is this correct or is there a work around to get a full screen view with the iPad's built-in Safari browser? Or do you feel that it is essential that we develop an app to present our viewer in a full screen presentation?

(Are there any app writers here who would know how to accomplish this? If so, please contact me.)

I would like to ask iPad owners here reading this if you could take a quick look at Automotive Traveler, click on a few of the features, and leave comments on your experience. (If you hit the BACK button after reading a feature, it will take you to a page where you can leave a comment.) Please remember that we are still testing the viewer. We want your input to improve the viewing experience, especially telling us what features, from the perspective of being an iPad owner, you would like to see incorporated into our viewer.

We are trying to bridge what I call the digital divide between traditional ink-on-paper, vertically-oriented magazines and content specifically designed for the web. Complicating this project is how dedicated E-readers like the Kindle and Nook fit into the picture. As the price of the iPad and competitive tablets fall, I see such devices being relegated into the low-end category and with their limitations, end up selling for $50 or less (when non-Apple tablets move down under $200 and Apple products command their usual 2X price premium over their PC counterparts). Does anyone here see this scenario the same way I do?

One thing that I would like to say, before signing off, is that being as old as I am, 55, and being a magazine junkie, that like my peers, I still love reading a well-produced, glossy magazine. But I do see the future and it certainly won't be ink on paper, that's for sure. It's my belief that many readers under 25, may have never bought a magazine, preferring to get content – however unvetted it might be – from Internet sources. In my case so many younger auto enthusiasts have told me they've never bought Motor Trend, Car and Driver, or even niche, focused titles aimed at specific groups like import car owners. How true do you believe this to be? If you are under 25, have you never bought an enthusiast magazine?

Thanks for reading what's turned out to be a longer post than I anticipated. I hope that you will visit Automotive Traveler, that you'll leave both comments and suggestions to improve the presentation. Also feel free to contact me directly by clicking here.

Richard Truesdell
Editorial Director, Automotive Traveler
Editor, Chevy Enthusiast

#1. You need to go buy an iPad. I really don't understand how you expect to develop for a platform that your company doesn't own or have any means of testing without running out to a store after you've completed it.

#2. You need to get the Zinio app installed on it, then subscribe to National Geographic, Car and Driver, Smithsonian, and a few others. You apparently don't have a clue what can be achieved already on this device. While you probably don't have the budget of a National Geograhic, you surely need to know what sort of things can be done.

#3. The text doesn't scale. If you're 55 and you've gone to look at your web site at all on an iPad, then you already know that not a single one of us in that age range can read anything on your site except the ads. What, am I suppose to get a 2nd pair of glasses to be able to read that size font? I don't think so.

#4. Automotive Traveler is better than Chevy Enthusiast regarding being able to read the font size. But, you're still stuck in the box. The traditional magazine format box. Sorry, but i don't see any difference in the format of either one of those than the paper editions of every other mag on the market. Whoopee, so you put it into 16x9. It's the same old thing. I have to go through several full pages of ads and all the other junk none of us cares about to get to the index even? Then a few more pages of the same prior to getting to the content? You're still selling ads based on the same old prescription that is dying.

#5. If you're going to be web based instead of app based, where is scrolling? What is the obsessiveness with this box that says everything on the page has to fit within the confines of a single screen? Oh yeah, right, the advertisers want their ads to be the first thing recognized.

#6. Sorry, but the whole thing is in the same old tired box of a paper magazine. Where is the outside the box thinking of the new mediums? The controls are too small, the fonts are too tiny, there are too many pages of junk to be passed over to get to the content (that may be ok in paper, pages turn fast, but no one, especially the younger generation is going to accept loading multiple pages in a row of nothing but ads on the web before they give up and head for the next site).

Bob, thanks very much for taking the time to reply. I'm going to try my best to reply to your thought-provoking post on a point-by-point basis.

#1. You need to go buy an iPad. I really don't understand how you expect to develop for a platform that your company doesn't own or have any means of testing without running out to a store after you've completed it.

Possibly a valid point but strictly as a consumer I have a real problem with buying a device today, an iPad, that will likely cost substantially less shortly, and offer a more complete feature set. Remember the outcry when Apple dropped the price of the first-generation iPhone? Plus, we're developing our viewer to work on a wide variety of devices, not just the iPad. While selling three million iPads in 90 days is quite an accomplishment, that number is still very small compared to the installed base of laptops, netbooks, and desktop computers. (Apple is claiming that they will sell 28 million iPads in the next 12 months and this doesn't address the tablets coming from non-Apple vendors. In my opinion the iPad-sized tablet universe is about to explode in the next 12 months and we want to provide content for this base.)

#2. You need to get the Zinio app installed on it, then subscribe to National Geographic, Car and Driver, Smithsonian, and a few others. You apparently don't have a clue what can be achieved already on this device. While you probably don't have the budget of a National Geograhic, you surely need to know what sort of things can be done.

I have Zinio on my laptop, subscribe to many magazines, and am not impressed. Maybe the presentation is "better" on an iPad, because of the iPad's ability to rotate and view a single magazine page portrait-style but when you do that, you can't view and read a magazine's double-spread without scrolling and zooming. The Automotive Traveler magazine-style pages are designed from scratch, to be viewed on a computer, laptop, iPad/tablet screen. I think that's important. I think we should discuss this and the POV we each are approaching this topic.

Yes, you're right, we don't have the resources or budget of National Geographic <SMILE>. What we are trying to do is to develop a fast, low-overhead, low-cost viewer to allow publishers/content providers to port their content to an all-digital environment. Many magazines are shutting down because they haven't been able to make this transition.

#3. The text doesn't scale. If you're 55 and you've gone to look at your web site at all on an iPad, then you already know that not a single one of us in that age range can read anything on your site except the ads. What, am I suppose to get a 2nd pair of glasses to be able to read that size font? I don't think so.

Does this last statement mean that we both fall into the 50+ demographic? The text on the Automotive Traveler homepage does scale. There are two icons located on the upper right-hand side of the Automotive Traveler homepage to adjust font size. Does it scale enough? Maybe, maybe not. I can only go by what my IT teams tells me based on the screen size and resolution of those viewing the homepage and website. But if you're in my demographic, 50+, I would agree with you that the default font setting should be larger. I remember the day I woke up and could no longer read my laptop screen and needed to but my first pair of reading glasses. ****, it sucks getting old, doesn't it?

#4. Automotive Traveler is better than Chevy Enthusiast regarding being able to read the font size. But, you're still stuck in the box. The traditional magazine format box. Sorry, but i don't see any difference in the format of either one of those than the paper editions of every other mag on the market. Whoopee, so you put it into 16x9. It's the same old thing. I have to go through several full pages of ads and all the other junk none of us cares about to get to the index even? Then a few more pages of the same prior to getting to the content? You're still selling ads based on the same old prescription that is dying.

This is because Automotive Traveler's magazine-style content was designed from the start for the medium – both 4x3 and 16x9 computer screens -- and Chevy Enthusiast was designed for a traditional printed page. If you can't see the difference (and advantage of the Automotive Traveler presentation) then there's not much I can do about that. But let's talk about it in more detail. Are we actually talking about the same thing?

I'm not sure if you've reached the Automotive Traveler homepage, why you're saying that you have to go through several more pages to reach the magazine-style presentation. From the homepage, click on the representation of any one of the six featured items, and you go right to the viewer. What am I missing?

The issue of ads is that they are only presented in the web pages, not in the viewer. But you, and others who get content primarily from the web for free, have to understand that to produce content (pay writers, photographers, and designers as well as hosting bandwidth) either subscription or advertising revenue must be generated. Please, tell me what revenue model is out there that will allow us to generate the needed revenue to cover these costs? This is an issue that all publishers/content providers are trying to figure out.

#5. If you're going to be web based instead of app based, where is scrolling? What is the obsessiveness with this box that says everything on the page has to fit within the confines of a single screen? Oh yeah, right, the advertisers want their ads to be the first thing recognized.

Because that's the way editors like me think, we think in terms of a "page" and this page translates to the real estate provided now by the size and configuration of the computer screen. I ask, why is scrolling needed? This presentation has nothing to do with advertising, at least in our case. In a few weeks, you will see fully how we are addressing the issue of advertising. I hope this thread maintains itself so you and others in the iPad community see how we accomplish this. It's a balancing act so stick with us.

#6. Sorry, but the whole thing is in the same old tired box of a paper magazine. Where is the outside the box thinking of the new mediums? The controls are too small, the fonts are too tiny, there are too many pages of junk to be passed over to get to the content (that may be ok in paper, pages turn fast, but no one, especially the younger generation is going to accept loading multiple pages in a row of nothing but ads on the web before they give up and head for the next site).

See my response to point 4 above, with regard to how quickly you can access the "real" content.

You seem to be focusing on what we are doing on the Automotive Traveler website rather than how we are presenting the magazine-style content within the viewer. That's where we want to get you, reading the content in the viewer. But you may be pointing out navigation issues that we don't see because we are too close to the presentation, that it's not as intuitive as we think it is. (I'd love to talk with you and other iPad users more directly. Please E-mail me so we can communicate directly and possibly exchange phone numbers. We can learn from you, and conversely we can share our agenda -- as publishers/content providers -- with you. A better experience is what we're both after and we welcome your input.)

As far as the speed of our viewer is concerned, I believe it is among the quickest available, and we're working to make it faster. This was an issue three years ago when we published four quarterly issues of Automotive Traveler magazine. At that time we used software and hosting provided by an outside vendor which while it had many wonderful features, had limitations we needed to address, most of all, it was Flash-based, thus provided a poor iPad experience. There are some issues that we need to address in the four issues with respect to the way the layouts were transferred from the layout program to PDF to the old viewer. But right now we're looking forward to getting new magazine-style content produced and posted in our new viewer.

We're in the early stages of what promises to be a very long development process but because it's so early, you and others here can have a very substantial input on how we move forward. We see the iPad specifically and tablets in general, to be an important new delivery platform and we want to provide users of these devices with unique content that is optimized for them. The time to launch a niche print magazine like Automotive Traveler has passed and we're trying to embrace a world where ink on paper is no longer the only way to deliver this kind of content.

Thanks for your response.

Richard Truesdell
Editorial Director, Automotive Traveler
Editor, Chevy Enthusiast