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Wired Magazine for the iPad
Some of you may or may not know that Wired magazine has recently been publishing a digital iPad version of their print magazine for a few months now. If you haven’t seen it I highly recommend you try out an issue. It is quite an awesome experience. I love the interactive ads, the incorporation of video and extended article information. I believe that this is the future of publishing and I’m liking it. Since I come from a primarily print background that is a little heretical for me to say. I resisted the Kindle for a long time before I began to embrace the joy that is digital reading.
Now that I’ve professed my love for the medium and the product let me say a few things that I don’t like.
Okay, so my complaints are really just one. The file size of each issue is huge. Granted the amount of content may warrant it, but there’s a couple of reasons I’m not a fan of the size.
The download time can be excruciating. I’m at my parents for the holidays and they don’t share my interest in fast internet connections. It took a long time to download this latest issue. What makes it worse is that I thought I could just play a game or browse the internet on the iPad while it worked, but apparently it will not download in the background. So it pauses the download making it an even longer experience.
Secondly, I’m not sure I want to keep multiple issues at that size on my iPad from now until eternity. For some reason a print copy is easier to part with. Digital seems to me that I can keep it forever if I want because it doesn’t take up any “space”. Not physically anyway. I haven’t checked to see if I can back up old issues to my desktop, so I’ll admit this isn’t the most researched and thorough review you’ll find.
I have no doubt that Wired and its peers are constantly searching for a more optimized solution, but for now I can’t see this current setup as a long term mobile content solution.
Filed Under: Technology
