[Osmium]

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 Newsstand API and a best practices guide: e.g. by all means customise your design and experience but that doesn't mean you should release an app crammed full of pngs that weighs half a gig. Newsstand apps should be low bandwidth and text-centric. Why can't I search all my magazines from a central location? Why can't I see a central list of articles I've favourited from a variety of publications? As it stands, the only way to do this is with an RSS reader or Instapaper. I'd be happy to pay for quality journalism if it was in a format that's convenient and sensible.

[tstegart]

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 requires a total revamp of business practices and a restructuring of workflow. And that's hard when a magazine is staffed by people who will lose their jobs when digital magazines take off.

[Osmium]

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.

[tstegart]

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.

[kmfrk]

The New Yorker is pretty good now. It's available in Retina from a certain issue a few months back, too. What bothers me is that I don't have any way to make annotations, but that's what happens when you don't see a more universal framework for Newsstand magazines.

[nicholassmith]

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

[robterrell]

Half a gig per issue is exactly why I consider them subpar.