Because there is something to be said for downloading a magazine and then being able to view the content later on when you no longer have a wifi connection.

It is published by an organ owned by MIT; but is much closer to being a general-circulation tech magazine hovering somewhere between Scientific American and Wired. More VC/startup hagiography than the former; but less specific-gadget focus than the latter.

Very much unlike an academic journal in structure, tone, or content. Also not terribly closely linked to MIT faculty, though it will sometimes do writeups of things going on in the labs there.

Still a bit troublesome for a magazine with ‘technology’ in its name to misstep on the wild intertubes; but it isn’t as though MIT’s CS department was scratching its head in befuddlement at the problem…

This is lame, of course they do.

My guess as to the real motivation; look at what harvard is doing. Charging for academic content is changing if not going away.

What I want is to be able to read a webpage, as if I was reading it on my iPad’s Kindle app. I’d like to be able to read a site in offline mode.

If it’s a comic, each set of panels should fit in single screen without scrolling.

Above all, it should not look like Salon.com.

But the customer demanded an ‘app’. Never mind that a mobile website would have worked just as well, if not better.

Feh.

Someone should have taken a hard look at jquery mobile and phonegap.  That’ll be $250.00 for my basic consulting, thx.

Moreover, some web pages are designed to be used with a mouse and keyboard– the controls are too small to be used with fingers– the pinch zoom wastes precious fractions of  a second. Again, a well designed ipad app guarantees usability.

A good rule of thumb might be:
Is there a firefox plugin for your site? Do people use it? For instance, I’ve always used an fierfox plugin with ebay– it helps me organize my bidding. A well designed ebay app could be more convenient than the equivalent set of web pages.

But as for magazines? Just get rid of the pagination. Try to make the ads less intrusive. Don’t use Windows specific typography.

Good web design, especially using RSS, does the trick better than a team of app programmers– let the browsers and readers (and browser-based readers ;) do the heavy lifting of showing your good work.

How on earth did peeps think moving from successful universal formats to myriad little apps/device versions as anything but a step backwards? I totally see it for FB and other media that is intended to be interacted with many times everyday, I don’t use em, but I see why people would. But for a magazine? That’s like selling the same edition in newsprint fold and glossy bound mag at the same newsstand.

Honestly, while I suspect that calling on technologies unfamiliar to web designers(at least to do a genuinely decent job of something ‘applike’, not just an encapsulation of the system-provided webkit and a snapshot of your site) didn’t exactly help, and certainly makes continued existence in the face of a number like that impossible, I’d be inclined to suspect that a much higher number would have made those concerns melt away…

The initial stampede of publishers to iDevice specific delivery mechanisms was not driven so by some inadequacy of HTML; but by the comforting notion of a nice, clean, walled garden complete with built-in ‘buy’ buttons and cryptographic locks, away from the ghastly rabble of the internet with its low-value ads and wicked Google News devaluing your content.

As always, some ended up discovering that there weren’t enough customers inside the walled garden, or learning the hard way that the gardener not only wanted his 30%; but wanted it for any outside services sold through services sold inside; but the ones who found the money that they wanted seem undeterred by the terrors of Objective C.

If that’s the case, and subscriptions cost less than the single-copy equivalent, how did they ever think they were going to make money on this?

Lose money on every subscription but make it up in volume?