André Fischer

iPad App Crisis

Apple’s iPad has been out for a few months now. I think it’s a neat device with lots of opportunities to integrate more aspects of our lives together. The media outlets, however, have yet to address a particular issue that could be crippling to the iPad medium, and that is cost and advertising.

The consumer pays for the app itself, say GQ Magazine or Time. $5, cha-ching. Then, on a monthly basis, an additional $5 per issue. Now, if that was all that associated, MAYBE I could see it doing fine. But, why would anyone pay $5 for an issue that was filled with advertisements? Advertisements that made the actual content navigation MORE difficult? Content for which I am paying?

Another pitfall: why pay more for the app’s digital issues than a paper subscription costs? OK ok..unless you just really hate paper or can’t imagine cutting down another tree, BUT why pay $60 a year what once cost you only $10-$20? It doesn’t make sense to me. In my mind, what matters most is the actual content, not the method of delivery. 

Any of us could go without any of these services because the internet is still the “information superhighway.”

Attempts to make free information more appealing by changing the way its delivered is a cool idea, much like bottled water. It will probably catch on..for a while. 

I must say, I agree with this guy. Everyone’s all “ooh” and “aah” about Wired Magazine’s first online edition; and I must say it does look cool “on paper”, as it were.

But apparently, the fact that the whole thing is ad-laden kind of riles me, possibly more than this guy, even: I can understand the need for ads to support the cost of producing a paper magazine. But an electronic one? Are the production costs of all that shiny, flashy-even-if-not-done-in-Flash, interactive stuff really that high?

Or are the buying readers just being taken for a ride (again)? As the author points out, getting your electronic magazine is actually going to end up costing significantly more than the old dead-tree variant. And with most of that information available for free on the Net, perhaps a good RSS reader is a better investment.

I’ll mull over this some more once I have my iPad in my eager, sweaty hands and can formulate a more informed opinion.