Five things I want from an iPad Magazine & Poll – What do you think of Magazines on the 'Pad?

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Is it the saviour of the magazine industry, or isn’t it? Figures on iPad magazine sales have just been released on AdAge and we’re not quite sure whether it means that iPad magazines work, that they don’t work, or that they will work later.

In meantime, I just wanted to set down some of my preferences

1) Pictures that go right to the edge of the page
. Margins are a thing that was invented because of printers. No printing, no margins. Pictures on iPad just look loads better when they go to the edge of the screen, look at it yourself.

2) Facebook and Twitter integration
– so they’re easy to share with my friends, which is my first thought when I read a good story these days. Still.. I realise this is tricky because it involves magazine pages having urls, and if the brand is charging for their content on iPad it’s unlikely they’ll be giving it away for free on iPad…

3) Comments and alternative ways of navigating content – I love a good comments section and miss these on iPad magazines. And I find it hard to read things in that page after page way these days. How about a 10 top read section…?

4) Movey things – that’s a technical term I’ve just coined. I don’t mean adverts that fly up into your face or the equivalent of that jumpy irritating Microsoft Word paperclip, I mean things that respond to your touch… nice smooth interactive elements – images of gadgets that spin round and give you a 360 degree view, for example. Or panaoramic views that you
Okay, I’m sure that is more expensive but some things are just worth shelling out for.

5) The ability to buy different articles from different issues instead of all of one issue. Say I pay £3 and can then download any 30 articles from all of the Glamour archives from the past 10 years. What about that?

Do you think magazines work well on iPad? Fill in our poll and please tell us in the comments what features you think work well….


Anna Leach