Time Inc. shows off magazine tablet demo
Time Inc. has gotten in on the same game, showing off its version of a digimag running a touch-friendly issue of Sports Illustrated. The company not only buzzed everyone with the charming walkthough video — a floating hand paging through SI on a sleek, black tablet (embedded after the break) — but also had a live, functioning variation of the product up and running on a touchscreen HP laptop. The gist of the project seems to be that the publisher will be able to offer this digitized version of its magazines in some sort of agnostic format, one that would be accessible to PCs and phantom Apple tablets alike. Peter Kafka over at All Things D says that he had a chance to play with the demo and it was, “quite a bit of fun.” While it’s clear that both Time and Condé Nast are taking parallel routes to online publishing (the former is purely in concept mode, the latter is working with Adobe on digital versions of its titles as we speak), one thing is painfully clear: both companies have shockingly similar ideas about what the future of magazine publishing looks like. We hope Apple has been informed.
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Review
“a tablet type device would be great for magazines. But these concepts are all just attempts to recreate the same experience as a paper magazine. Do we really need it? We have websites that deliver content much better than magazines do. They’ll have to come up with something that innovates the magazine experience rather than just recreating it”
“If this is what the Apple tablet is gonna look like, I’m gonna be dissapointed. Can’t Apple make their products do anything more than swipe and fade in/out pictures? All I’ve gotta say is Apple had better try to emulate or at least offer more functionality in the tablet than what their iPhone/Touch offers today – I’m obviously alluding to the functinoality of the Courier here – because otherwise, this looks like a flop.”
“I’ll stick to paper magazines. If I wanted to watch short video clips, audio clips, and be subjected to animated advertising I’ll go to the website”
Videos: Watch Me Swipe The Time Inc. Tablet – Techcrunch
http://mashable.com/2009/11/19/wired-apple-tablet/#disqus_thread – Mashable