Via Engadget,
here.
Time inc is following in the footsteps of Conde Nast's digital magazine concept, showing off an early version on a nameless black tablet PC (Apple tablet, anyone?). The format would be accessible on PC's and touch tablet PC's alike (and, I assume, the hopefully soon-to-be-mentioned Apple tablet), and would hopefully revitalize the periodical industry. Check out the video of it in action
here.
If you ask me (you didn't, but you're reading this, so I assume you care about my opinion), this isn't going to do much for the magazine industry. It might be something cool to stall the slow, painful death of periodicals, but I don't think it's going to do all that much to stop it--and here's why. You need an expensive piece of equipment to run it, it's nothing you can't find on websites anyway, and if it's paid content (not available in a physical format like a magazine or book), piracy will hurt it immensely. Let me tackle these points one by one.
1. The equipment. Very, very few people have a touch capable PC because they are expensive, not useful, and more like toys than actual appliances. In order to take full (yes, full) advantage of this, consumers would need to adopt a new kind of technology that, right now, they only have in their phones. The Apple tablet could completely make this point moot if it really takes off, but unless they price it sub $500-$600, people won't bite. It needs to take a piece of the netbook market, otherwise if they price it in the same range is full notebooks, it better pack the same power...
2. This is nothing you can't find on websites already. Embedded videos, expansive news stories, real-time feeds...welcome to the internet. If you have a computer, you have this content.
3. Unlike physical content like a magazine or a book (which haven't been hurt too bad by piracy), once pirates get a hold of this format, that will be a death blow. Movies have physical copies, music does too--and while these sales are falling because of piracy, ultimately they will still sell to consumers who aren't tech savvy. This will be an all-digital format, which means tech savvy consumers will be their audience, most of whom have pirated something in their lives. With no physical format to form legs under, who's to say that once the digital format is cracked, people will still pay money for it?
I say good luck to Conde Nast and Time inc. They'll need it in this uphill battle.
Cheers,
Zach
