Josh Ong
The San Jose, Calif., software maker touts more than 600 titles created with its Digital Publishing Suite. The suite works in conjunction with Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 to produce digital publications for the iPad, Google Android tablets and Research in Motion's PlayBook.
“Digital Publishing Suite support for Newsstand will provide Adobe’s publishing customers the ability to deliver engaging content directly to the digital doorstep of subscribers on their iPads,†said Todd Teresi, vice president and general manager, Media Solutions, Adobe.
“Adobe technology is fundamental to the transformation taking place across publishing and now readers will be able to easily obtain their magazine and newspaper subscriptions in one location and get access to the latest issue as soon as it is published, further accelerating magazine adoption on tablet devices.â€
The company highlighted Newsstand subscriptions as being able to "significantly boost sales and advertising revenue by combining greater content discoverability with flexible payment options required by readers." Files created by Adobe's suite will be detected and automatically downloaded by Newsstand, while apps built with the software can add push notifications and icon covers.
Apple announced Newsstand in June as a key new feature of iOS 5. The app will serve as a folder that organizes and collects magazine and app subscription content with a bookshelf interface similar to that of iBooks. New issues will automatically be updated in the background, seamlessly showing up in the Newsstand folder. The app will also include a browse function that will let users search for and purchase new subscriptions.
Rumors of the app emerged last year, highlighting Apple's efforts to court publishers to the iPad. Publishers showed some initial resistance to Apple's business model, which takes a 30 percent cut and does not automatically provide subscriber personal information, but a number of them have since come on board with offering in-app subscriptions on the iPad.
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9 Comments
It's a bit like the never ending battle between Cable and Satellite TV.
They would rather not have it, but long term maybe they can't afford to not engage it.
Compulsory 'safe browsing' with only authorised web sites available via Safari is the way to go, at least long term.
The app will also include a browse function that will let users search for and purchase new subscriptions.
Will you be able to search the magazines you have downloaded or have purchased? These magazines seem like pretty poor resources if they aren't indexed which is disappointing if supposedly the best journalistic content will be locked up in these walled gardens. It feels like we'll be going back in time to using microfilm. I wish Apple would give these magazines in the News-stand app access to the spotlight APIs.
The best interface for magazines on iPad is Push Pop Press (bought up by Facebook), the second best is Adobe InDesign CS5's magazine design software. So here's to hoping more magazine makers build their magazines using this App and readers and users can get a decent and consistent magazine experience across unrelated publications.
My wish though was that Apple did a Newsstand App where all your magazines were stored, and they bought up those ex-Apple employees that created Push Pop Press to build not only the Newsstand but the free Push Pop publishing platform that magazines were required to use to get into Apple's Newsstand. I'm very sad only half of that dream came true, because that would have been perfect! Absolutely perfect.
One thing I really hate about Magazines on the iPad is that every freaking magazine has a different UI. I want to read your magazine, not learn how to use your app!
Wired's app is the most offensive in this regard is for hundreds of years, to move from one page to the next, you would go from left to right. Now they want you to scroll up and down for an article, and left and right between articles. It's infuriating!
Poking around Adobe's site I see no reference to pricing except "click here for a consultation."
that phrase automatically puts it out of my price range.
I have ONE magazine that I would love to offer for 99¢ but iTunes won't take PDF and ePub makes it look like crap because it is filled with graphics and photos.