biggies with ipads

me and a friend have been developing an app that sells digital versions of various australasian magazines, would be great if you guys could check it out and give feedback/criticisms. Still early days as we only launched into the store over the last few months. We have some free magazines and other paid issues. The app is free to download

Currently have:
Remix
Remix US
Spook
Distilled
Faint (free)
Fjorde (free)
NZ performance car
(t)here

Most magazines are in the fashion/lifestyle genre and all are from aus/nz apart from (t)here which is an art magazine from New York.

linkage - http://itunes.apple.com/sg/app/fakeprint/id454952154?mt=8

thanks!

God the iPad needs more local magazine content. I absolutely love how the magazines translate to the device but fuckin territory restrictions totally ruin it.

Make one for windows phones trixy you nit! :>

Def reccomend checking out FakePrint..its a pretty sweet app

Whats the app called? (cbf'ed opening this window on the iPad )

Edit - nm, thought Maestro was talking about another app

Anyone know a good word processor app for an iPad?

Seems buggy as hell to me trixy Pages don't load. The store is empty (there was initially magazines there to choose). It all went tits up after I tried to download that free Remix magazine.

Apple's Pages is considered the best. Syncs with iCloud (obviously), opens/exports Word etc, clean, intuitive design.

Edit: See also it's spreadsheet companion Numbers, and PowerPoint cousin Keynote. Keynote is REALLY good actually.

Now that I've look at this app - sorry mate, but it's just terrible. Lets start with the first magazine I bought (and paid $5.29 for), NZ Performance Car - a mag I probably would buy, at least on a semi-regular basis if there's something that looks good on the cover.

Here's the first few pages, after I briefly get the cover flashing up, then it changes to this page by itself.


Uhhh....OK, real good look.


OK, that page is half in focus I guess. An improvement!


Spoke too soon.


Oh hey here's the cover again! What's that other page though?


What the christ?


And here we go, content finally. What happens when I zoom in so I can actually read it?


Oh. Totally unreadable.

You're simply doing a straight digital render of the magazine layouts straight out of pre-press or whatever, and this is a prime example of doing it all wrong and actually totally ignoring what the iPad platform offers you. If you want to see how it SHOULD be done, what you should be aiming for, look at mags like National Geographic, possibly the highest quality magazine app on the platform. Don't settle for mediocrity.

But the most important thing you're doing wrong? YOU'RE NOT USING NEWSSTAND. This dooms you to total failure. Fanboys aren't going to use you because it's an awful app and you're not using the Newsstand platform, and normal people aren't going to use you because you're not in Newsstand so they don't care and aren't going to see you.

As it stands, the $5.29 I just spent on this NZPC magazine is a total waste of money because it's purely unreadable. This is a terrible app and you should feel terrible for having anything to do with it.

I'm sorry to be so negative, but I don't have a single nice thing to say about it. (Apart from it's good to get more localised content like this). Great idea, terrible execution.

Hahahaha! Good on you Kris. That looks fucking ridiculous, and I am frankly surprised if anyone thinks it is good delivery. I thought Apple had reasonably stringent policies on app creation?



gc.

Well it's more about making sure apps don't breach app store developer rules, rather than weeding out apps that are just plain shitty. Mate I haven't even scratched the surface of how bad it is. It's like Fisher Price My First App or something.

damn.... at this point I should admit I only briefly checked out the free part on a friends iPad, which seemed fine

Yeah.....I've deleted it now. All it seemed to do was crash my iPad, which is not something I look for in an app.

Side question: The Newsstand store doesn't have a search box? Whaa?

Cheers, I wasn't sure about pages. I'll download it tonight and have a look. If I like it, I'll invest in a bluetooth keyboard as well.

Certainly, it leaves much to be desired at this point. Both improvements to the store, and actual publisher buy-in are needed.

Why should publishers care though?

Because this:
http://gigaom.com/apple/conde-nast-subscriptions-up-268-since-newsstand-launch/

Pages is the best I've seen for 99% of users. I'm certain there are others with more features, but Pages is beautiful and just works great and also integrates well.

I actually really like the Apple Dock Keyboard, because the F-Keys are replaced by iPad specific buttons like Home, volume controls etc. Pity they discontinued it, but they are still out there. Claim it doesn't fit iPad2, but it actually works fine, tablet just doesn't sit 100% perfectly, only about 98%.

no need to be sorry need to know the problems. I just bought NZPC on my ipad and it worked fine. With the half in focus pages they sometimes take a bit before they fully load - this is an issue we need to get looked at.

Re: the zooming issue. Def needs to be addressed and we know this, our developers are a fuck to deal with sometimes.

In regards to newsstand we have to get our developers to tweak our app so it's available in newsstand so that's definitely around the corner - it's essential i agree.

And i would love to make a nat geo app but i don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend on it per issue we ultimately want to develop more features that the ipad offers but it's much too expensive atm