Thoughts on the iPad-Only Newspaper The Daily

To much fanfare yesterday, The Daily was announced by Rupert Murdoch, head of News Corp., together with Eddy Cue, Apple vice president of Internet services. This is the first iPad-only daily news organ, and it represents, apparently, some $30 million in investment.

The Daily states that it was “built from scratch for the iPad,” and it shows. It takes advantage of a number of iPad features, includes 360-degree photos, videos, and even games, to provide a truly unique form of information. At one point, a photo zooms out, at another point a tap on a photo plays a video report, and at yet another, a small box shows the latest tweets on a topic.

But for all these innovations, The Daily is a crappy newspaper with little real news. The first issue has a cover story about the demonstrations in Egypt, a story about the snowstorms in the US, and not much else in the way of news. Most of the rest of the paper is gossip, fashion pictures, horoscopes, an advice column, movie reviews and games. Okay, there are a couple of short editorials, but they’re stuck in between gossip and fashion, and don’t say much anyway. There’s a lot of attention to sports; notably to the Super Bowl, which, it so happens, is on News Corp.-owned Fox TV this coming Sunday.

The sports section is, in fact, the largest part of the first issue of The Daily, suggesting the type of audience the newspaper is targeting: those who don’t care about news. After all, one of the biggest stories of the year – the Egypt demonstrations, and the day that Hosni Mubarak announced that he would not seek reelection – gets a total of five pages, of which about one page is text. One other page talks about demonstrations in neighboring Arab countries. Then another page talks about Mubarak’s son and “trophy wife.” (That one is a three-page article with one page worth of text.)

Frankly, if you were to print all of this out, it would probably make a total of 6-8 pages of a New York Times-sized newspaper. Not much news for a buck.

So a lot of hoopla for news designed for people who don’t read news. The content of The Daily is roughly what you get in European cities for free: newspapers like 20 Minutes in France and other countries, distributed for free near subway stations and in city centers, offer more news than The Daily. They, too, contain very little serious news, and are designed, as the name suggests, to be read in 20 minutes. The Daily seems to be targeting people who think that Reader’s Digest is something worth reading. My guess is, though, that the people who spend what they do to buy an iPad are a bit more educated than those who would consider the content of The Daily to be worthwhile.

If you don’t have an iPad, you can see some screenshots of The Daily on the paper’s blog. This gives a good idea of the share of the paper that covers “real” news; as of this writing, only one of the screenshots shows a news story, while the rest cover the “meat” of the paper: ephemera.

But they got the interface right. I hope others will see what The Daily has been done and improve their own news apps. I would very much like to have a daily “paper” on my iPad, but it has to have real news, not this kind of crap.

Update: today’s second issue has a tad more news, but I counted 25 pages of sports, mostly about the Super Bowl (on Fox TV), and the gossip/fashion/lifestyle crap is nearly as much.

Are All iPad Buyers Egotistical?

In an article in today’s New York Times, titled, “Applause, Please, for Early Adopters,” journalist Damon Darlin makes some misplaced assertions about iPad purchasers, and some mistaken comparisons. He discusses those who have bought the iPad, and offers a comparison with the iPhone:

A tough lesson about buying early could have been learned by the iPhone’s first buyers back in 2007. Those early adopters paid $600 for a phone. Two months later, Apple dropped the price to $400. Then, in June 2009, it introduced a better version, with twice the storage, for $200, one-third the original’s price.

What he seems to ignore, however, is that the iPhone is subsidized by phone companies in a complex financial agreement where Apple gets money from AT&T in exchange for the customers’ lock-in to that company’s phone contracts. The comparison of apples and oranges does not shed any light on potential future prices of iPads.

Granted, many people buy tech devices because of a desire to be up-to-date and ahead of the curve, but comparing prices for the iPad with those of a cellphone is disingenuous. It would be fairer to compare its price with that of, say, a laptop. The latter’s price will drop, over time, as new models are released, and new features are added, but the change will not be drastic.

I wonder if the author buys hardcover books – after all, they are just for “early adopters” who can’t wait for the paperbacks. Or new albums, at full price, before they turn into “budget-priced” discs. Yes, people pay a premium for newness; there’s nothing new about that. Unfortunately, one journalist used a very bad example to point out this well-known fact.

Take a Stroll Through Apple’s iBookstore

In my latest Macworld article, I take a stroll through the aisles of Apple’s iBookstore, the gateway to buying ebooks on the iPad. It’s ok, but I have some reservations. Check it out if you’re interested in ebooks.

Hear Me Discuss the iPad on the Tech Night Owl Live

On this week’s all-star episode, the iPad remains front and center, as Apple reports selling 500,000 units the very first week. What this means is that the international rollout is delayed until May.

But that didn’t stop columnist Kirk McElhearn from having one sent by a friend in the U.S. to his home in France, and so he gives you his hands-on experiences, including a direct comparison with the Amazon Kindle and his evaluation of the forthcoming iPhone 4.0 update.

Cutting-edge commentator Daniel Eran Dilger, of Roughly Drafted Magazine, is on hand to address those rumors that Adobe is poised to sue Apple over such problems as the lack of support for Flash on Apple’s mobile platform, and the controversial change in the developer’s license. This revised agreement evidently blocks using cross-platform tools or Flash to build iPhone apps.

NOW PLAYING! April 15, 2010 — Kirk McElhearn and Daniel Eran Dilger

Amazon’s Kindle App for iPad vs Apple’s iBooks

One of the main reasons I wanted to buy Apple’s iPad is to use the device as an ebook reader. I’m a big reader, and have thousands of books, but would like to be able to read some books on a portable device. Aside from any discussion of the merits of this, I thought I would look at the two main apps for reading ebooks, Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iBooks. (I’m leaving aside the many other apps that allow you to read free ebooks, or those which offer limited catalogs. I’m just looking at the two that let you read the broadest selection. And I won’t discuss selection here either, because the iPad is too new to have the selection that Amazon offers.)

First, Amazon currently has the edge in device ubiquity, with a Kindle app for the iPhone and iPod touch, as well as for the iPad. Apple’s iBooks will, however, be available for these devices in the fall, when the company releases a new version of their software. Amazon also, however, lets you read ebooks on their own device – the Kindle – or on a Mac or PC, with a program that that works on those platforms. Apple will presumably follow suit, with a Mac version of iBooks in the fall, and perhaps even a Windows version.

But the main question remains that of display. Reading an ebook, you want the broadest range of display options, so you can get the maximum reading pleasure from the books you buy.
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Dear New York Times: I Would Like to Pay for Your News, Please

So I got my iPad today. I’m impressed. (See the post below.)

But one thing I want to do is use it to read the news. As I wrote a while ago on Macworld, I think there are great opportunities to get people to pay for content – news and other types of web information – using this device.

So I downloaded the New York Times’ “Editors’ Choice” app, and I’m very disappointed. First, by the ads; there aren’t too many, yet, because this is new. But I’m sure there will be more. Second, by the limited number of stories available. I don’t want to read web sites with the iPad, unless they’re optimized for the device; but dedicated apps make sense.

However, if you don’t provide more news and no ads – for a fee – this app is essentially worthless. I don’t only want to read the stories you include, I want to read a lot of your stories (such as book reviews, but also stories from the archives).

So, please improve this app, then come up with a fair price. I’ll sign up right away.

An iPad in My Hands: First Impressions

I got my iPad today, shipped from the US. Rather than wait a month, I wanted to be able to check out this new device, and to be able to write about it as soon as possible. I’m looking forward to writing several articles about using the iPad for Macworld.

But first, I wanted to post some first impressions. Sure, there have been tons of iPad reviews, posted all over the web, and I don’t intend to write a full review, but rather just jot down some ideas that have crossed my mind after using the iPad for a few hours.

The device itself is very attractive, easy to hold, but it’s heavy. I can’t see using this while standing in the subway, or even using it for a long time without being able to rest it on something: your lap, a tilted case, or a table. Compared to the Kindle, the iPad is a heavyweight. The screen is glossy, which isn’t great, but it’s easy to find a good viewing angle. It doesn’t get very dirty during use, which surprises.

The display is amazing: bright, crisp, and fonts are very readable even at low sizes. (It’s 132 ppi, or about twice the resolution as a computer screen.) I can definitely see reading on this device for a long time.

Applications launch very quickly, for the most part, and are quite responsive. However, it’s clear that some apps I tried were rushed out and lack optimization; some apps have lag which surprises compared to the overall speed.

The built-in speaker, which is in the center of the device behind the aluminum back, sounds surprisingly good. I could see listening to music while using the device, just with the speaker, if I’m not too concerned about sound quality (ie, stereo sound). It is a great device for listening to audiobooks, and the sound of games and other interface feedback is excellent.

The iBooks app is very nice, but it’s pretty similar to the Kindle app. The selection of books available is much more limited than those from Amazon, and, while I’m a big reader, I couldn’t find any books that I really wanted to buy. There are too many publishers missing for now, but that will change soon. You can, however, get free books sourced from Project Gutenberg, and they are, for the most part, fine. (Though a complete Shakespeare is pretty much unusable because the table of contents is borked.)

What is most striking about this device is the impression I get of newness: not that the object itself is new, but that the way I’m using it is new. It’s very different from an iPhone or iPod touch, and it’s nothing like a computer. It really is a new category of device, or, as a friend said, the first “information appliance.”

I’ll post more after I’ve used the iPad for a few days. For now, I’m very, very impressed.

How iPad Application Pricing Will Change the App Store Game

With today marking the dawn of a new era in computing (I seriously believe this, but only time will tell), Apple’s App Store is going to deliver different results to developers than it did for the iPhone. While lots of apps will sell for the iPad, this store is going to stop being the El Dorado that it has been for many developers. The App Store took off for the iPhone and the iPod touch in part because of pricing: when it’s just a buck or two to try an app that, in the end, you’ll only use a few times, you’ll take the plunge without second thoughts. Developers have sold, in some cases, more than a million copies of their 99-cent apps. But this is all about to change.

When Apple announced the prices of the first apps they presented – Pages, Keynote and Numbers, from their iWork suite – they set a new bar for App Store pricing. Instead of being one or two dollars, they are ten dollars each. Granted, these apps are designed to do far more than any dollar app, but if you look at the current top sellers for the iPad in the App Store (yes, lots of people are buying apps before getting their iPads), you can see that prices range from a handful of one- or two-dollar apps to a few 20-buck programs, but the majority float around the 5- and 10-dollar range.

Many of these apps will sell well, but nothing like the sales some developers have seen for iPhone apps. When you spend a buck, you can do it without thinking; when you spend five or ten, that’s another ball game.

Now, you could think, “But the iPad will sell millions of units.” True. But so does the Mac. There are very few applications for Mac OS X that sell in the hundreds of thousands of units. Most shareware developers don’t make much money from their programming. Sure, there are a handful of people who make a living, but very few, far fewer than the number of almost industrial iPhone app developers who churn out dollar apps like sandwiches.

For iPad developers to make a living, they’re going to need to provide unique solutions that provide essential functionality, not fart apps or games that people will play a few times and then delete. We will see some of the latter, just because developers can make them. But I don’t think anyone should expect the same type of app purchasing on the iPad as the iPhone. Part of this is because of the pricing bar that’s been set, but also because this is not a pocket device that people will whip out when they have five minutes to wait on line at the bank. The iPad is more of a “couch” device, and usage will reflect that. Time will tell exactly what types of apps people really use, but developers shouldn’t expect to sell what they did on the iPhone.