The Magazine is a digital magazine that is described as a “popular Maxim type entertainment magazine”, and it’s now available on the iPhone. Its first issue looks quite good and fits that description well.
It started out on Facebook, and already has a large readership there apparently. The new iPhone version contains ‘exclusive’ content, and here are some of its other features listed in its App Store description:
- Lifetime subscription – with new issues released ‘frequently’ and delivered instantly to your iPhone
- Complete access to all previous issues
- iPhone specific zoom and pan features
- Access to beautiful models and hotties
- Amazing stories you won’t believe
- Previews of the latest and future technology
- Sports & video game guides
- iPhone Game / App reviews
- Interactive contests
The first issue is 12 pages, which seems a tad short to me. I’m not sure I’d want to wade through a really long magazine on the iPhone, but a few more pages and some expanded content wouldn’t hurt. The content does seem to partially follow the Maxim / mens magazine formula. So in the first issue we get a mix of profiles / interviews with a couple of ‘hotties’, some short science and tech articles, a caption contest, and a page of iPhone app reviews.
The pages devoted to hotties are pretty tastefully done (no nudity, just SI swimsuit issue type photos), and the photography seems pretty good as well.
The Magazine displays a single page at a time with text and images at a fairly small size in order to fit the page. The text size is quite small in its initial view and, at least for me, requires a fair amount of zooming in and scrolling horizontally to read a full story. This is quite similar to the way its done on the popular Zinio digital magazines. I wish someone would try out a magazine in single column format for the iPhone, where you can read without horizontal scrolling – as I just don’t read much if I have to do a lot of that.
Two things that could immediately improve the navigation within the app and the overall experience would be: an ability to move between pages by flicking right or left (currently you have to use the forward and back buttons) and an option for viewing pages in landscape mode (right now, you can only see them in portrait mode).
I’d also like to see the content expand as the issues roll on – maybe adding some more in-depth articles (most all are fairly short in the first issue), and extending the topics covered to areas like books, movies, fitness and more. It would be nice to know what the planned publishing frequency is as well – I’d prefer to know that its i going to be monthly or weekly or whatever the case may be, rather than just seeing that new issues will be released ‘frequently’. To be fair, this may be something the publishers will determine when they have a few issues under their belt, but when possible, this would be a good thing to know.
Overall, I think The Magazine looks promising, a nice little diversion. Its second issue is due out today and I’m interested to see it. It is available now in the App Store at $1.99 – or you may even still be able to pick up a promo code to get it free, over at this forum thread at the everythingicafe site …
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TAGS: iphone apps
