http://sadtrombone.com/

What happened wasn't a failure in content, but in delivery. Creating an app that essentially displays your mag content as a PDF in an app frame is more or less the pinnacle of blind stupidity.

Ideally, the traditional publishers will have an opportunity to rebuild their magazine display apps so they're more in keeping with expected UI.

For some decent examples of interactive UI that could be repurposed to display magazine content, it's worth looking at the BBC app, and Flipboard.

Coming from someone who used to own an iPad (we sold it after deciding it had just turned into a giant Pandora walkman for our living room). I downloaded a couple of the initial magazine-for-ipad offerings. They were great, but the problem I had with them was that they cost as much as buying from the news stand. If they really want to keep the ball rolling, they need to offer subscription rates at a deep discount (they are saving a ton of money by not printing these things! Why not pass that on to the consumer?). I've been iPad-less for a couple of months now, so maybe they've already started doing this?

Where's Will to tell us how all our base belong to Steve Jobs again?

@4 I don't have to.

You keep fixating on unit sales of Androids and I keep pointing out that advertising revenues and profit markups mean the iPad wins.

you're measuring the wrong things.

The Wired app wasn't just PDFs of the magazine; there were shiny things added, like videos and interactive whatnots. It was neat, but not neat enough to pay for every month.

@5, yes, I'm sure the ad revenues for a magazine that's lost 4/5 of its readership is spectacular.

We'll add "fixate" to the list of words you don't understand the meaning of.

Android schmandroid. The Atlantic Monthy, a (gasp!) paper magazine with a well-managed web presence (and an iPad version that they hope will eventually sell a fifth as many copies as the print edition) is not only profitable for the first time in decades but more profitable than it ever has been. What I am "fixated" on isn't Android, it's ink on paper.

You are a shithead. Seriously, touching your head leaves permanent finger marks (and twenty minutes' frantic handwashing after).

Agree with @2 - Nobody with any sense ever said the iPad was going to save magazines, and most of the magazine people had the least sense of all. They saw a product that was roughly the size and shape of a magazine, so they put a digital magazine on it (maybe added a video here or there), and charged as much or more than the print edition.

The only thing killing magazines is magazine publishers.

They are too damn expensive, that's why I don't buy them for my iPad. I don't generally buy magazines anymore anyway, but I would buy them for the iPad if they were less expensive.

Harold Ramis called it back in 1984.

@7 read ... the ... fine ... article.

They're referring to online readers from an initial app buy.

God, but you're clueless.

The only people who care about the Atlantic Monthly are people who quite frankly don't get it.

What @9 said - a Tablet subscription should run at a retail cost of maybe $2 max per annum - no physical delivery, high revenue from ad linkage and qualified customers, higher ad yield. You don't actually think the literal cost for a magazine is what you "pay", do you?

Why do you think The Stranger is free? It's the ads.

The problem is pretty simple: America is continuing to be dumbed down by a population that while consuming a hefty share of the world's resources, and having (on the whole) lots of money, that's so intellectually incurious that they're more willing to finance a life size (?) recreation of Noah's Ark than any sort of actual culture, not to mention books, or magazines that don't have tits in them. Or are about cars.

The internet hasn't stopped the trend; if anything it's encouraged a new form of semi-literacy, where people absorb less meaningful content in their lives even though it's being communicated through letters on screens.

Newspapers....sure, the internet has impacted them. Magazines, eh...

It's a little more complicated than raw circulation numbers, since ad impressions are worth more if the magazine has better quality consumer data about their readership. I wouldn't venture any guesses based on this data.

I know it's not fashionable to point out typos but... Is that number eleventy thousand in the last sentence?

iPads are really stupid

@15 luckily the WSJ and WaPo don't agree with you.

check out their Best of and Worst of lists for tech for 2010 and the upcoming 2011.