When I first witnessed Wired magazine’s tablet app at SXSW this past March, I was thoroughly impressed. I wholeheartedly believed that they had successfully bridged the gap between analog and digital, causing me to finally catch the ‘iPad anticipation itch’. The app was gorgeous and fluid, chock full of image galleries, beautiful layouts, video, animation, and a seamless navigation system. It appeared, at first glance, to be the ultimate interactive magazine.
Cut to four months later; the iPad has been released, selling over 3 million units worldwide, and users have been able to test out these magazine apps for themselves. Today, I read Pete Cashmore’s review of the magazine apps on CNN.com, an article which almost fully restored my initial disparagement of the iPad .
Cashmore makes a compelling argument in regards to the ‘interactivity’ of the iPad magazine apps. He states that the apps inability to adopt common social media and interactive practices (i.e. ‘liking’ an article, the ability to share or add comments, search, and customization) have put iPad magazine apps “at risk of being the next CD-ROMs”.
Years ago, when I imagined (and developed) an interactive comic book for my undergraduate multimedia thesis, I simply thought of a digital comic that would enhance the readers experience, but not do much else. At that point, social media was just growing out of it’s infancy, and digital narratives hadn’t yet exploded on to the scene. So the idea of the digital comic just doing fancy things triggered by the users exploration seemed pretty high tech and uber interactive to me. And while it was an interactive experience, one that would immerse you into the ‘comic book world’, it didn’t engage users too far beyond some silly Flash tricks.
The reason I mention the comic is because back in March, while totally enthralled and excited by Wired’s magazine app, I stated to Victoria that they had ‘perfected’ the experience I had only dreamed about years ago as a college student. However, the problem, as Cashmore points out, is that this experience provides only a ‘passing nod to the rise of truly engaging media formats’. Certainly the super slick appearance and multimedia-rich iPad magazine apps would suit a digital comic book, but the way we consume news has changed so dramatically in the past ten years that the (unfortunately) passive apps do very little to appease a readership of content sharing, social-media junkies. Having cool animations, videos, and photo galleries activate as you read your magazine is pretty awesome, don’t get me wrong, but today’s definition of interactive media means so much more than just watching cool shit happen. I suppose it’s like a totally beautiful, but brain dead, supermodel. Sure its all glitz and glam on the outside, but if you can’t engage or share in an interesting dialogue – then what’s the point?
Fortunately, Cashmore does see hope for the future, and that, like any new technology, iPad app developers still have some kinks to work out before they really strike usability gold. A die hard Apple fan at heart, I’m holding out for the 2nd generation iPad before I completely throw the towel in.
Check out Cashmore’s article here.
