Gio Gutierrez

The “Unofficial” iPad Experience

// Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 10:14 am GMT -5 // Random

Scott Dadich, Creative Director for Wired describes the “revolution in the way people consume journalism” (well said) allowing consumption in many different places, “paper, mobile devices, iPhone, iPad…”, and that’s his whole list. The only non-paper PRODUCTS where this is feasible come from Apple. They collaborated with Jeremy Clark and the “Adobe Experience Design” team to build the thing, but the only viable handheld platform for this is the iPad. The entire video is on a device that is not the iPad.

Since they use InDesign to make the magazine, Adobe is helping them literally convert the magazine, layouts, etc, into an interactive format in Adobe AIR. This is the laziest, worst path to success for any publication. Look at the screen designs in the video. They are literally the magazine, ads and all. It is a horrible reading experience from every possible perspective. Chris Anderson in the technical notes describes how they’ll then be using the Adobe conversion tools to convert the AIR app to iPad/iPhone. Note that the title of the article is “The Wired Tablet App: A Video Demonstration” but the URL is “…/the-wired-ipad-app-a-video-demonstration.” Last minute editorial change perhaps?

Now compare all this to the experience described in the the Time magazine/Sport Illustrated concept for a digital magazine done in collaboration with The Wonderfactory, a design company that doesn’t sell any development tools. There’s your difference between professionals and the “Adobe Experience Team.”