So, on Friday I had to take a quick business run down to San Diego. Because it
was last minute, I didn’t have a lot of flight choices that weren’t $14B tickets - so I booked myself on Southwest. (Or, as I like to call it, “The Greyhound of the Skies.”) Because it was a quick trip, I thought I’d pack light: no laptop, just the iPad. It’s been awhile since I was on an airline that has no internet, no tv-in-the-seat, no…uh….grown-up seating. So, to recap: it was me in a tube with two choices: play with the iPad offline, or Skymall. (Believe me, it was neck-in-neck there for a while.)
Before I left, I download two apps: the Kindle App for the iPad and the Wired App. I “whispersync’ed” my Kindle to my current book (the excellent “Zero History”), and the issue of Wired from the other month. (The one with Elon Musk on the cover.) The download of the apps? 2 minutes, the download of the *content*? About 30-40 minutes for both Zero History and the Wired issue. To be fair, 90% of the time was downloading the issue of Wired. I think they run their download servers on a couple of re-purposed 486’s in the back closet somewhere. The download experience of the 500M multimedia digital magazine was so awful and frustrating - especially with the iPad’s current single-tasking OS - that I seriously doubt I will ever download another issue for quite some time. (Note to Conde Nast: you have correctly identified that the future of periodical publishing is tablet computers: yay for you! 1000 points! However, you may want to actually prep your data center for scaling up to downloading *at least* the same number of concurrent users as your total subscriber base. -1000 points. Oh, and for extra credit: your load probably won’t be even, it will probably peak during the few days you release a new issue, so prep for that.)
On the plane, I had the opportunity to sit in the last internet disabled environment left on the planet, with a “digital media device” that can’t play music while I’m reading - so I was able to concentrate on both.
First, the Kindle app: I sincerely regret not actually bringing the Kindle. About 10 minutes into reading, my eyes began to tear up. 15 minutes in my head began to throb. This goes back to my original whining about the presentation of digital books, that reading long-form content on a glowing screen didn’t work in the late 90’s, and it sure doesn’t work on the larger tablets. There are folks out there that are claiming that “they comfortably read tons of books on their iPad Kindle app.” I submit either that either they are reading a paragraph at a time, or they’re too stubborn to admit that their eyes are slowly melting out of their head. When you read a web page, periodical, or watch a video on a glowing screen your eyes are constantly in motion: skimming the page, watching the action on screen, or reading a paragraph or two: It’s all about the micro-motion of the eyes - it keeps you from having to focus on what is, essentially, a lamp aimed directly at your face. With a book, however, it’s different. Your eyes settle into a pattern of reading that reduces or eliminates the micro-motion. Hard to remember this in the age of Twitter, but you are doing what used to be called “concentrating.” (I know, weird sounding word - but look it up, it’s true.) The concentration is what gets you - and eyestrain sets in. On long-form written content, it becomes very noticeable.
Which brings us to the Wired app from the Conde Nast people - this was a much different experience. The app is designed to draw your attention to several different areas at once, very much like a web experience. (It reminded of that weird, brief moment in time when “multimedia CD-ROMs” were all the rage: a mix of text, images, video and touchy-feely experiences.)
Once the damn content got loaded, Wired’s content layout translated perfectly to an application. The articles were easy to read (brief, remember?), and the way the app allowed me to navigate from article to article and section to section, while still prominently (and, somehow, unobtrusively) displaying their advertisers full page “glossy” ads was brilliant. Conde Nast, and Wired in particular, shows us that the printed periodical probably finally has a short shelf life - and trees can breathe a sigh of relief.
Next time I’m in an internet-free zone, though, my eReader is coming with me. I don’t want to undo my lasik.
- November 14
- , 2010
