Zinio

Zinio on the iPad is one of the major magazine apps you have been hearing about that is supposed to save traditional magazines as we know them. In summary it’s OK… I guess.

I like having Rolling Stone or The Advocate at my finger tips but I still think magazines need to break out of their one page articles constantly interrupted by 100s of two page advertisements like they use in the paper mags at least when they make these iPad editions or any other digital format for that matter.

Like take The Advocate as an example… They have these huge ass AIDS drug ads all over this magazine. They have had these since time began it seems.

Now why the hell do I have to thumb through two fucking pages of health warnings that accompany the one picture page of advertising for the drug? All that in order to find the article I was reading? I think I forgot what article I was reading frankly the second time it happened.

Why?

This is the iPad people if I want to read all that muck I could hit a link giving me all that required legalese if I so needed to really read that crap… Or how about the two page advertisement for one of the big fashion designers while I am reading the iPad in portrait mode one page at a time.

I would think with the right programming they would simply re-size the two page ad to fit the portrait mode screen orientation I am reading the magazine with since the iPad knows which way I am holding it but instead I have one page with a mostly blank pointless image and then BAM the next page with the designer brand on it. Sure it’s only a flip of the screen but it ruins the power of a two page ad.

Anyway, the single app reader to get all these mags in one place is a great idea unlike Time who is taking up unnecessary desktop space on my iPad with their own limited app that I probably will never really use.

I still think Zinio itself should be a little flashier and prettier in displaying on the iPad. Less linear and by the book and more internet savvy like and linkier and fucking interactive if you get my drift guys. Smarter like the iPad is smarter not just a dumb terminal to view a static paper like magazine through. That’s just silly eInk thinking there.