Adobe's Magazine Solution for the iPad

Here is an informative video podcast from the Adobe evangelist Terry White: "Adobe Digital Publishing to the iPad: A First Look"

It is a 15 minute overview of the solution for building iPad apps that Adobe is building for magazine publishers. As you might expect there are some neat software solutions in the package, especially notable are tools for placing video in a document page, for interactive/panoramic 3D photos and model rotation, and for full integration of a web page in the document. Cool stuff.

But the thing that really struck me with this overview is that Adobe is taking a big, and surely quite a risky bet on the way that we are going to read and interact with digital magazines. Adobe have decided that the information architecture for the digital magazine will be very different from the conventional paginated, linear, sequence of the printed magazine. The Adobe solution is entirely built on the proposition that digital magazines should have a matrix style of layout, with pages arrayed left/right in the horizontal plane, and also up/down in vertical 'stacks'. This concept seems quite natural for a 'story', or a set of photos, or a collection of cartoons, which can be read in the vertical 'drop' whilst the ordered contents of the magazine move along in the horizontal mode. This sounds like a logical way of planning a magazine issue and there is apparently no reason why a digital magazine should not be so arranged. We have seen quite a few early magazine apps already employing this, washing-line, information layout, by no means all of them from Adobe's developers. I am not convinced that users really want to read magazines in this way; but if they do, Adobe will be in a very strong position because they now have a direct set of tools for bridging magazine publishers from the InDesign package with which most high-end magazines are now produced, directly to a file format and an information architecture for the iPad to which Adobe are building an extensive and complementary set of tools.

On the other hand, there are several reasons for thinking that this big bet on the next stage for magazine architecture could be the wrong way for magazines to go digital. Here are some:

1. Each magazine issue has to be precisely designed for the iPad, perhaps page by page, with adjustments and tweaks. The automatic layout tools in the package cannot guarantee a 100% result. This means more work in the publishing/design stage.
   
2. Twice over. The magazine on the iPad should really have two sets of pages adjusted for the different aspect ratios of the landscape and the portrait mode of viewing the device. Terry White suggests in the video that the digital magazine could be designed for presentation in only one orientation, but that really is not a good option for the iPad. Magazine apps, or even ordinary documents, that can only be read in landscape or portrait mode on the iPad feel very lame.
3. And then the magazine has to be re-engineered again for the iPhone (if that is supported) which has different proportions to the iPad.
   
4. Redesigned, or re-tweaked, many times more (it is probably much worse than you think) since magazine publishers will need to review and tweak the magazine layouts again (twice) for as many alternative devices as will require magazine apps with different aspect ratios.
5. Multi-page, multi-column, layouts work better in the horizontal plane than when read in vertical scroll mode. What do we do about that if the whole of the magazine is being matricised?
   
6. This bi-valent, matrix, layout is arguably not a good solution for magazine users, because the arrangement of a digital magazine not only changes in potentially confusing ways as one switches a device between landscape and portrait mode, but it also confuses the reader as one transitions between different devices, or from print to digital. The overhead imposed on a publisher in needing to refine designs for different versions on different screens, is bad enough, but it is outweighed by the cognitive 'overhead' for users who need to relearn how to navigate and understand a magazine which is being presented in different ways on different devices.
7. Are readers going to be happy with a reading style for magazines which is completely different from that used in reading newspapers or books? Are digital books meant to work as well in matrix mode as magazines? What about newspapers?
8. Will this matrix layout work efficiently when you have magazine apps, book apps and newspaper apps on the same screen; for there will soon be bigger touch screens? Or when we wish to consult two issues of the one magazine? Matrices hog space in both dimensions.

Adobe need to have an app-building solution for the magazine industry where their software is an essential and highly regarded creative tool, but there are reasons for doubting the generality and flexibility of their current approach. If there are a score or more Android hardware devices in the next year -- three, four, or five of which achieve some level of consumer acceptance -- Adobe's decision to couple the design of a digital magazine so closely to the screen size and the hardware spec. will be sorely tested.

Apple's Segmentation and Service Integration

There is a brilliant and highly perceptive article on Apple's strategy by Mark Sigal over at O'Reilly Radar. Read it all, but here is an excerpt:

In the real world of building products and attacking market opportunities, market segmentation is the process of defining and sub-dividing the aggregate, homogeneous market into addressable, targeted needs and aspirations buckets. Buckets that are in turn, thresholded by demographic, psychographic and/or budgetary constraints.

Market segmentation strategy enables a company to drive complete, unified product solutions that are harmonious with messaging, customer outreach, and channel strategies for selling and supporting customers.

In this regard, Apple's product strategy is a study in market segmentation. Versus merely trying to stuff a product, burrito-style, with as many different features as possible, they target specific user experiences, and build the product around that accordingly. Apple's segmentation strategy, and the folly of conventional wisdom

Mark points out that Apple has defined and addressed these market segments (or buckets) by delivering a range of devices which have differing but powerfully complementary and mutually attractive portability, wearability, pocketability modalities. Apple has brilliantly seen that in the age of mobile computing it is highly desirable to offer your users different styles and weights in which devices may be donned, doffed, cuddled, clutched or tethered; best not to have them 'lugged' or 'humped'. The way the devices look and the way they feel matters more if you are carrying them around. Their touchability, weight, balance, their reflectivity and colour -- all these are important with tools which are becoming almost a part of our wardrobe (or at least will often be taken out of our handbag). Style becomes an aspect of function when the objects are to be worn and carried. He also provides us with a helpful diagram of the range:






































Mark Sigal goes on to point out that this segmentation is complemented by highly effective integration at the level of the OS (to a degree -- making us parenthetically wonder when will iOS 4 move out towards the desktop and down towards the Nano?) and most importantly, and more universally, through the e-commerce platform iTunes and the media layer. The media layer is universal; we should reflect on the defensive strength that gives the Apple product skeleton. We should reflect on the accretive potential that this breadth of cultural objects gives to the device constellation. Because there are many, many more, choices at the media level it is essential for the Apple eco-system that the individual choices of consumers are shared within their individual device grouping. The media layer is where the consumers individual choice reigns supreme and it is in this sense the most 'open', the most consumer-committing, and potentially one of the most profitable aspects of the differentiation strategy.

Further, when you see how Apple has used its vertical integration of the iPod media player and the iTunes marketplace across all of its devices to create a billing relationship with 160 million consumers vis-à-vis simplified discovery, purchase and distribution, it provides a window into how they've facilitated a market segmentation approach that is simultaneously harmonious and discrete. Apple's segmentation strategy, and the folly of conventional wisdom

Harmony is key, the range and mutually supporting quality of the Apple product segmentation is making it very difficult for competitors to mount an effective challenge to the iPad, and to an extent to the iPhone. And we notice that hardly anybody is trying to mount a competitive challenge to the iPod Touch which may be the most effective, defensive/aggressive, unit in the Apple line-up.

Life is difficult for the consumer electronics and device manufactures who compete with Apple, but following Mark Sigal's analysis what are the implications for media owners?

1. The first point to understand is that Apple's strategy is broadly media friendly. Especially to media that wish to establish subscription services to Apple's large iTunes audience. The device manufacturer and the mobile network operator may be in direct competition with Apple, but the media producer should aim at a symbiotic relationship with the leading mobile media platform.
   
2. Furthermore the Apple strategy is working and it needs to be followed. But notice that this does not mean that a media owner should aim at segmentation at the service level. Quite the opposite. Books, films, magazines, newspapers, TV shows should be sold as all-in inclusive services wherever possible. The media should flow between all the device options that confront the consumer and wherever a publisher can establish a direct relationship with a consumer, that relationship (a subscription) should be transferable to any other device or access solution that the consumer is wearing/lugging. Segmentation at the device level should be married to integration at the service layer.
3. Apple is building its services on top of web solutions. Apple's universal media layer is driven by web services, as (See John Gruber on Apple and the Open Web where he points out that Apple is heavily invested in HTTP but not much in HTML). Follow that model. The web is fundamental to all media distribution, and it is at the level of web distribution that the media owner can hope to provide a fluid service for users who may be part in and part out of the iOS device network.
   
4. There will be scores of new device options in the next two years. Apple's present lead in media delivery will be steadily encroached. Avoid the mistake of building solutions for devices (there will be 5", 7", 9", 11" and more screen sizes on tablets next year). Respect the integrity of your product and your service and deliver the same solution everywhere, as far as possible. The best solution may not be fully deliverable on some platforms, but make sure that the core offering is available there (even if some of the bells and whistles are missing).
5. Consider, at every step in your relationship with Apple, that the consumer is king. Apple will not lightly grant access to consumer information and private data that the Apple devices may obtain, or that ill-mannered apps might obtain without the consent of users. Apple will not and should not pass on this private data and do not expect them to do so.
   

The Book as Information Appliance

The best blog posting on the Apple Tablet that I have read this week is at Gizmodo, by Jesus Diaz, The Apple Tablet Interface Must be Like This.

Anybody blogging now about the Tablet has an excellent chance of being proven wrong in 5 days time. But the most interesting aspects of Diaz's piece are historical, where he speculates about the interface by thinking about what has already gone before, in which he notes that the iPhone has already changed our expectations about how an interface should work. The touch screen is crucial but the flexibility of the 'app-based' interface is also crucial. He is betting, and I am sure that he is right, that the Tablet is going to be an extension and development of the iPhone interface and of its operating system (this is not going to be Mac/OS). Diaz sees the iPhone as having already established a crucial break with the 15 year reign of the desktop metaphor for usability. The genius of the iPhone is that it has shown how a small device can be a succession of information appliances in which the special features of each application are captured in the specialised interfaces which belong to each application (or 'appliance').

When it came out, people instantly got this concept. Clicking icons transformed their new gadget into a dozen different gadgets. Then, when the app store appeared, their device was able to morph into an unlimited number of devices, each serving one task.

In this new computing world there were no files or folders, either. Everything was database-driven. The information was there, in the device, or out there, floating in the cloud. You could access it all through all these virtual gadgets, at all times, because the iPhone is always connected. Gizmodo

Well, I am frankly delighted that this world of windows, files and folders is on the way out. Documents too are under notice of termination! I am very excited about the way in which information appliances will give us many more models and metaphors for the way that our software should work. Gestures will replace commands and trial by touch will replace error.....

But before we chuck all the paper-based metaphors out of the window (along with the files, the folders, the waste baskets and the .docs), I think that an age of software interfaces emulating information appliances is going to be very helpful and very preservative for some parts of our print and our paper heritage. Pages will stay with us. Tablets like pages and canvases. Libraries too -- we need a collective noun for a large collection of apps, and 'library' may be the group noun of choice. Above all, books, magazines and newspapers are great 'metaphors' for information appliances. They are information appliances par excellence, and they have in their 'soft' or emulation versions great potential for use on a tablet or an iTouch interface. Books, magazines and newspapers should behave and will teach us how to use the tablet interface in much the same way that they behave and teach us how to learn in real like. But they will not be the same. They will be software applications, appliances, apps, and so they will have much more potential for compute application. The main advantages of tablet-books or tablet-magazines or tablet-manuals, behaving somewhat like their physical counterparts is that we all know how the physical objects work and the virtual information appliance will work in a similar way to help our expectations and to help our discovery of how they are different.

I have no idea what the Apple digital publishing environment is going to look like when it is unveiled next Wednesday, but I bet that it is going to look much more familiar to book lovers, more retro, than most of us realise. If Apple have got their information appliances right digital books and magazines are going to feel more like real books than most digital publishing experts would have predicted.