Extra, Extra…Read All About It…On Your Phone or iPad
- Introducing The Daily: The iPad's First Exclusive Daily Digital Newspaper
- Transform Your iPhone or iPad Into A Powerful eBook Reader
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Now that the Apple App Store allows for subscription-based apps, hundreds of newspapers and magazine publishers have begun offering digital editions of their publications, which can be accessed using an iPhone or iPad, and a specialized app for that publication.
As you explore the App Store, you will notice that apps now fall into several monetary categories, including these:
- Free Apps: These apps are usually demo versions of paid apps or contain ads that you must view in order to fully utilize the app. Some free apps are also offered by specific companies, and offer functionality of interest to that company's customers.
- Paid Apps: These are apps you pay for. Most paid apps available from the App Store are priced between $.99 and $9.99. Paid apps include unlimited future updates as new revisions to the app are released.
- In-App Purchases: Whether an app is initially offered for free or you pay for it, app developers now have the ability to sell you added features, functionality, or other content from within the app, by allowing you to make instant in-app purchases. In terms of games, for example, you can purchase power-ups or extra items for your character from within the game as you're playing it.
- Subscription-Based Apps: Used by newspaper and magazine publishers—as well as other content providers—these apps allow you to pay an ongoing or recurring subscription fee to access content, such as the latest issue of a newspaper or magazine's digital edition.
While the subscription-based apps for each newspaper or magazine are free, you will often need to pay a subscription fee to be able to access each issue of the desired publication.
Newspapers—including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, USA Today, and local and regional daily newspapers—all now have digital editions available.
The same is true for a growing number of full-color consumer and industry-oriented magazines, including Newsweek, Time, ESPN The Magazine, MacUser, Consumer Reports, Golf Magazine, Men's Health, Sports Illustrated, Maxim, Martha Stewart Living, GQ, Wired, The New Yorker, National Geographic, and O: The Oprah Magazine.
What's great about accessing the digital editions of these publications from your iPhone or iPad is that you can easily set the publication's app to automatically download each edition, so it's literally waiting on your device's screen in time for your morning coffee or commute to work.
Also, in most cases, the digital edition of the publication is an exact replica of the printed edition, so every article, photo, and even the page layout will be the same. What the digital edition adds in some cases, however, is an interactive element, which allows you to quickly jump between articles, or access related websites or streaming videos, for example, with the tap of a finger.
Some publishers are giving away the digital edition of their newspapers or magazines to existing paid subscribers, while others are changing a small additional fee to paid subscribers for the digital content.
For a fee that's less than the cost of the print edition, non-print edition subscribers can access just the digital edition of a publication using their iPhone or iPad.
To access and subscribe to any digital edition of a newspaper or magazine, first find and download the specific app for that publication from the App Store. You can do this by entering the name of the publication within the search field of the App Store app. It's located in the upper-right corner of the App Store screen.
Or if you're not sure which newspapers or magazines are available in digital form, within the App Store's search field, enter the search phrase "magazine" or "newspaper." Upon loading the publication-specific app of your choice, launch it on your iPhone or iPad, and follow the on-screen prompts for subscribing to the publication.
In most cases, at least one free issue of a magazine is offered; or in the case of newspapers, a one- to four-week free trial subscription is offered. If you opt for a paid subscription, this can be done from within the publication's app, and the associated subscription fee will be billed to your existing iTunes/Apple ID account.
Introducing The Daily: The iPad's First Exclusive Daily Digital Newspaper
The Daily, which is published by News Corp., is the first of its kind, daily digital newspaper available exclusively to iPad subscribers.
Each issue of The Daily contains seven sections, including a News, Business, Gossip, Opinion, Arts & Life, Apps & Games and Sports. This equates to at least 100 pages of new and original content being published 365-days-per-year.
Priced at $.99 per week, or $39.99 per year, each daily issue of this publication gets automatically downloaded to your iPad or iPad 2 through the publication's app, and can be read on the tablet's screen. The Daily is for iPad and iPad 2 users only, and is not compatible with the iPhone.
This digital publication is loaded with full-color graphics and photos, plus offers an interactive element, which includes streaming videos, links to websites, and other interactive content (including a daily crossword puzzle).
In terms of content, The Daily is very much like USA Today, in that it's a general-interest, full-color publication that offers news, combined with plenty of other articles of interest to the reader. The publication is created by a dedicated staff of veteran news reporters, editors and journalists, and is not simply a collection of news headlines with links to wire service stories.
A free, two week trial subscription to The Daily is provided upon downloading the publication's free app from the App Store (visit http://www.thedaily.com, or the App Store for details). Having launched in February 2011, The Daily represents a multi-million venture with media mogul Rupert Murdoch at the helm.