iPad Newspaper From News Corp Rumored in January

An anonymous reader writes "News Corp plans to launch its rumored iPad-only newspaper on January 17 according to recent reports. Dubbed the 'Daily,' the paper will reportedly make use of a new 'push' subscription feature from Apple wherein users can opt to be automatically billed for either week-long or month-long subscriptions. Once set up, a new edition of the publication will show up on user's iPads each and every morning."

Comments

*only ipad*

[polar red]

Does that mean they won't use the same sources as their other papers and channels ?

Re:*only ipad*

[Anonymous Coward]

Rupert Murdoch is running this?

This will be AP stories from the wire, and opinion pieces from FOX.

Re:*only ipad*

[bigredradio]

And advertising. I seem to recall that newspapers make money on ads and not the subscriptions. That is why I can get my daily paper for $0.50. Does he think he can pay for this by subscription revenue only?

Re:*only ipad*

[mcgrew]

Um, News Corps? Isn't that the FOX people? It makes sense, only a FOX watcher would pay for news from the internet.

Re:*only ipad*

[Concerned Onlooker]

No. The only difference is you won't be able to view wikileaks stories.

Re:*only ipad*

[Anonymous Coward]

and will those ads be flash... oh wait a minute...

Re:*only ipad*

[flyingkillerrobots]

I don't understand this from a marketing perspective. Those who buy Apple products, such as the iPad, tend to be younger college student types, and to draw a correlation, overwhelmingly liberal. Why is News Corp even attempting to market to them, let alone exclusively?

Re:*only ipad*

[glueball]

Those who buy Apple products, such as the iPad, tend to be younger college student types, and to draw a correlation, overwhelmingly liberal.

I don't know what the iPad demographics are other than anecdote--they aren't just for younger people.

But to your point--Those younger people will be growing up after buying iPads will become more conservative as they age to 30 years old. http://www.gallup.com/poll/120857/conservatives-single-largest-ideological-group.aspx

I say it's near perfect marketing if your hypothesis of younger people buying iPads is correct and the simple Gallup demographic information is correct.

 

Re:*only ipad*

[dzfoo]

>> Does he think he can pay for this by subscription revenue only?

He may be able to pay for it with subscriptions revenue only, since the distribution costs and operational expenses are greatly reduced from that of a paper-printed daily publication.

        -dZ.

Re:*only ipad*

[jimicus]

Possibly, but I'll bet the printing and distribution is a relatively small part of the total cost.

Re:*only ipad*

[NeverVotedBush]

The Onion will be more accurate and at least funny...

Re:*only ipad*

[slapout]

1. News Corp is in it to make money by targeting whoever will buy the product.

2. Just because News Corp is involved doesn't mean the product will be conservative. The FOX network (not FOX News) was very liberal when it started out.

3. Not everything has to have a left/right slant. Can't we have an article about gardening without any political commentary?

Re:*only ipad*

[nelk]

3. Not everything has to have a left/right slant. Can't we have an article about gardening without any political commentary?

I was reading an article about gardening the other day that had some very interesting ideas on how to handle bushes.
Speaking of bushes, did you know that Bush was also a recent president, and that a lot of his policies aren't seen in a very positive light? Discuss....

Re:*only ipad*

[clarkkent09]

He pays for the content anyway (for his newspaper and tv channels), this is just another way of distributing.

Re:*only ipad*

[Anonymous Coward]

What udder pro green anti American job propaganda. Everyone knows that growing things is a part of the subversive green movement aimed at removing CO2 from the atmosphere that we've laboured hard for the past 200 years to put there.

Re:*only ipad*

[blind monkey 3]

Does he think he can pay for this by subscription revenue only?
What makes you think there won't be ads?

Re:*only ipad*

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Fox isn't anti-liberal; they're anti-Democrat. They're Republican, not conservative. If a Republican wants to spend a lot of taxpayers' money on something "for the common good," that is ok with Fox and they will sing that person's praises. Remember the Iraq War?

There's no reason Newscorp can't tell Apple customers what they want to hear. They just need to get some Republicans to say it. The party name, not a philosophy, is the ONLY thing that matters.

Re:*only ipad*

[Anonymous Coward]

BAD JOKE ALERT!

well in the UK his "newspapers" when used as emergency toilet paper result in more shit coming off the paper! (not the joke)

mind you... the iPad... it does sound tlike an electronic feminine hygene product and thus ....

made me think of the similarity between iPad owners and their ipads..... they're all stuck up cunts :P

Re:*only ipad*

[tehcyder]

I don't understand this from a marketing perspective. Those who buy Apple products, such as the iPad, tend to be younger college student types, and to draw a correlation, overwhelmingly liberal. Why is News Corp even attempting to market to them, let alone exclusively?

I'd say that most people who buy iPads are people with more money than sens, and therefore overwhelmingly likely to be conservativees. Most students I know don't have five hundred quid to waste on toys.

Re:*only ipad*

[tehcyder]

The idea that everyone starts off left wing and naturally gets more right wing as they get older is utter and complete bullshit, and whoever repeats such cliched nonsense is merely self-certifying the power of military-industrial brainwashing they have undergone.

As an adult, if you choose to drink the kapitalist kool aid, that is your decision, not a fucking law of nature.

Re:*only ipad*

[tehcyder]

Not everything has to have a left/right slant

It does if the story is about Rupert Murdoch.

It would be like having a story about Hugo Chavez and expecting to keep politics out of it

Re:*only ipad*

[intheshelter]

I think the demographic assertions you made are pretty much made up bullshit, but in the interest of being fair I'd like to ask if you have an citations you can provide that prove these demographics are true.

Re:*only ipad*

[intheshelter]

Based on your post I see stupidity applies equally to Apple lovers and Apple haters.

Physician heal thyself. . .

What does this bring to the table

[Joehonkie]

How is this better than a web-based news source, even a paywalled one?

Re:What does this bring to the table

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah.

Or, better than a regular paper newspaper delivered to the front door.

Have to check back next year and see if this one went anywhere......

Re:What does this bring to the table

[spun]

It makes Rupert Murdoch more money. Oh, you meant, "how is it better for the customer?" Does that actually matter?

Re:What does this bring to the table

[shadowrat]

exactly. we have been able to charge people for content on the web forever. I suspect it's about finding your market though. The iPad is like a filter that extracts all the people who want to pay for stuff. the ratio of users who will pay a subscription to users who just want free stuff is likely far higher on the iPad than on the web in general.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[corbettw]

Um, yes it does, because if it doesn't bring something that other formats don't then no one will sign up for it. Which means Murdoch and company won't make any more money.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[Monkeedude1212]

It's designed specifically for the typical Apple user.

"Oh! A way to spend more money with an Apple Product? An iPad only application where I can have my credit card billed automatically each month? A newspaper that will no doubt have articles that can be found on any decent news aggregating web site? Where do I sign up? That sounds piquant as shit!"

Re:What does this bring to the table

[alen]

it's for the people that can't get past the quaint idea of media being delivered in "issues" where you have to wait a day, week or month to read information

Re:What does this bring to the table

[Monkeedude1212]

It's a pretty stupid idea though, Even if 95% of people who WOULD buy the subscription own an iPad - you're effectively cutting out 5% of your market simply because they don't want to make it available on your other iProduct.

It's not like you lose money for every person who doesn't subscribe...

Re:What does this bring to the table

[polar red]

Does that actually matter?

maybe pushing their Lie-bert-Arian propaganda is more important.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[gstoddart]

How is this better than a web-based news source, even a paywalled one?

Because it will be a native app instead of the web, for one. The web is a reasonable "lowest common denominator", but really, it still sucks for UIs, no matter how many advances we've made.

The difference between a native app and a web-page on this kind of device is massive in terms of how much nicer the native interface is -- in part because it scales up things to be more "touchable" instead of "clickable". I'm glad to finally see a reversal of this trend of "everything as a web page" -- the usability of an app designed for the multi-touch is easily an order of magnitude better than a web page. It's a completely different kind of interface than one you'd do for the web.

They also get Apple as a distribution and billing mechanism. Which I'm sure will also benefit them. However, I don't expect that I'll be making use of the "push" subscriptions, and least of all, for anything from News Corp. There are plenty of *free* news apps that run native on the iPad (BBC, Reuters, and others). Though, I'm sure there will be a fair few people who actually subscribe to this.

I see lots of things on the app store which you could argue is largely the same as the content on a web page. The difference being, with an app instead of a web-page, it's a far better user experience overall.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[characterZer0]

If anybody could get it, the people who buy iPads would not want it.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[Anonymous Coward]

because it is actually not web-based but app-based. This is the point. You turn on your iPad (no joke here...), one click on your newspaper app, here you go. Then you don't need an internet connection to read page by page as everything is (should be) already downloaded. (at least I hope so).

Re:What does this bring to the table

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say "whoosh" but that joke would also probably go over your head.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[gstoddart]

It's designed specifically for the typical Apple user.

You know, instead of the usual bitching and moaning about the "typical Apple user" like everybody else on Slashdot, why don't you try to actually think about this instead of just launching into the usual screed? That fact that you've been modded insightful for basically acting like a 4 year old kind of proves my point.

I have the free BBC news app on my iPad, as well as Reuters and several others. In fact, I've never paid for an app on my iPad (or a track from iTunes for that matter) -- there's so much free stuff out there it's amazing. It's so much nicer to use than a web page, because it's a user interface that takes into account the platform it runs on.

As I've pointed out elsewhere in this thread, the native interface of an iPad application (and, indeed I bet this would be true for an Android device or a Blackberry) is that the interface works the way you expect the interface to work on that platform. The web makes middling user interfaces at best -- a native app (for any platform) is simply going to be a better user experience.

This isn't even about the iPad -- it's about realizing that the 15 years we've spent using the web for everything has led to really crappy user interfaces, all bound to the HTML paradigm. I'm glad to finally see the web being eclipsed by actual applications and interfaces. This will happen on Android, Microsoft, Blackberry, and every new device that comes along.

If three months after this is released, and News Corp releases this for an Android tablet, will we be all saying how hip the Android users are because they can subscribe to the same content? Will it suddenly be cool?

Seriously, get over the whole iPad/Apple bashing thing, and recognize that tablets (of all forms) and the like are fundamentally changing the rules and the prevalence of everything being a frigging web page. You don't have to like the iPad, but you should recognize everything you've said will apply to all new touch screen devices as they come on line and available.

Personally, I don't see web pages going away, but I do see them not being the only way people get information or interact with software. This is just an example of that.

Seriously, dial back the bitching about this being about Apple, and start thinking about this in the broader context of what is going to be happening in the industry over the next bunch of years. Now that touch-screen technology is becoming prevalent, you will see this kind of thing on all platforms.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[Monkeedude1212]

You honestly believe that when Windows finally gets around to mimicking the iPad that someone will go and provide a "MS Tablet Only Newspaper"?
Thats the source of the joke here. It's not that it won't make its way to other tablets, its that its specifically being marketted as iPad only.

It's the worst piece of business logic I've ever heard of, yet someone has decided to try it out on an Apple product, all of which have a bad rap as being overpriced for what you actually get - the Hardware is never Earth Shattering enough to justify the price, it often seems you are paying for Apple's Software which goes for more than even Microsoft's ludicrous amounts and locks you into it even more. I just learned the other day that in some cases you can't even activate your new iPhone without hooking it up to a computer with your iTunes.

I was merely pointing out the OBVIOUS joke that has been circling around Apple and the fact that its actually happening is almost too comical to be true.

Chill out

Re:What does this bring to the table

[Anonymous Coward]

To be honest, I don't know. I could, however, see it has an advantage that the push could happen at night, so when you get picked up your ipad in the morning it already had the next day's paper on it. Thus you could read the paper even if you didn't have wifi access (i.e. on a train or plane).

Is it something that couldn't be accomplished otherwise? Absolutely not. This is a feature though that could make some of the less techy people's lives a lot easier. I could also see applications which would automatically download web content at pre-determined times and then used an offline browsing mode doing the same thing from the users perspective.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[ByOhTek]

maybe that's his goal - one more piece of evidence that online news is a bad idea?

Re:What does this bring to the table

[arth1]

It's not like you lose money for every person who doesn't subscribe...

That depends on whether you subscribe to (npi) RIAA/MPAA accounting or not.
And given that this is the right wing, well...

If you don't subscribe and get the same news elsewhere, you're costing them a sale every day, which is the same as theft.

What's really sad is that I'm only halfway joking, and that there really are people who'd support this "logic".

Re:What does this bring to the table

[Saint Gerbil]

Didn't apple say they were going to ban apps which basically did what their main website did ?

In a related note surly apple would hit them with the ban-hammer as soon as they post an "android market share increasing" story. (or similar)

Re:What does this bring to the table

[Anonymous Coward]

The web wouldn't have succeeded if every site had to write a fscking application to present it's data. You are a typical Apple fanboy that cannot see beyond Jobs's anus. God forbid you grasp the benefits of hyperlinking.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[arth1]

You know, instead of the usual bitching and moaning about the "typical Apple user" like everybody else on Slashdot,
[rant deleted]
Seriously, get over the whole iPad/Apple bashing thing,
[rant deleted]
Seriously, dial back the bitching about this being about Apple,
[rant deleted]

You know, instead of verbosely justifying your purchase, why don't you let it go?

Seriously, get over the whole iPad/Apple bashing thing, and dial back the bitching about bitching about Apple.

If you like your Apple devices, fine. But we don't need any more evangelists.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[gstoddart]

You honestly believe that when Windows finally gets around to mimicking the iPad that someone will go and provide a "MS Tablet Only Newspaper"?

No, I honestly believe that when Microsoft finally mimics the iPad, this newpaper will be made available for it. Right now, as I understand it, neither enough people are running Windows Mobile 7, nor is the interface nearly good enough to do this.

yet someone has decided to try it out on an Apple product, all of which have a bad rap as being overpriced for what you actually get - the Hardware is never Earth Shattering enough to justify the price

The hardware? No. The software is actually some of the nicest I've used in years -- and that is worth the money. The iPad is some of my first exposure to Apple's stuff beyoind iTunes on my Windows machine -- and, I'm awfully tempted to add an actual Mac to the herd of computers. It's like the old pissing contest between Intel and AMD over processor speed -- if you don't write bloated software that doubles in size every year, you don't need to be constantly doubling hardware needs. It's not like I'm running a web server on the damned thing.

I just learned the other day that in some cases you can't even activate your new iPhone without hooking it up to a computer with your iTunes.

Can't speak to that -- in my experience, my iPods and my iPad all are designed to work with iTunes, and likely the iPhone as well. Since I've been using that for around 10 years, I actually find that convenient since all of my media is already in there. Plug it into the machine, and let iTunes sort out the intial setup -- 5 minutes later, I'm syncing music and movies.

If you don't like it, don't buy it. But the whole "zomg, teh stupid Apple users" is getting kind of old.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[MrMarket]

How is this better than a web-based news source, even a paywalled one?

When you download the app flip to page 3. You'll see...

Re:What does this bring to the table

[spun]

What a lovely fantasy world you live in, where everyone makes rational decisions based on their best interests rather than what they have been brainwashed into believing by marketing and public relations.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[gstoddart]

The web wouldn't have succeeded if every site had to write a fscking application to present it's data. You are a typical Apple fanboy that cannot see beyond Jobs's anus. God forbid you grasp the benefits of hyperlinking.

Once again, I stand in awe of the master debaters and wordsmiths posting on Slashdot.

You've clearly run rings around me with your astute points and finely crafted logic.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[spun]

Fox News and Rupert Murdoch aren't libertarians, they are authoritarians. And like authoritarians everywhere, they simply use libertarians as tools. It's as if the wolves have convinced a few sheep to go out and argue to the rest of a sheep that a wolf's stomach makes the best home.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[vijayiyer]

"It's not that it won't make its way to other tablets, its that its specifically being marketted as iPad only."

No, it's not being marketed as anything yet. This is somewhere between a rumor and a leak.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[chrome]

but, but, but the web is the future for all applications! We'll all be running apps on the cloud from our thin clients! The network is the computer! etc etc! Don't tell me they sold me a lie.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[vlm]

How is this better than a web-based news source, even a paywalled one?

Its important to specify the difference between a push web app news source, which could do all kinds of cool filtering and instant access (not high latency of streaming) of attached videos, and this specific app which is probably (just guessing) designed to little more than collect more money.

A good news app would intelligently log how interested I am in a story, based on both how long I read and what rating I give it, and then in a Bayesian way filter my news for me. Also it would provide an intelligent mixture almost like a DJ for news.

Also it would have all linked multimedia pre-downloaded via the push. No click and wait for video, ultra high res images instantly available.

Also it would have much better bookmarking than current websites.

I want it location aware. If I'm reading about yet another shooting 3 blocks away I want to see it on the google maps. Or a new restaurant opening up, I want turn by turn directions from my house.

Finally I'd want push downloaded instantly available background like relevant wikipedia articles, or if a lame journalist is misreporting on a scientific article, I want the original ARVIX paper please. Not just in the text, not a link to pop open Safari, but the actual paper right there. Not a text article paradigm, but a MIME like multimedia collection for each story.

What we're probably going to get is a reskinned safari or ibooks plus a big bill. But I/we can dream.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[PCM2]

The web makes middling user interfaces at best -- a native app (for any platform) is simply going to be a better user experience.

Wait -- so the Web was a bad idea, we should abandon it, forget about HTML5 (more of the same), and go back to the days where every single information service ran on a proprietary client? I hope you're not being serious.

When I learned that most of the so-called apps that people have on their iPhones are actually purpose-built clients designed to access a single Web site each, that's when I started to agree with the folks at Research in Motion: this whole "apps" craze is a fad.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[corbettw]

He can go looking for that evidence all day long. Meanwhile, his competitors will keep making money left, right, and center.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, instead of the usual bitching and moaning about the "typical Apple user" like everybody else on Slashdot, why don't you try to actually think about this instead of just launching into the usual screed? That fact that you've been modded insightful for basically acting like a 4 year old kind of proves my point.

Because he's right, so he might as well keep up the usual bitching and moaning because it's true 99.9% of the time [citation needed].

Re:What does this bring to the table

[Anonymous Coward]

It reduces the likelihood that you will try to corroborate what you have read in iFox (which is essentially what this will be) from other sources?

Re:What does this bring to the table

[gstoddart]

Wait -- so the Web was a bad idea, we should abandon it, forget about HTML5 (more of the same), and go back to the days where every single information service ran on a proprietary client? I hope you're not being serious.

Did you read the whole comment, or just stop when your knickers got into a twist? Because I also said:

Personally, I don't see web pages going away, but I do see them not being the only way people get information or interact with software. This is just an example of that.

Of course the web isn't going to go away, and of course we shouldn't abandon HTML 5.

What I said is that a native application gives a better user experience than the web. Organizations that have the resources or the inclination will make native apps (for many devices) which allow for that. The web is ubiquitous, and I don't believe that I will be seeing it go away any time soon.

But, I can't tell you how many times I've found myself grumbling about crappy applications that run on the web that are slow and ugly.

I'm saying that an app is simply a better alternative when it is available. Touch screens are an advance in the way we interact with this stuff ... it would be moronic to still slavishly stick to the old paradigms; especially of mouse and keyboard.

that's when I started to agree with the folks at Research in Motion: this whole "apps" craze is a fad.

I'll be surprised if that turns out to be true. Personally, I find apps to be a huge improvement over the "everything is a web page" we've been stuck with for the last bunch of years.

Apps and touchscreens are the first time in about 15 years that we've moved forward on user interfaces and interacting with computers. The web has advantages of zero-footprint installs and all that, but I'd hardly call it the best set of user interfaces out there. And, with companies like Microsoft seeing an app-store model in their future, it's hardly going away.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[dachshund]

Because it will be a native app instead of the web, for one. The web is a reasonable "lowest common denominator", but really, it still sucks for UIs, no matter how many advances we've made.
The difference between a native app and a web-page on this kind of device is massive in terms of how much nicer the native interface is -- in part because it scales up things to be more "touchable" instead of "clickable". I'm glad to finally see a reversal of this trend of "everything as a web page" -- the usability of an app designed for the multi-touch is easily an order of magnitude better than a web page. It's a completely different kind of interface than one you'd do for the web.

While this is all true in theory, my experience is that low-usage proprietary formats have one huge usability disadvantage in practice: namely, it's expensive to produce content for them. So while it's true that your newspaper could have multitouch, interactive, vector-graphics-enabled, hyper-linking, Angry-Birds-quality-animated featurettes, in practice the publishers can only really justify the creation of a small number of such features per newspaper. Absent these you're down to a flat web page/newspaper that's slightly easier to manipulate through an app than through a browser.

But over time, even these advantages will go away as web designers get better at designing for tablets, and browser/web technology improves. It's more or less a self-fulfilling prophecy, since the publisher will inevitably devote more resources to improving web version if it has 10,000x the readership and it's cheaper to develop for.

I've seen this happen with a number of formats over the years. It shouldn't be surprising, once you consider how expensive it would be to produce a product every day/week/month that lives up to the hype of what a tablet-based newspaper should be. Even the iPad 'showcase' version of Wired is basically just a bunch of high-quality image files with a small number of lame 'interactive' features.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that you respond to trolls should be indication enough that maybe your head really IS up your ass...

Re:What does this bring to the table

[Anonymous Coward]

That question, phrased in an even more general way, is something that I kept asking and people just couldn't really explain to me .. until someone finally realized the obvious-to-them thing that I wasn't grasping since I don't (and will never fucking ever) have an iPhone.

The reason to replace a website with an Apple store app, is the store. The web is large, so you have to wait for people to find you, but Apple's store is (relatively) tiny, so your app can more easily come up on the first page of results for people looking for something. It's a alternative market. Being different is a quality all in itself, because it means you're not competing with the same old same olds.

Imagine if I open the all-new Coward Store. You can be #1 on there. Then imagine if I had a captive audience of a million people who were locked into using the Coward Store. You would then have reason to want to be #1 on my store. These vertical monopolies are very powerful compared to the free market of the web. It's all at the users' expense so the people should be telling Apple to fuck off, but for whatever reason, they don't.

Another aspect to it, is that (and this is very weird!) people basically go through Apple's store looking for things to spend money on. They want to buy things for the sake of buying things; they are compulsive shoppers and really don't give a damn what they get, as long as they receive the satisfaction of having spent some money. And conversely and much more obviously, people don't go trolling through the web looking for places who will accept their credit card number.

Why the difference in behavior? If I knew that, I would be the next Steve Jobs or L. Ron Hubbard.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[DragonWriter]

This isn't even about the iPad -- it's about realizing that the 15 years we've spent using the web for everything has led to really crappy user interfaces, all bound to the HTML paradigm. I'm glad to finally see the web being eclipsed by actual applications and interfaces. This will happen on Android, Microsoft, Blackberry, and every new device that comes along.

Well, except for ChromeOS applications. And, applications that need to economically target a broad range of devices rather than being rewritten from scratch for each OS. And...

Seriously, get over the whole iPad/Apple bashing thing, and recognize that tablets (of all forms) and the like are fundamentally changing the rules and the prevalence of everything being a frigging web page.

Except that they actually aren't. Native apps were always dominant for things that were performance critical or for which web browsers don't provide APIs, or for which appropriate browser-based UI controls weren't widely implemented. Sure, in the last few years the number of common desktop uses for which that applies has been narrowing, as web APIs, UI features (whether standard HTML, provided by JavaScript libraries, or whatever), and perforamnce for common desktop application tasks has improved.

Smartphones and tablets -- with new features for which standard web tools weren't available, and lower powered processors which make performance hits a bigger deal -- obviously have a slightly different initial native:web balance than contemporary desktop/laptop systems -- but, over time, the same evolution that has happened on the web is happening to them.

Seriously, dial back the bitching about this being about Apple, and start thinking about this in the broader context of what is going to be happening in the industry over the next bunch of years. Now that touch-screen technology is becoming prevalent, you will see this kind of thing on all platforms.

Or, more likely, you'll see more robust common understanding of how to interact with the web via touch, and new common JavaScript APIs for mobile functions, and the web will march on.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[gstoddart]

While this is all true in theory, my experience is that low-usage proprietary formats have one huge usability disadvantage in practice: namely, it's expensive to produce content for them.

I think it depends on how you want the content to look and be interacted with. XML could easily be used to drive both -- that's what it's for.

Even the iPad 'showcase' version of Wired is basically just a bunch of high-quality image files with a small number of lame 'interactive' features.

That has been true of most demonstrations of multi-media for as long as we've had the term. Start out with loads of whiz-bang images and videos, and eventually realize that it's just extra space and it's really adding anything.

I'm betting that my Reuters and BBC apps are all pulling the same info from the same sources as the web versions, it's just about presentation and how the interface works.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[flyingkillerrobots]

He can go looking for that evidence all day long. Meanwhile, his competitors will keep making money left, right, and center.

Please back up your assertions with data. You're wrong. News Corp has a significantly higher margin of profit (not just absolute profit) than the New York Times. Additionally, the NY Times has been losing revenue over the past 5 years, while News Corp gained.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[Monkeedude1212]

This is somewhere between a rumor and a leak.

So you obviously aren't up to date with Apple's marketting techniques.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[Anonymous Coward]

It's more like "There's money in the iOS market".. I'm sure developers will make it for other tablet devices, but not at the risk of starving or going bankrupt.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[mugnyte]

So you're saying you're in favor of companies paywalling information in a pretty frame that's freely available (in another pretty frame, actually dozens of them). (Psst: You're renting a browser, the content is still a feed)

You sir, are betting on the wrong side of history. Let me introduce you to this idea again:
  - AOL, MSN, CompuServ all delivered news with "Value-add" sections that they fought long and hard to drill into customers minds: "This is special content you cannot get elsewhere". All dead.
  - The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, SF Chronicle, Philadelphia's papers, and about 10 others are dying. Even with custom-tailored content for their market, and local brands/names to appease. Dying
  - The race is to remove lag, bulk, walled-gardens and increase choice. The delivery mechanism is done, free. Defending the idea of paying for it (every month?) is silly.
  - The allure from these failures of "content you cannot get elsewhere" is a ruse. At this moment, we're in the Age Of Information [overload]. There's too much content to consume. If you cannot find what you're looking for elsewhere, you're not really searching.

Here's the scoop:
    Readership is moving online, to the largest source pool available. Who wants to limit their surfing options?
    Content production is moving online, to the largest market available. Who want to limit their market segment?
    The same reporters and readers are now finding each other again online, under a new model.
    The new model charges for screen time/real estate in a dynamic way, not through print, and through multiple avenues for contract. Money flows via click referrals. Pay for information as you read it. The micro-payment

  This isn't going backwards, and your iPad application may have a niche market, but I will bet it'll raise prices, cut costs or skimp on value-added benefit until it dies via the parent graciously removing a failed loss-leader, or the customer base realizing they are paying for customization they don't care about.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[corbettw]

His competitors, in this instance, are all-internet news sources, not daily papers.

Unfortunately, the biggest players in the sphere (Gawker, TMZ, Radar Online) are all private corporations so no financial data is available. But in ten years, which group do you think will still be around: the ones making their content easily and readily available, or the ones trying to lock in their customers?

Re:What does this bring to the table

[dzfoo]

The Internet was a terrific idea, and still is. A single, unified, fault-tolerant, common protocol for communications between networks; it's brilliant!

The World Wide Web, on the other hand, is not The Internet. It's one of the many services implemented on the Internet. A very popular one, but hardly unique. It was a great application for what it was designed: hyper-text document sharing.

The web as the single, unified, common interface for the consumption of multi-media and other content may not be so great. Implementing every single application as an extension of the web, in HTML and JavaScript to boot, is like hammering a square peg into a round hole. You end up with the lowest common denominator, a jack-of-all-trades user interface which is master of none.

To illustrate this point, consider why the geek world holds its collective breath in awe when, say, Google figures out how to do real-time keystroke display of online chats using JavaScript and HTTP, when dedicated chat clients were doing this since before the web was invented. The fact that the web is just now capable of supporting services and applications that have existed for some time in many other formats, suggests that perhaps it is not the best suited medium for them.

        -dZ.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[Mr_Silver]

How is this better than a web-based news source, even a paywalled one?

Well, for starters you can read it on the underground.

Hell, it'll make reading it on the overland train better too given that access to the internet (at least on my route) is problematic thanks to all the tunnels, bridges and dead spots.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[dachshund]

I'm betting that my Reuters and BBC apps are all pulling the same info from the same sources as the web versions, it's just about presentation and how the interface works.

I've never used those apps, but I do use the Engadget app which I imagine to be similar. It's definitely easier than using the browser, largely because the content is already neatly formatted for the screen and you can avoid some awkwardness from Safari's awful caching. There are a few controls and bells and whistles that work better in the app (mostly image and video viewing), but not very much that's really dramatically better than the web experience.

My point, then, is that these advantages could largely go away with improvements browser and web page design.

So the question then is: what features are so unique that they can only be done well in an app? To me that's mostly the neat animated interactive stuff, but like I said, that stuff is rare end expensive to develop. Is it worth building a tablet-only newspaper for that stuff?

Re:What does this bring to the table

[gstoddart]

So you're saying you're in favor of companies paywalling information in a pretty frame that's freely available

Nope. You said that -- I said:

I have the free BBC news app on my iPad, as well as Reuters and several others. In fact, I've never paid for an app on my iPad (or a track from iTunes for that matter) -- there's so much free stuff out there it's amazing. It's so much nicer to use than a web page, because it's a user interface that takes into account the platform it runs on.

I merely pointed out that a platform-native application is a better user interface than the web, especially on a touchscreen interface which gives you better ways to interact with it. I didn't say anything about paying for content (for or against), merely the way it is presented.

There are plenty of organizations which have made apps for their content, and they still give it away for free. I flatly refuse to pay for online content, but I do find, for example, the free news apps I have a nice format to read it -- of course, my primary news source is still Google news.

Paywalls and charging for content is happening (and going to continue) no matter what I think about it.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey - I thought this was good, but no, you are right! It really sucks being dumb...

Re:What does this bring to the table

[Hatta]

Wait -- so the Web was a bad idea, we should abandon it, forget about HTML5 (more of the same), and go back to the days where every single information service ran on a proprietary client?

Who said anything about proprietary clients? Native clients, open protocols is the way to go. Instead of shoehorning GUI elements into HTML, let the OS do it. That's what it's for. You can choose a proprietary client if you like. Or an open source client.

The web as a document delivery mechanism was a great idea. As an application platform it's abominable.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[clarkkent09]

Fox News and Rupert Murdoch aren't libertarians, they are authoritarians.
 
I certainly wouldn't count Fox News as a libertarian channel (in what sense are they authoritarian though?) but rather as conservative both fiscally and socially, which is still closer to libertarian than any other main channels. Fox Business News is very libertarian though - see Stossel's show http://www.hulu.com/stossel and Freedom Watch, the two most libertarian shows on television. Murdoch himself has a history of being anti-socialist more than anything else. In Britain, his newspapers, The Times and The Sun, supported Tony Blair against Conservatives because he defeated the long standing Labour party far left leadership (which almost destroyed the party: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_Party_(UK)#The_.22Wilderness_Years.22_.281979.E2.80.931997.29) and more towards the center-left.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[DragonWriter]

How is this better than a web-based news source, even a paywalled one?

There is zero chance that I someone will post a link to it that I will be tricked into clicking on and being subjected to a News Corp property, so there is some benefit to me -- and at no cost.

If all News Corp-owned outlets were paid-subscription, iPad-only, with no web or broadcast presence, I'd be even happier.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[ByOhTek]

Not looking, creating

Re:What does this bring to the table

[spun]

How is being socially conservative at all libertarian? Social conservatives want to legislate away our freedoms. That is authoritarian, not libertarian. I can understand that true fiscal conservatism is libertarian, but legislating against gays, abortion, science education, and drugs is about as far from libertarian as you can get. Not that I expect you to know what libertarianism is really about, most people who call themselves libertarians have no idea what the word really means, what the history of the movement is, or what real freedom is. Most people who claim to be libertarian are really authoritarians who want the 'freedom' to run their own little dictatorships however they please.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[Anonymous Coward]

...it often seems you are paying for Apple's Software which goes for more than even Microsoft's ludicrous amounts...

Really?

OS X: £25
MS Windows 7 Home Premium: £105

Re:What does this bring to the table

[clarkkent09]

How is being socially conservative at all libertarian?
 
It's not, I meant the fiscal part. Fox is pretty consistent in calling for a smaller, less intrusive government, less spending, lower taxes etc. They also supported the Tea Party movement, while the likes of CNN started off by deliberately ignoring it, then switched to calling it racist and are now sulking as they realize none of the smears worked.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[Dog-Cow]

And when I read your reply, I agreed with most sane people that you're a complete and total idiot.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[Voyager529]

but, but, but the web is the future for all applications! We'll all be running apps on the cloud from our thin clients! The network is the computer! etc etc!

Don't tell me they sold me a lie.

The most hilarious part of this post is the fact that it was posted by a slashdot user with a 4-digit UID and a username of "chrome".

Re:What does this bring to the table

[Anonymous Coward]

OS X: £25
MS Windows 7 Home Premium: £105

Sure, but with OSX, you have to buy the machine with it. I can run Windows 7 on a $200 machine. Let's see you do that with OSX.

It's like saying "look how cheap my razor is" without mentioning that the blades are $100 each.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

You honestly believe that when Windows finally gets around to mimicking the iPad that someone will go and provide a "MS Tablet Only Newspaper"?

If they grab a huge portion of the market and the market is such that portability s not super easy, yes. But that's unlikely to happen. There have, however been Windows specific Web pages and applications for distributing just such content, some little more than .exe's that wrap PDFs.

It's not that it won't make its way to other tablets, its that its specifically being marketted as iPad only.

Yeah, that and hundreds of other applications.

It's the worst piece of business logic I've ever heard of...

You haven't been paying attention.

...someone has decided to try it out on an Apple product, all of which have a bad rap as being overpriced for what you actually get...

That's the reputation according to some people on Slashdot, not according to the general populace.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[sakshale]

Yeah.

Or, better than a regular paper newspaper delivered to the front door.

Have to check back next year and see if this one went anywhere......

I get the paper delivered daily. Often I will read an article that I would like to quote or reference online. Unfortunately, when I go to the publisher's online venue, the article is hard to find and often not the same.

IFF this is truly equivalent to a normal newspaper, and IFF the articles are easy to quote or reference, my hardcopy newspaper subscription will become part of history.

PS - $52 per year is less than the cost of a normal newspaper.

PSS - My paper, with the sucky website is the S.J. Mercury News -- which advertises itself as the Silicon Valley paper. Too bad they don't know how to use the technology they write about.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[Graff]

How is this better than a web-based news source, even a paywalled one?

Well, supposedly it will be more than the umpteenth regurgitated blog mess that is the current web-based media. You know what I'm talking about, when a "news" article is a blog talking about a blog that references a blog written by a guy who has an unnamed source.

Whether or not this iPad daily "newspaper" is worth it is up to the subscribers to decide. I could easily see it working if the content is thoughtful, heavily researched and backed by facts, engaging, and entertaining. If it fulfills those sort of conditions then there will be people who will pay good money to get it every day. If not then it will fade into obscurity.

Now paywalls have been put up with these sorts of promises before. Some have failed and some have succeeded. I hear the Wall Street Journal Online has been fairly profitable but there are plenty of examples of newspapers that put up a paywall and had it topple on them. Again it's all about the target audience and if you can provide an experience that they can't get on the free-to-browse web.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, I find apps to be a huge improvement over the "everything is a web page" we've been stuck with for the last bunch of years.

Well, that makes one of us.

If you see the most important thing about the Internet being that it's a way for some of us to make money, then apps are an improvement.

If you see the most important thing about the Internet being that it's a way for all of us to have access to information and communications, then apps aren't such an "improvement".

I'm not the first person who looked at his iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad and realized that he's bought 50 apps to access the same information that he used to access with a free browser.

Before the Internet was mainly a place to make money, there was a lot of really useful information and useful ways to communicate on it. The more everything on the Internet has to be "monetized" (gawd, I hate that term) the more the Internet will become cable television and end up being just another conduit for money going one way and bullshit going the other.

PR

Re:What does this bring to the table

[sakshale]

I did not read anything in TFA that even implied that there were no future plans to support other platforms. Could this not be a proof of concept exercise?

Re:What does this bring to the table

[Abcd1234]

Fun fact: this specialized app is probably "thinner" (in terms of resource utilization, etc), than a web-based app.

Which brings me to a dispute I have: to my mind, the definition of "thin" client is that the display component is local, and all the work is done remotely. How is a magazine *display* app *not* a thin client?

Re:What does this bring to the table

[Brett Buck]

How is being socially conservative at all libertarian? Social conservatives want to legislate away our freedoms. That is authoritarian, not libertarian.

        Where do you get this idea? It's nonsense. Social conservatives want *the government out of everyone's lives*, aside from the few areas where it is supposed to operate. i have seen far more liberals advocate authoritarian ideas and they are daily trying to legislate away my freedom. Obamacare, Cap and Trade, forced enviromentalism, down to the Federal government controlling what kids bring to school in their lunches, for Christ's sake.

        Brett

Re:What does this bring to the table

[Anonymous Coward]

In Britain, his newspapers, The Times and The Sun, supported Tony Blair against Conservatives because he defeated the long standing Labour party far left leadership (which almost destroyed the party: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_Party_(UK)#The_.22Wilderness_Years.22_.281979.E2.80.931997.29) [wikipedia.org] and more towards the center-left.

Sorry, I had to pick myself up off the floor.

Murdoch is a fascist (see Mussolini's own definition) and Blair was never even remotely left wing. He was, in fact, as right wing as Thatcher.

The UK is now disintegrating after three decades of mismanagement by those who had Murdoch's imprimatur.

BTW "libertarianism" is merely an attempt to provide an intellectual justification for selfishness.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[curious.corn]

You're joking aren't you... ... I hope...

No really... you're pissed off about paying for healthcare for your fellow citizens?! WTF!!! You're pissed off about not tearing apart the world your children are supposed to breed their children?! You're pissed off for being educated that no, Coca Cola & Ronald Mc Donald snacks may be cheap but it isn't really healthy for your kids to eat?!

Dude, I hope you're a hoax, a troll...

Re:What does this bring to the table

[flyingkillerrobots]

Time will tell, but I don't think it's necessarily a stupid move on Murdoch's part. It's a trade-off between readership and revenue; they're different business models, and one will eventually be shown to be more efficient than the other. I used the NYT comparison primarily because I read the Wall Street Journal.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[spun]

Uh, what are social conservatives FOR, then? What does it mean to be a social conservative? I thought it meant that they want to prohibit gays from marrying, they want school prayer, they want to fund teaching of creationism, forbid sodomy and oral sex, outlaw recreational drugs, carry out as many executions of criminals as possible, and basically go back to the good old days when white men were men, and everyone else did what they were told.

Being a social conservative, as opposed to just a conservative sans modifiers, or a fiscal conservative, means that one is conservative in the social realm. Being conservative in the social realm means wanting to legislate social behavior, either returning it to the way things used to be, or keeping it as it is now.

In any case, being socially conservative is NOT libertarian.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[superdana]

They also started the Tea Party movement

FTFY

Re:What does this bring to the table

[AmericanInKiev]

Why because its updated /daily/ !

Re:What does this bring to the table

[jo_ham]

I bought a second hand Mac Mini on ebay for around $250. It runs OS X.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[jo_ham]

That's not what he said - he said that the prevalence of the web meant that the web UI was being shoehorned into everything. The Web itself is not a bad idea - it's one of the best in fact, but the idea that it should only be accessed by one UI is holding us all back.

Best tool for the job and all that. The data that this app accesses can just be a backend DB that the web interface also accesses. There's no need to have it all separate.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[Anonymous Coward]

But this *is* a web-app. The content is retrieved over HTTP and rendered using WebKit. It just happens that WebKit is embedded into a "app" rather than a browser.

The only benefit that this brings is that it saves the user from having to open a browser and go to a bookmark.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[tehcyder]

Murdoch supported Tony Blair because by 1997 the British people wee so pissed off with the Tories that it was obvious New Labour wee going to win and Murdoch would have lost newspaper sales by supporting the Tories.

You're correct that Blair was sufficiently right-wing/non-socialist to be acceptable to Murdoch though. He wouldn't exactly have backed the Socialist Workers Party....

Re:What does this bring to the table

[tehcyder]

How is being socially conservative at all libertarian? It's not, I meant the fiscal part. Fox is pretty consistent in calling for a smaller, less intrusive government, less spending, lower taxes etc. They also supported the Tea Party movement, while the likes of CNN started off by deliberately ignoring it, then switched to calling it racist and are now sulking as they realize none of the smears worked.

The Tea Party movement is seen outside the US as either a joke or an indication of insanity, just FYI.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[tehcyder]

Social conservatives want *the government out of everyone's lives*, aside from the few areas where it is supposed to operate

Social conservatives dislike government when it affects their own pockets (e.g. if it outlaws racism in the workplace), but are fine to use it to enforce their bizarre moralistic-Christian worldview.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[tehcyder]

If anybody could get it, the people who buy iPads would not want it.

Exactly, Murdoch could offer the same product in free and paid versions, and the iPad weenies would go for the paid one because it had a cooler font, or something.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[tehcyder]

Not subscribing to Murdoch's electronic rag is not theft, but it definitely is a potential lost sale from his point of view.

This is why I can't see him sticking just to the iPad, I don't know what percentage of internet use they have yet, but it's certainly still a minority.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[tehcyder]

I can't help thinking that your post is either an elaborate exercise in irony, or else an excellent troll.

How anyone can claim that accessing the internet is better on a phone than through a web browser on a full sized computer screen is beyond me.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[tehcyder]

I think the lowest end Windows machine would be a lot more than eighty quid cheaper than the lowest end Mac.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[tehcyder]

I could buy a secondhand Windows box for less than £100, so what?

Re:What does this bring to the table

[tehcyder]

GP wasn't a troll, unless you subscribe to the new slashdot definition of a troll as "something that annoys me/I disagree with".

Re:What does this bring to the table

[tehcyder]

I am increasingly relieved that it was Microsoft and not Apple who were the dominant company when the internet started becoming widely available to the public.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[tehcyder]

You seem to be making the assumption that all computer programs are best accessed via the internet.

A lot of us still like to have local program execution and read/write access. Pulling live information from the internet doesn't mean that you have to have separate apps to access each source of information.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[tehcyder]

Who said anything about proprietary clients?

*cough* Apple *cough*?

Re:What does this bring to the table

[tehcyder]

If people want to have proprietary hardware, proprietary software, a proprietary network and so on, good for them, let them get on with it and re-create the early AOL/Compuserve experience, but with added Apple shininess..

Just don't pretend that it is part of the internet.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[tehcyder]

Stop using the word "web" to refer to proprietary push technologies. The world wide web is accessible to anyone with a browser.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[tehcyder]

Well, supposedly it will be more than the umpteenth regurgitated blog mess that is the current web-based media. You know what I'm talking about, when a "news" article is a blog talking about a blog that references a blog written by a guy who has an unnamed source.

So you think News Corp is suddenly going to become a bastion of high quality journalism?

Re:What does this bring to the table

[Graff]

So you think News Corp is suddenly going to become a bastion of high quality journalism?

Did I say that?

Re:What does this bring to the table

[gstoddart]

I can't help thinking that your post is either an elaborate exercise in irony, or else an excellent troll.

Have you considered the fact that neither interpretation is correct? Because, it is in fact, neither. Go back and re-read it.

How anyone can claim that accessing the internet is better on a phone than through a web browser on a full sized computer screen is beyond me.

Except, that's not what I said.

Primarily, I was talking about the iPad, not a phone. And, I was talking about accessing content and applications -- not "the internet" or a "web browser".

An iPad-native application to access content is a cleaner interface than simply viewing things in a web browser, specifically because it is optimized for the screen size and the difference in the interface. Because you use the device differently (as you will with any touch screen tablet that isn't trying to reproduce a desktop experience with a keyboard and a mouse).

I also said that moving away from having everything being a web-page is long overdue -- I generally find a lot of applications just simply don't lend themselves to being on the web, but people still insist on rolling out everything as a web page because that's what we've been doing.

Content delivery apps on any tablet gives us the opportunity for something new. In this case, an iPad newspaper -- while I'm not interested in subscription content from News Corp, I do have free news applications from the likes of BBC and Reuters. And, as I stated, reading content on a native app is simply a better designed interface than a web-page.

The web isn't going anywhere, but why should we slavishly stick to everything being a web-page when we have new types of user interfaces and technologies? Having a touch screen changes how you interact with the device, so to me, a native app to access the content makes more sense than sticking to the old web-page model. In this case, some content providers have decided that in addition to their web-pages, they would write a native app which you can also use to access their content. Customers get choice.

Human-Computer interaction can't just halt at the web-page, especially since the first tablets are showing us how we can do it better. However, this gets lost in the sea of Apple bashing and nobody is listening because "zomg I hate Apple". What Apple has done is to actually establish some new ways to interact with a device -- consequently, an app designed to use that has the possibility of being nicer to use than a web-page.

All of the above should be true for any touch-screen tablet. Specifically because it's not a "web browser on a full sized computer screen".

Re:What does this bring to the table

[Gizzmonic]

Murdoch himself has a history of being anti-socialist more than anything else. ...Except in China, where his publications parrot the official state 'news' because that's what sells. He's loyal to exactly one thing: money.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[gstoddart]

You seem to be making the assumption that all computer programs are best accessed via the internet.

And you seem to be making a lot of assumptions about what I'm saying. :-P

A lot of us still like to have local program execution and read/write access. Pulling live information from the internet doesn't mean that you have to have separate apps to access each source of information.

I generally prefer to have as much of my information locally so that I can still access it off-line. One of my favorite apps is a reader for wikipedia which keeps the pages you view locally so you can read them offline.

However, I am saying that a native interface to view the content that you pull off the internet (some content, not all content) can simply be a better designed user interface than a web page.

The web as a one-size fits all model where everything needs to be pulled down every time has been around a while. But, it's not the last word, and there is room for improvement.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[DragonWriter]

Stop using the word "web" to refer to proprietary push technologies.

GP never uses the word "web" to refer to proprietary push technologies, so it would be hard to stop doing that.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[mugnyte]

Given. I stand corrected. I'm happy to read that you aren't paying for a subscription.

  Paywalls filter a readership so narrowly they usually fail to pay the bills. So advertising becomes the method anyway, even with a paywall.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/dec/03/memories-paywall-pioneer

Re:What does this bring to the table

[jo_ham]

The point was "let's see you do that with OS X" and I have done so. I didn't pick up the cheapest one either.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[jo_ham]

Ok, so proprietary hardware like ATI and NVidia graphics cards, Intel CPUs, standard RAM, SATA hard drives and SSDs, standard ethernet ports and 802.11b/g/n wireless.

Proprietary standards like html5, aac, h.264, well documented xml formats, open source calendar and contacts servers, WebDAV...

The point is not to make a closed off network. The point is to create tools that do the job to their own strengths rather than just trying to force everything into a Web UI, but still using open standards and protocols and networks to do it.

The data for this app (and the BBC and Guardian apps that are already on the store and not vapourware [I have used them both], fetch their data from the same servers at the web client does. It's just a different way to access it - and better on the iPad when you do it this way. On a normal computer, it is better to access it with a web page.

Of course this is a part of the internet. Unless you want the internet to be frozen in time, because it's just perfect the way it is. Oh wait, I understand, it can only grow in directions *you* think are ok - so essentially when Android apps do this it'll be ok (oh wait, Android already has).

Re:What does this bring to the table

[clarkkent09]

If by outside US you mean the Eurofagots, I can reliably inform you that most Americans do not exactly envy people who have forgotten (actually never even known) what freedom is like and who are happy to be paying 60% of their meager (by US standards) income to support their bankrupt welfare states, when they are not driving around in their midget cars and living in their 800 sf. government built apartments. Btw, a continent that produced communism, nazism, fascism and caused 100+ million deaths (lets not even go back further than 20th century) should maybe, just maybe, take a look at the US constitution and 225 years of unprecedented freedom, prosperity and stability that that system produced and try to learn something from it.

Re:What does this bring to the table

[Hillgiant]

It makes Rupert Murdoch more money. Oh, you meant, "how is it better for the customer?" Does that actually matter?

You make a salient point that I believe most of the other posters have missed.

How does this improve the experience for advertizers?

Re:What does this bring to the table

[spun]

Most people don't seem to realize that readers are not the target market. They are the product, delivered to the target market, advertisers. The iPod, being a "walled garden" rather than an open access point to the wild and woolly web, delivers a product that is more palatable to advertisers: people who like being told what to do.

minority report

[Laxori666]

This reminds me of the scene in minority report where everyone carried around a digital screen instead of a newspaper. When an arrest warrant went out for the main character, seconds later all their screens were updated with a News Flash saying to look out for the guy. It's, like, the future, today!

Re:minority report

[blair1q]

Except now it won't be an arrest warrant, it will be an order to call Health Care Reform, "Government takeover of healthcare".

Re:minority report

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it's like the future today, oh wait, if the iPad is dropped it may break, and in Minority Report it was actually a foldeable paper? Right?

Why?

[cpu6502]

I can get the daily edition of News Corp's "The Blaze" or FOXnews.com for free. What makes this new iPad edition worth paying? I guess it has something to do with the new push tech.

Wow! News content delivered automatically!!

[Orga]

Who'd have ever thought such technology was feasible. Only in the world of a closed off iPad could this possibly be any kind of news. Please let us return to five years ago when things like this weren't newsworthy.

One more reason to not buy an iPad......

[__aavqan3009]

Just because we can does`nt mean we should.

Oh goody

[southpolesammy]

Yet another monthly recurring charge that I'll never use, nor ever get around to cancelling. At least my idle gym membership won't feel so lonely now...

Re:Oh goody

[Urkki]

Yet another monthly recurring charge that I'll never use, nor ever get around to cancelling. At least my idle gym membership won't feel so lonely now...

Indeed, but don't feel bad. Things like that are what keeps the economy running. Like gyms, how else could they afford to keep gym equipment factory workers (in China) fed, if not for all the generous people with idle gym memberships?

Re:Oh goody

[SteveFoerster]

Ooo, I like people like you because you keep my gym membership affordable, and I actually use it. Thanks!

Re:In other irrelevant news ...

[bigredradio]

This has no bearing on me, as I have no desire to own an iPad, and even less desire to read a single word penned in Murdoch's cesspool.

So you click on the slashdot article about a service you would not want on a device you don't have? Then leave a comments letting us know you don't care about it?

Re:In other irrelevant news ...

[countertrolling]

This has no bearing on me...

But it does.. People who read Fox also vote.. a dangerous combination.

DONOTWANT

[toby]

If ever a story deserved that tag, it's this one.

Re:Sign me up!

[Captain Splendid]

Good! Straight news not re-written by desk-bound "reporters", and opinions devoid of leftist drivel.

Unfortunately, no shortage of douchebaggery.

Re:Sign me up!

[Anonymous Coward]

Good! Straight news not re-written by desk-bound "reporters", and opinions devoid of leftist drivel.

Paranoid much?

Persecution complex much?

Does it have a crossword puzzle?

[JThaddeus]

That and a non-Murdoch paper could sell me on a iPad.

Re:Does it have a crossword puzzle?

[gstoddart]

That and a non-Murdoch paper could sell me on a iPad.

BBC, Reuters and numerous others have news apps for the iPad that are free, and a fair few have subscription availability.

You can get also crossword apps, again, some free.

marketing train wreck approaching... 3.. 2... 1

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the proportion of Apple iPad users (young, liberal, welcome novelty, tolerant of diverse lifestyles and cultures) who would shell out subscription rates for Rupert Murdoch's right-wing spin on the news?

D'oh.

Re:marketing train wreck approaching... 3.. 2... 1

[LDAPMAN]

Why would you assume that iPad users fall into that demographic? The folks you describe are a small minority of the population. You don't honestly believe that Apple has sold many millions of iPhones and iPads to such a niche market.

Re:marketing train wreck approaching... 3.. 2... 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Pay attention to Apple's ads.

Re:marketing train wreck approaching... 3.. 2... 1

[RightSaidFred99]

You underestimate the number of hipster douches that are out there.

They are multitude.

Re:marketing train wreck approaching... 3.. 2... 1

[tehcyder]

Pay attention to Apple's ads.

And everyone who buys perfume at Xmas looks like a model because the people in the ads do.

It's about bullshit "aspiration".

It's from News Corp? Save yourself some money

[serutan]

Just scrawl "Liberal Socialists Doing Scary Bad Stuff!" on the screen in permanent marker and look at it every five minutes.

Re:It's from News Corp? Save yourself some money

[sa1lnr]

And there will be tits on page 3?

Re:It's from News Corp? Save yourself some money

[Anonymous Coward]

No, this is aimed mostly at the US market. Page 3 will be pictures of Muslims being shot. And lots of American flags.

Re:It's from News Corp? Save yourself some money

[RightSaidFred99]

I actually listen to Fox sometimes, either for amusement or to get a different viewpoint. You're clearly about 3 years behind, the new Naughty Word is "Progressives". "Liberals" (i.e. "libruls", "libruhls") is so 20th Century.

Re:It's from News Corp? Save yourself some money

[radionerd]

I think this is a great idea, I get to pay for my Fascist propaganda right up front!. My parakeet thinks it's a stupid idea, we still have to pay for it, and he ends up with no place to crap.

Re:It's from News Corp? Save yourself some money

[ignavus]

Just scrawl "Liberal Socialists Doing Scary Bad Stuff!" on the screen in permanent marker and look at it every five minutes.

You can just scrawl that on a sheet of paper and save yourself the cost of an iPad.

Time machine

[mrogers]

When the iPad was first announced, I dismissed it as an insignificant device - little more than a giant phone or a netbook without a keyboard.

How wrong I was.

What Jobs & Co have developed is nothing less than a fucking time machine. The iPad offers to transport us back to the comfort and safety of the mid-twentieth century. A time when citizens' minds were untroubled by pornographic smut or government leaks. A time when the news was delivered to your doorstep once a day, and you were happy to pay for the privilege. A time when anyone who disagreed with the policies designed to keep them safe was quietly taken away and never heard from again.

What next from these technological wizards? Here are my predictions:

• The iDollar, a digital currency based on the rock-solid security of the Gold Standard.
• The iCadillac, a car the size of a house, with stylish white-wall tires and a DRM-equipped stereo.
• The iWife, a lifelong companion and domestic servant who will teach your iKids strict gender roles and other Apple-approved family values.
• The iCigar, a relaxing treat for gentlemen, with no proven medical link to cancer.
• The iMac, a dapper yet practical wrap-around raincoat, available in beige, light brown, or camel.

I'm truly excited to be living in the future my grandparents dreamed of!

Re:Time machine

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

What Jobs & Co have developed is nothing less than a fucking time machine. The iPad offers to transport us back to the comfort and safety of the mid-twentieth century.

While you doubtless know the "safer more wholesome time" thing is a fiction, what's sad about this sort of thing is twofold:

First, that cutting edge companies aren't taking a stand with an eye to the future. They could be setting themselves up as common carrier type companies that will carry any content that meets technical criteria and thus they don't have to explain why they'll do business with the KKK but not Wikileaks. No one is all that offended by neutral third parties and those that are, usually don't hurt you business.

Second, that there is a real business case in the US for company run censorship on behalf of the consumer. If it didn't make business sense, i.e. if people didn't want content to be censored then we wouldn't see Walmart, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and for that matter most major companies censoring the content that is distributed through them. Was there ever an America that truly valued individual freedom and where people thought, "stories about sex with your mother, gross, completely not interesting to me, I hope the store carries it and values individuals' rights to choose for themselves, the same way they do with content I want but most people don't like". I truly value freedom, but most businesses that have studied the issue seem to find consumers in the US are much more interested in imposing a lack of freedom and enforced adherence to the mainstream. Screw you American public!

Re:Time machine

[mrogers]

I agree, there's a sad lack of vision in America today. The whole country seems bitter and afraid. Nobody talks about principles. Of course the same's true in Europe, but I feel like we've been suffering from that disease for longer - America used to be different. Perhaps it's a symptom of post-imperial decline, which America's only just beginning to enter. Or perhaps I've fallen for the golden age myth after all - Americans must have been bitter during the Great Depression, afraid during the Cold War - why did we ever think they were different?

Re:Time machine

[Anonymous Coward]

Was there ever an America that truly valued individual freedom and where people thought, "stories about sex with your mother, gross, completely not interesting to me, I hope the store carries it and values individuals' rights to choose for themselves, the same way they do with content I want but most people don't like".

Apparently so, or maybe this store's purchasing agent missed something.

Re:Time machine

[tehcyder]

I agree, there's a sad lack of vision in America today. The whole country seems bitter and afraid. Nobody talks about principles.

Unfortunately, I think it's more like Yeats said:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Your Teabaggers, warmongers and Christian fascists don't lack principles, they just believe in fucking stupid ones.

And the silent unhappy majority just go along with the loonies because they're too bowed under the weight of misinformation and economic gloom above them to worry about much more than scratching a living for their families.

Re:In other irrelevant news ...

[Anonymous Coward]

People are free to be idiots. That is the most excellent thing about our country :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9GespLQrM8&feature=related

Now after watching that do you think people vote because of policies or because they think it is American Idol?

I personally happen to agree with many republican policies and a few democrat polices. I write my congress critter and TELL them. Paper, pen, and a stamp, no quick dashing off an email... I do not care what party they are in. They represent me no matter what. I do get rather irked with the block voting going on. Which means *NEITHER* party is actually reading the bills, and the congress critters are most certainly not reading them.

Re:In other irrelevant news ...

[Anonymous Coward]

that actually describes everyone here :)

Re:In other irrelevant news ...

[Anonymous Coward]

This has no bearing on me, as I have no desire to own an iPad, and even less desire to read a single word penned in Murdoch's cesspool.

So you click on the slashdot article about a service you would not want on a device you don't have? Then leave a comments letting us know you don't care about it?

Obligatory: You must be new here.

Re:In other irrelevant news ...

[Anonymous Coward]

what's even more disturbing, they don't just vote (which can be corrected in the long run), they breed.

What will it be called?

[DrXym]

My money is on "The Hipster"

Re:What will it be called?

[Duradin]

How can they call themselves "The Hipster" if they don't hate Apple enough to not be on an Apple device? Applehate is the hippest of hip.

We don't read Wynand

[Lilith's Heart-shape]

Of course, comparing Rupert Murdoch to Gail Wynand is a more generous comparison than Murdoch deserves.

Re:Sign me up!

[phoenixwade]

Paranoid != wrong. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they are NOT out to get you.

Re:In other irrelevant news ...

[Anonymous Coward]

"People who read Fox also vote.. a dangerous combination."

It doesn't much matter who votes. The outcomes of elections are determined largely by the election systems.

Re:In other irrelevant news ...

[Foobar of Borg]

This has no bearing on me, as I have no desire to own an iPad, and even less desire to read a single word penned in Murdoch's cesspool.

So you click on the slashdot article about a service you would not want on a device you don't have? Then leave a comments letting us know you don't care about it?

What the fuck are you going to expect next? That he RTFA???

Re:Sign me up!

[truthsearch]

Unfortunately for you, reality has well-known a liberal bias.

sound like trouble

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see a couple of reasons why they'd want to get everyone to read their news through a proprietary app. (1) you can't block the ads and (2) google et al. can't get to your content as easily. It increases the value of their advertising and helps get rid of news aggregators. Sounds like what Tim Berners-Lee was warning everyone about.

This just in!

[Anonymous Coward]

Homophobes, racists, the mentally ill, and old coots descend upon Apple Stores nationwide!

Re:huh...

[vijayiyer]

Funny, don't you think "Freedom hating" would be something you'd hear on Fox News? Or are you blinded by your own hate?

Cue CSS joke

[Yvan256]

There's no money to be made in the top, middle and bottom?

YAY!!!

[koan]

Propaganda pushed to my over priced hobbled tablet...yay?

Re:In other irrelevant news ...

[oldspewey]

Yup, check out the maps from Ohio from 2004.

Curse you Rupert Murdoch!

[blair1q]

How the hell am I supposed to wrap a fish in that?

Re:Curse you Rupert Murdoch!

[B1ackDragon]

How the hell am I supposed to wrap a fish in that?

I've found that my iPad makes an excellent sushi plate.

Re:Curse you Rupert Murdoch!

[ignavus]

How the hell am I supposed to wrap a fish in that?

Blend the iPad first.

Re:Curse you Rupert Murdoch!

[tehcyder]

How the hell am I supposed to wrap a fish in that?

You have to take the iPad out of its special hand-tooled leather protective skin, throw the iPad in the nearest rubbish bin, and use the skin for something useful.

Re:In other irrelevant news ...

[blind biker]

So you click on the slashdot article about a service you would not want on a device you don't have? Then leave a comments letting us know you don't care about it?

So? Actually, what business is that of yours? This place is designed for everyone to comment on any topic. Even if you moderate him/her to -1, you can't stop them to express a point of view. That's a good thing, not a bad one.

This sounds familiar

[hawguy]

Hmmm...news pushed automatically to a device overnight.... omg, I think I've woken up in 1992!

But seriously, what value added service will this provide that users can't already get from one of the dozens of free online newspapers and news aggregator apps?

(interestingly, the title in TFA is "iPad-only newspaper from Apple and News Crop set to launch on January 17" if they really are going to Crop out the fluff from the news, that may make it worth the money)

Year of Mobile Malware

[orgelspieler]

Whaddya know? I guess 2011 will be the year of mobile malware!

Mourning

[mynameismonkey]

I miss PointCast.

Reference

[Anonymous Coward]

For those of you confused by that last sentence:

http://xkcd.com/798/

Of course

[jwietelmann]

That has never stopped anyone from filling something with ads anyway.

Re:Sign me up!

[OakDragon]

Do your knees hurt from all that jerking?

murdoch still going to die sooner or later

[Dan667]

all that money and hate is not going to keep him alive. To be honest, it already looks like he has gone senile.

Did you mean?

[crovira]

"you can't stop them" FROM EXPRESSING "a point of view."

Opine away, but avoid doing violence to the language.

I agree with you though: "That's a good thing, not a bad one.""

Re:In other irrelevant news ...

[DragonWriter]

So you click on the slashdot article about a service you would not want on a device you don't have? Then leave a comments letting us know you don't care about it?

You click on the "Reply to this" link on an comment that apparently doesn't interest you, and passive-aggressively ask questions about the comment to which the answers are expressly stated in the comment to which you are replying.

Your point?

And on the other networks just write

[Quila]

"Conservatives Doing Scary Bad Stuff!"

Anybody who thinks ABCNBCCBSMSNBC is anywhere near neutral or balanced is fooling himself.

Re:And on the other networks just write

[TheL0ser]

You missed fox news. But that's because they are fair and balanced. They say so right in the slogan.

Re:And on the other networks just write

[Abcd1234]

Up next on the conservatives-excuse Hotline, that golden oldie, "Well Clinton did it!"

What does this bring to the TV?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it will be a native app instead of the web, for one. The web is a reasonable "lowest common denominator", but really, it still sucks for UIs, no matter how many advances we've made.

Hence why Google TV will not work.

Finally, something that will SAVE print newspapers

[RapmasterT]

I'm assuming because this is being proposed by the same people who have watched the entire print newspaper industry slide down the toilet, while scratching their heads and wondering why, that this will fail miserably.

Let's see...limited distribution to ipad only, paid subscription for same content people can get free elsewhere, combined with generally being a dumb idea. what could go wrong?

Wait ... Fox News on the iPad?

[WillAffleckUW]

OK, it's official.

The end of the world is nigh.

Re:In other irrelevant news ...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

This has no bearing on me, as I have no desire to own an iPad, and even less desire to read a single word penned in Murdoch's cesspool.

So you click on the slashdot article about a service you would not want on a device you don't have? Then leave a comments letting us know you don't care about it?

Of course. We're all trying to win that word 'Insightful' next to our posts.

Re:In other irrelevant news ...

[Anonymous Coward]

The point you make in your comment is of the bottomless, 'turtles all the way down', type. That is, I can just as easily ask what business is it of yours questioning bigredradio. However, much like oldspewey's comment, it doesn't add anything useful to the discussion; rather, again much lime oldspewey's comment, it's an inane comment with no purpose other than to degrade the signal to noise.

It seem to me that bigredradio was simply pointing out oldspewey's inanity but no attempt was made to prevent oldspewey from posting drivel.

If it gets by theSteve

[opusbuddy]

Will it be called "iLies?"

Up next on the liberal excuse hotline

[Quila]

"Liberal news slant is really neutral."

How is fiscal conservatism libertarian?

[brokeninside]

Being fiscally conservative means only that you think that the government should spend less than it takes in until such time as the national debt is paid off.

Perhaps you meant economically conservative.

Not if they want to get it approved by Apple

[brokeninside]

Page 3 will have to wait until the Android version comes along.

Re:Sign me up!

[Hognoxious]

Why would iPad owners be interested in straight news?

Cool!

[Zorque]

Now you can use a pile of shit to read a pile of shit! Meta!

Re:In other irrelevant news ...

[Corbets]

So you click on the slashdot article about a service you would not want on a device you don't have? Then leave a comments letting us know you don't care about it?

So? Actually, what business is that of yours? This place is designed for everyone to comment on any topic. Even if you moderate him/her to -1, you can't stop them to express a point of view. That's a good thing, not a bad one.

He wasn't trying to prevent you from expressing your opinion, he was laughing at you for the obvious dichotomy between your actions and your words.

Re:huh...

[The Hatchet]

of course I think "freedom hating" would be something on fox news, everything on their show is about hate and removing freedoms from people different than themselves. Sure they try to make other people look like freedom haters, but frankly, nobody wants to take away their freedom to be bigoted hate filled assholes fighting against education, freedom, information, science, personal liberties, etc, but the fact is that everyone besides them wants their freedoms, and it is not their right to take away everyone else's.

Let me put it this way, I don't hate anyone, but I do love freedom and the people who are fighting against it have gone beyond just fighting against my and the freedom of others, and they have changed into people who use psuedoscience with absolutely no evidence to back them up besides ridiculous here say, and they have claimed every single organization not based on the bible biased and heresy. Not to mention they have began labeling non-hate filled bigots as having "the liberal disease that needs to be cured of killed" according to the past 4 of them I have debated, and Glenn Beck himself, the thought leader of the dick heads.

So no, I am not blinded by hate, I am just a man who wants my freedom and will be damned if a bunch of hater dumbasses will take away my freedom to express myself, speak my mind, and have free and easy access to a proper education and knowledge.

Re:Sign me up!

[tehcyder]

Paranoid != wrong. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they are NOT out to get you.

Untrue, as "paranoid" is really shorthand for "paranoid delusions".

So now there's an app...

[UDChris]

for yesterday's news?

Re:In other irrelevant news ...

[tehcyder]

This has no bearing on me, as I have no desire to own an iPad, and even less desire to read a single word penned in Murdoch's cesspool.

So you click on the slashdot article about a service you would not want on a device you don't have? Then leave a comments letting us know you don't care about it?

Yes, because it keeps the Apple fanboys on their toes and reminds them that there is an outside world.

Re:In other irrelevant news ...

[tehcyder]

People are free to be idiots. That is the most excellent thing about our country :)

No, at best it's a disastrous but inevitable consequence of freedom: it's certainly not a good thing.