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

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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?

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.

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: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: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.

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.

Curse you Rupert Murdoch!

[blair1q]

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

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.