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Apple Buys Texture, a 'Netflix For Magazines' App (ft.com)
Apple said on Monday it will acquire Texture, a digital magazine app, as the iPhone maker looks to fill the gap left by Facebook's pullback from news distribution. From a report: The deal is Apple's latest move to build out its content and services platform, coming just three months after it announced plans to acquire Shazam, the music recognition app, for around $400m. First launched in 2010, Texture has been described as "Netflix for magazines," as its $10-per-month subscription service provides unlimited access to more than 220 publications including People, the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, National Geographic and Vogue. Further reading: Recode.
A magazine is large, meant to be viewed two pages at a time. How do you look at something like that on a cell phone? Seems like it would either be way too small, or require a lot of pinching and zooming around all over the place. Also seems like it wouldn't be a good way to view the ads, and magazines are all about ads.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
What is a "magazine"?
The difference between a "digital magazine" and a web site is the ads are always full-page in the magazine.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
It's called a library.
If that's as far back as you remember, you haven't really been around here that long. Slashdot has always had some crap stories, and marketing stories, and political agenda stories. Why if you look at the Wayback machine and set it for April 1999 you'll see stories about the Wing Commander and Star Wars movies, as well as Apple buying rights to use the MP3 codec.
Also not sure how buying a magazine streaming service is "political" but it is of interest to some of us who have been consuming traditional print media on a screen for some time now.
A magazine is large, meant to be viewed two pages at a time. How do you look at something like that on a cell phone?
It's almost as if it would be better to make a much larger device, some kind of digital pad, on which you could view larger pages or even two at once...
Hmm, perhaps Apple should look into producing something like that to complement the magazine app.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
An app by itself that just presents the world of magazines as we know it, is nice but not very useful. There are not that many magazines I actually want to read...
Now what would be lots more interesting, is Apple really going the Netflix model - in addition to providing access to normal magazines, what if Apple spent even just a billion dollars on producing really out there magazines? Something no traditional publisher would produce because of risk, but Apple could back and present through the app as a hook, the same way Netflix has original series that are a draw to use the service and thus also see other content.
Apple could even do things like short run magazines, that only had five-ten issues, or really interactive stuff since it's presented in an app. There are a lot of exciting possibilities there!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I found it funny, when my grandma, and my not very smart Apple fan dad installed "magazine" and "newspaper" apps. Nearly the epitome of the opposite of a digital native ... The only thing missing would be for them to print out the Internet. (We actually have a word for that, here in Germany: Internetausdrucker. It means literally that.)
So this nonsense right here ... Let's just say, the people who coined the term "Eternal September" couldn't have imagined how bad it would get ...
We need a new Internet. For real digital natives only. (So if you confuse the WWW with the Internet, don't have root on any of your devices, don’t own a personal computer, or can't at the very least make a shell script, you can't get in.)
Ah, glad to see the Computer Priesthood is alive and well, and still doesn't get why it will never be the year of Linux on the Desktop!
Dude, the poster claims to be a "digital native", which means it's some whiny kid whose opinion is irrelevant.
It's a fucking millennial mouthing off.
Ah yes, the golden age of crap from Roland Prickpull and Bonehead Assholeton. And that blue hipster twat who used to link his stories to a malware site.
And it wasn't just that they were crap, you used to get the same one two or three times.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Also, have you actually looked at what's on offer for Texture
I've used other magazine apps (and comic book apps) so I'm pretty familiar with what they can do, and what can be had. Although I've not subscribed to Texture I did look at the list of magazines and they are pretty standard fare (it's nice to see Make is still going).
I took a look a few minutes ago and was surprised to see there is a magazine devoted to beer, among other things.
I live in Denver, so I would assume there are several hundred magazines about beer.
many people would find it useful and more cost effective than buying magazines all the time.
Indeed it would be more cost effective than buying magazines all the time.
Here's the thing - people are no longer "buying magazines all the time". Magazine purchases have declined tremendously across the board, so magazine apps have kind of felt like the last holdout before they go away altogether.
But I really think Apple. through the sheer bulk and stubborn application of capital, could re-envigorate magazines as a thing again, figure out some way to make them exciting and desirable for the modern reader. Something that would be a cross between a book and a magazine and a set of Medium articles. Magazines have been fishing themselves for something that will help them carry on, but they are bound by capital and risk tolerance in a way Apple does not have to be.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Thank You!
Also, don't forget to participate in Team Creimer YouTube poll about being in favor of a 2 to 3 weeks government shutdown so help desk can install patches and vote yes.
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Team Creimer for a 3 weeks government shutdown.
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Also, I have updated my sig yet one more time! I am now selling vacuum cleaners, going door to door while picking up second-hand lottery tickets at the same time!
Now, talk about efficiency! We will see who gets the last laugh when I collect all those royalties.
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$700 For A Vacuum Cleaner -- Are You #%@$ Nuts?!
They're going to buy Weeping Gorilla.
Focus on delivering completely integrated products is what made Apple what they are today.
If they start playing around with things like buying a magazine app here or setting up a cloud thing there then before you know it they're Google and they have no idea who they are, where they're going, or what their product is and neither will their customers.
I'm genuinely curious how the magazine publishers find this profitable. $10/month is about the price of a single digital-only subscription to many of these magazines.
If Texture is really providing the full content - the same as with a direct subscription - then I'm mystified. Why don't these publishers offer their subscriptions for $1/month or so? I'd snap up several of those in a flash. Why would they be satisfied with possibly substantially less delivered via a service like Texture?
> If Texture is really providing the full content - the same as with a direct subscription -
> then I'm mystified. Why don't these publishers offer their subscriptions for
> $1/month or so? I'd snap up several of those in a flash. Why would they be
> satisfied with possibly substantially less delivered via a service like Texture?
That $1/month/customer would be gross revenue, not net revenue. Try putting up the necessary web servers to handle thousands of paying customers browsing your site. Bandwidth ain't free, and neither are Oracle or SAP CRM applications to keep track of paying customers. Even if you go open source (MariaDB/PostgresSQL) you still need IT staff. And you get a small amount of money for *EVERY* Texture subscriber, even those who don't read your mag. How many of them would subscribe to your online mag directly?
This is similar to pay-TV channels forced onto basic cable. ESPN and BET (Black Entertainment Television) prefer to get a per subscriber fee, rather than handle their own billing. And non-sportsfans wouldn't subcribe to a discretionary ESPN, and most white people wouldn't subscribe to a discretionary BET. Many pay-TV channels would die in a true discretionary a-la-carte model. Think of Texture as the "200-channel-universe" cable bundle of the magazine world.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
Dude, the poster claims to be a "digital native", which means it's some whiny kid whose opinion is irrelevant.
It's a fucking millennial mouthing off.
Oh, look, it's one AC coming to the aid of another AC.
BAN ALL ACs, SLASHDOT!!!