Popular Science research offers Apple tablet hint
Just a short note to draw your attention to this video which shows you a concept of a future eReader device (possibly of some interest also to readers working within Apple R&D). It details a corporate collaborative research project initiated by Popular Science publisher, Bonnier R&D into the experience of reading magazines on handheld digital devices. It illustrates one possible vision for digital magazines in the near future.
As the page detailing the video reveals: “The concept aims to capture the essence of magazine reading, which people have been enjoying for decades: an engaging and unique reading experience in which high-quality writing and stunning imagery build up immersive stories.”
As we can see it’s a lot more than a simple magazine, it also harnesses various forms of digital media to maximize the immersive experience of engaging with a title.
“The purpose of publishing this concept video is first and foremost to spark a discussion around the digital reading experience in general, and digital reading platforms in particular,” the researchers explain, there’s even a link to a discussion forum on the device right here.
With all the discussion surrounding an Apple tablet, we though it might be of interest to see how the publishers are thinking on these things. We suspect Cupertino will do its best to match and exceed such visions.
Via: Engadget
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Comments (16)
I really like the intutiveness and creativity of rubbing the screen to bring up options.
Perhaps that could be implemented in the Apple tablet and even the iPhone.
interesting. no multi touch / pinching tho. ?
Yes, there is. Look at the two finger slide up from the bottom gesture. Very cool looking device. If someone builds it for a reasonable price (>$800), it will sell like MAD.
i want one now
I particularly like the way they've organized the magazine as if all the info were placed on one sheet of paper. Then, you simply envision your tablet's screen sliding up/down, left/right as you navigate. Maybe that is obvious to others, but I've never seen it portrayed quite that way. That's probably the way an e-mag should be implemented. Implementation of the other features (cut/paste/pop-up menues) is something Apple might be able to improve upon.
totally photoshopped, the shadows are all . . .
Oh, sorry, wrong site.
Love the fluidity. There was multitouch for the menu, but then a hold-touch for the context menu. I don't think that the duplication of functions made sense to me.
Folks -- This is a very interesting and compelling design for an eReader UX.
I don't know whether this is close to Apple's design, but it does speak to the ability to separate the content layers by type, with graphics, images and videos playing a prominent role in the navigation experience. A must view. It's about 6 minutes.
Bill H.
Very nice demonstration, but I'm curious as to why they haven't pushed the magazine paradigm further. Surely video and dynamic, real-time Internet feeds would be more prominent.
The Zinio interface on the computer is painful. At least this thing has a chance at making the experience a positive one. PC Magazine (I know, wrong site to use this reference) has been "digital only" for about a year and I hate it. I think I have read portions of the mag about 3 times. I read every page of my Pop Science and Pop Mechanics. Mostly because it goes effortlessly to where I want to causually read.
It's a very nice concept video. I would certainly welcome a tablet with these capabilities, but I know it's not going to come cheap. Yeah, probably around $800 or so. I don't care. I would buy it especially if it can play back high-quality videos and play games as well as much as a big iPod Touch. I would prefer this over a netbook any day of the week. I also think that Kindles and Nooks still have their place for those that just want to read on the cheap.
Maybe this type of tablet won't sway netbook users, but I'm fairly certain businessmen would enjoy using this device and they'd be certainly able to afford it. I'm not concerned about not having a physical keyboard because I only want to use it for output use. That virtual keyboard is good enough for me. It would be nice if they had a gesture-based character input or voice input as well.
It is a nice minimalist design concept. The HUD is straight forward and intuitive.
It is called Mag+ for a reason.
The mag does not contain videos or sound, and the presenter did not explain how these would be accessed. There was no audio/video controls in the UI. Search. He mentions the page metadata but no search.
The vertical layout would look bland quite quickly and stifle design variety.
The broadsheet metaphor for the contents was good but there was no overview and I think a simple listed contents page could be just as good. There is no need for a summary on the contents page when you can go to the article in the same space of time. Just make a quick Back button.
They still see the magazine in a linear aspect with the swipe function. People rarely read magazines in a linear fashion. The contents page is the most important page.
I think this would be the point Apple were months or years ago.
Just realised seearch is there at the top.
It seems that there is so much hype for this product I would hate to be let down. It now seems that yes the masses have responded. They want a tablet as only Apple could produce. Apple has the media distribution (iTunes) that would make this a wonderful product. But with all the hype (there's even a website dedicated to all Apple Tablet News, www.tabletcraze.com ) it seems that if this spring comes and goes and no tablet that we may loose faith in our folks at Apple. It's amazing what the public's emotions can produce. First the public said, "we don't think there is a market for this device". Now suddenly no one can live without one (even though most have never had their hands on a device like this) ...funny.
Not sure I would call it "troubling" but there was no mention about being able to ZOOM or just focus on reading the text itself. Most of the current eReaders out on the market now have an ability to change the size of the text. If I'm reading a digital magazine I would certainly like an option of getting rid of any pictures/graphics/ads on my screen in order to just read the textual content of the article at some point and not at a small 10-12 point font size on a bright screen.
Oh for f***'s sake, all this speculation is really getting on my tits!
Please, Apple, if you're going to release a tablet- GET ON WITH IT, some of us are desperate to get our hands on one!!!!!!!
This seems nice, but - I also want a grid view of the whole
of an article on one page - so i can get a sense of it's 'flow' and if I want to read it, what i want to look at first etc