iPad magazine sales seem to be in a bit of a slump. Many magazine publishers have made their content available on iPad as it's an easy way to read content without having to have paper copies littering your home or office. If it's more convenient, why are magazine sales on the iPad not doing so great?

In August, 10,500 users bought issues of Vanity Fair on their iPads. In August, only 8,700 copies were purchased via the iPad. Glamour magazine was in even worse shape with only 2,775 iPad issues sold in October. We all know that paper copies of magazines are on their way out, but shouldn't that mean that virtual copies should literally be flying off digital shelves?

Part of the issue may be the fact that Apple and publishers still haven't agreed on a universal, built-in subscription service (Apple wants to handle the transactions, publishers want to know who you are so they can do marketing based on demographic data). So for now, in order to purchase these magazines, you have to buy each issue individually. That can be a hassle. Since there are often steep discounts on the paper copies but none on the digital version, it can also be much more expensive.

As far as from a magazine stand point, maybe they need to switch gears on their own. There are several sport apps available that you have to purchase yearly. What about that type of model? What if a magazine had a few different apps with different price points? For a year subscription, price the app at the cost of a year's subscription. Then issue updates for each issue. Not an ideal situation but maybe a temporary solution to keep subscribers reading.

Do you guys read magazines on your iPad? Does no subscription model keep you from buying additional issues on a weekly/monthly basis?

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At over 5ooMB, Wired's iPad app arrives in the App Store and yes, the future of magazine reading appears to arrive with it!

Last November we gave a sneek-peek at Wired's concept for a magazine on a tablet. That demo was in Adobe's Flash. The new version is 100% Flash free and is beautiful.

Navigating the magazine is a breeze; tap on the screen and you are given overlayed navigation tools. The bottom scrolls through pages and the top has two options- zoom out and a vertical list of articles in the issue.

There is plenty of interactive content too. Videos from the upcoming Toy Story movie and 3D real-time models of Mars and a Lego Lamborghini. With this awesome content and interactivity comes a price; $4.99 an issue. Is it worth it? Let us know in comments! Check screenshots after the break!

[$4.99- iTunes Link]

Rupert Murdoch is bringing a Wall Street Journal app to the iPad the media mogul confirmed in his own paper:

"In fact, we've been allowed to work on one, and it's under padlock and key. The key is turned by Apple every night. But we will be on that with The Wall Street Journal."

Condé Nast is also getting in on the action according to the New York Times:

GQ will have a tablet version of its April issue ready. Vanity Fair and Wired will follow with their June issues, and The New Yorker and Glamour will have issues in the summer (the company has not yet determined the exact timing for those).

They say GQ for iPhone has already sold 150,000 copies, and they'll experiment with various advertising and pricing models. All the magazine apps will be developed internally with the exception of Wired, which was/is developed with Adobe.

Publisher Penguin wants to go so far as to abandon the limitations of the ePub format and make their books into apps, says Paid Content:

“We will be embedding audio, video and streaming in to everything we do. The .epub format, which is the standard for ebooks at the present, is designed to support traditional narrative text, but not this cool stuff that we’re now talking about.

Check out their video, after the break...

[via MacRumors x2, Gizmodo, 9to5Mac]

YouTube link

How much are you willing to pay for magazine and newspaper subscriptions on the iPad? That's a question publishers like the New York Times are literally fighting over, according to Valley Wag.

In their specific case, the old guard in "print" want to charge $20-$30 a month to access the paper online via the New York Times app shown off during last month's iPad announcement. Seems they're afraid it will cut into the traditional print-it, fold-it, put-it-on-a-truck-and-ship-it business. The folks in "digital", however, want to charge $10 since, you know, you don't have to print, fold, or drive it around to get it to the readers (cost for paper and fuel is zero).

That's just the NYT, mind you. While Apple is releasing a standardized, iTunes-based iBooks Store for the iPad, they haven't offered anything similar for newspapers or magazines (yet), meaning even if the Times settles on one model, the Washington Post (or whomever) could settle on something completely different. Atypically confusing for an Apple platform, isn't it?

And either way, there's really no precedent as to whether or not people will pay $10 a month for a digital newspaper, let alone $20 or $30. They certainly will for real world newspapers they can hold in their hand and share around the house and office, but for digital?

Some magazines, like Wired, are showing off and discussing concepts of what their digital version will look like (see their non-iPhone friendly video, after the jump), perhaps hoping the richer, multimedia experience will create a greater perception of value.

While people are used to free content on the web (Wall Street Journal aside), convenience and ease of use did get some off the file-sharing and onto iTunes Music. Could the same work for print? And what price point will let them stay in business and let us keep reading their content?

How much are you willing to pay to read the New York Times or Wired from the comfort of your iPad?

How badly does Wired's publisher, Condé Nast, want to get their content on the still-mythical Apple iTablet? Badly enough that they're working with Adobe to mock up their old content for this new (and still hypothetical!) medium. See the video above. (Warning! turn down your volume first!)

Now, we understand when movies started they were just filmed stage productions, and so it makes some sense that this looks a lot like scanned magazine pages made slideshow -- with a nice interactive map thrown in. The good news is that Apple's iTablet is still unreal, so there's plenty of time for content providers to play around with ideas on how to better present it dynamically, not quite like the web or even iPhone apps or iTunes LP/Extras, but a hybrid of all the above and more. Something next.

[Wired via Gizmodo]

Wired's blog picked up a story from iPhone Atlas today about a minor MobileSafari browser UI change that sees the (defaults to Google) search box surfaced right on top beside the URL address box (currently it only pops up when the top box is activated to save on vertical real estate). To compensate, the Refresh button gets demoted and tucked inside the refresh box. Not sure about the usability on this change yet...?

The more interesting speculation is about cut and paste, which Wired claims NO specific info on, but offers this as part of the ongoing search for some reason why Apple hasn't yet implemented this seemingly core functionality:

It's possible that Apple is taking so long to implement copy and paste not because it is difficult, but because Apple is reinventing it. Imagine a system-wide menu added to all applications which, instead of shuffling items off to a clipboard, lists all the places you can send that file (or text string). This would be like the existing "Open with" option available in the Mac's right-click menu -- each application effectively reports to the OS exactly what kind of files it can handle and the OS remembers this. Thus a picture could be sent to not only the Photo app, but to any other photo program. Text could be sent directly to any open dialog box in, say, Safari.

Sounds good to us. What about it, Joz?

Remember the Wired.com Global iPhone 3G Study Casey posted about a week or so back? Well, the results are in, and Wired's conclusion is interesting to say the least:

In our view, this data is a strong indicator that performance of the mobile carrier's network is affecting the iPhone 3G more than the handset itself.

Wired further cites the recent Swedish engineering tests, run by Bluetest, which showed that the iPhone 3G's eponymous radio and antenna performed roughly the same as those of the other handsets they tested.

So where does this leave the last, 2.0.2 firmware tweaks from Apple, and hopes that 2.1 would further fix 3G connection problems? Chipset and firmware finger-pointing may have been misplaced, or at least been only part of a larger overall 3G connectivity knot. Either way, it looks like the tennis ball has just been rocketed back into AT&T (and the other carriers') court for now.

From an end-user's perspective, however, especially if you're one of the unfortunate 2%, other than providing some entertaining distraction, does the blame game really help us? Or do we just want it fixed, like, yesterday?

(Thanks Bad Ash and yc for the tips! Thanks to the TiPb faithful who went over there to help out with the study, and thanks to Wired for recognizing them!)

Have you run into any 3G connection issues? Do you notice a slower tick than expected with your iPhone 3G? Well, take a part in Wired.com's global study so you can see if your iPhone is the slowest horse in the race or if it's just your area. Just point your iPhone Safari browser to TestMyiPhone.com and start a download and upload test and remember your location to import into Wired.com's interactive ZeeMap.

Maybe all this data won't amount to anything but it sure is cool to see how blazing fast 3G is in different parts of the world. Also, it serves as good reference to see if your iPhone 3G is part of the unlucky 2%. Click the Read Link for more info.

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"Inside Steve's Brain" author Leander Kahney of Wired magazine is reporting a programmer source inside a major software house has revealed that the next generation iPhone 3G will thinner -- we're talking Paris Hilton thinner -- by a whopping 22%.

Not only that, it will sport better battery life than the already impressive 8 hours talk time of the first gen model, and twice the NAND flash capacity, topping out at 32GB. (Paving the way for 64GB iPod Touch's?)

Still not enough, echoing Kevin Rose (historically not the most reliable of iPhone prognosticators), Kahney thinks the phone may be heavily carrier subsidized -- down to the $200 level in some cases -- in an effort to put the hurt on Blackberry.

Okay, fess up, who left the rumor mill jacked up to max?!

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