Wired review – magazine app

As a technology-oriented publication you’d expect Wired to get an iPad app right – and they very nearly have. The Wired app has had some teething issues, but it’s a maturing delivery platform that’s well-suited for the kind of content it provides. You can check the app out at Wired.com.

Price: Free! for the app itself; content is $3.99 per issue, via in-app purchasing
Size: 5.6 MB
Format: iPad-only app

First of all, I should mention that this is not the same Wired app that was on sale up until a few days ago. That app was a single issue of the magazine, and significantly flawed in its implementation. This app is an entirely separate (and improved) entity and, as such, you’ll need to grab it from the iTunes store all over again.

Now, what is the Wired app? It’s a framework for purchasing, downloading and viewing digital copies of the Wired paper magazine.

The Good

The app’s interface is minimalist and elegant, and largely easy to use. The front end is a gallery of Wired issues (including a free iPad Edition preview, and the June and July 2010 issues so far). From here you can purchase issues (in-app purchases use your iTunes account), download them, and select them for viewing.

Once you’re viewing an issue, a tap in the centre of the screen invokes the user interface, which auto-hides when not in use. A slider at the bottom of the screen lets you scrub through the issue page-by-page, and a menu bar at the top offers four options: the Home button takes you back to the issue gallery, a drop-down menu lists the issue’s contents by article, the issue number is a tappable link back to the cover page, and the horizontal navigation button gives a side-scrolling gallery of the issue’s contents, article by article (including ads), with multi-page articles flowing down the screen.

This last view gives a clue to the real strength of the Wired app. The content itself is more than just an electronic copy of a paper magazine: it’s not just a PDF. The magazine uses “new digital publishing technology developed by Adobe”. What this means in practise is that they can – and do – embed interesting multimedia content to enhance a story; for example, June’s short piece about Trent Reznor included audio samples to illustrate the stages of a song’s development. A one-page article about a Lego Lamborghini featured an animation of its assembly that you could swipe through to see the model grow on the ‘page’. And it lets them transcend the limits of paper; several stories take one page, with an option to tap multiple buttons to show different image captions, information overlays and so on — which is something that would take multiple pages in a print magazine, and probably get cut as a result.

Equally, the format’s versatility has affected the layout of the magazine: reading through it isn’t just a case of endlessly scrolling from left to right. Multi-page articles are oriented ‘vertically’, so you scroll downwards to read the rest of a story – which can be confusing to start with, but it’s a welcome change from “…continued on p. 120.”

The Bad

Unfortunately, this format comes with some weaknesses — the biggest is that multi-page articles with a scroll-down aren’t always immediately obvious. There are navigational cues of varying subtlety, such as borders and graphics that flow off the bottom of the screen, suggesting more content to see below, but unless you’re paying attention it’s too easy to skim sideways, leaving you confused at the start of a new article.

Navigational cues are also an issue in that it’s possible to accidentally tap on things you didn’t realise were links and wind up on a completely different page, with no back button in sight. (The cover is particularly prone to the latter; trying to scroll from the cover to the internal content can be an adventure!) Conversely, sometimes things look like they should be tappable links, and aren’t. This is improved in the most recent issue, with a circled arrow or yellow-highlighted text marking internal links.

The other major usability quibble is physical; changing pages requires a significant swipe motion; tapping hotspots is generally more pleasant, and better for those with restricted motion (whether due to physical limitations or being nested in a blanket on the couch).

Apart from usability issues, the biggest problem is size: the app is a fairly svelte 5.6 MB, but full issues of the mag are huge, around half a gigabyte, which will chew up storage space fast — especially as there doesn’t seem to be a way to delete issues once you’ve got ‘em. In some ways this is worse than the old version of the app, which was a one-app-per-issue model; at least with that system you could delete unwanted issues from your iPad without losing all of them.

There’s one significant feature that the app doesn’t have that you might expect: an interface for viewing wired.com content. It does have an internal browser for viewing external links but so far there’s no integration of Wired and wired.com content. I hope that’s on the way.

The Bottom Line

The improvements in the space of a month are impressive, and Wired seem to be committed to further development, including reducing the file size, and upcoming paper/digital subscription bundles. Despite the usability hurdles, the Wired app is an enjoyable read and a welcome expansion of the paper magazine. If you enjoy Wired magazine and don’t feel the need to own the dead-tree version, I recommend digital consumption.