There’s a new magazine out on the iPad for the iPad called Sideways, priced at £2.99 and it features everything about the iPad. Sideways creators say it’s the first iPad designed magazine, and I have to say it’s a pleasure to read and looks good, including the embedded YouTube video on many of the pages.
I thought this would be a highly tech orientated magazine for the iPad but it turns out it’s more of a lifestyle magazine featuring iPads which includes looking at how to grill food on the BBQ, looking at the world cup, running and fitness for the iPad and showcasing a few apps to purchase along with some basic tutorial videos on how to use the iPad.
This is all okay, but one thing I did find is that even after purchasing the magazine that there’s a number of articles in the magazine that don’t work because they’re scheduled for release on a future date in the month (see image of greyed out articles above). I really don’t get this or like this attitude. If you are providing a magazine for sale, then everything should be there. This would be like going to the newsagents, purchasing a paper magazine and finding on the pages where an article should be it says, “sorry this article isn’t ready, send us your address and we will mail it to you when ready”. That kinda sucks seeing that i have paid £2.99 and can’t yet get the entire magazine, especially for a magazine first and I’m sure will hurt Sideways. I can see a possible reason why they’re doing this, to try and get you to come back to the magazine later in the month in the hope you’ll say, okay I’ll buy next months magazine that is due out soon, or simply because they aren’t fully ready with the magazine.
Overall the magazine look and feel is very nice, its not like a traditional swipe magazine, you navigate by picking articles off the left hand menu, so the closest you could say this comes to is a website but designed in a very clean way.
Now that I have seen the first issue and experienced the content and the missing articles in the magazine, I don’t think I will be buying the second monthly installment of the magazine but do like what they are trying to do with Sideways all the best and hope it takes off for them. I think they would get a lot more monthly subscribers if they have all of the articles ready in-app and made it a lot more tech orientated.
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