The Magazine: For geeks like us. By Marco Arment

&#62; "The Magazine: For geeks like us"<p>... geeks "like us" who only care about iOS and are willing to pay for content. Just to be accurate.<p>Not that there's anything wrong with paying for content. Every time you're confronted by an ad that you didn't volunteer to look at, you're paying for content.<p>But iOS-only seems like quite a limitation, and seems to contradict "for geeks like us" as the headline appears in HN.

It doesn't surprise me that it takes an AAA iOS developer to finally make a good iOS magazine. It always struck me that Newsstand was a wasted potential: full of good publications trying to squeeze their paper format into an app instead of releasing the same content in a better format.<p>Does anybody know of "good" Newsstand apps? This might be the first.<p>I personally think Apple should release a more aggressive Newsstand API and a best practices guide: e.g. by all means customise your design and experience but that doesn't mean you should release an app crammed full of pngs that weighs half a gig. Newsstand apps should be low bandwidth and text-centric. Why can't I search all my magazines from a central location? Why can't I see a central list of articles I've favourited from a variety of publications? As it stands, the only way to do this is with an RSS reader or Instapaper. I'd be happy to pay for quality journalism if it was in a format that's convenient and sensible.

Interesting. First of all it's very nicely designed and after reading the introduction I like the philosophy behind it. Taking the Instapaper approach of focussing on text is interesting. While images and graphics can often enhance content having nice, plain text on a device the size of the iPhone makes much more sense. So first impressions of it are good. Hopefully the content is just as good.<p>Update:<p>After reading a couple of the articles it seems pretty high quality and justifies the price. It's also only the second good Newsstand app I've used (The New York Times is the other). I've tried several others and they are just 100's of space consuming images, difficult to read especially on the iPhone.

I'd love to see this as a webapp. I'm one of those folks that just doesn't use apps or even sign in to my apple account. I'm sure more of my kind exist.<p>EDIT: Whoops I see this has paid in-app purchases. I wonder if there's something out there that can offer as seamless an experience as iTunes in-app purchases for webapps.

Another victim is seduced by a leading "The", causing any attempt to reference this publication to become a tragedy of grammar.

Looks interesting. Finally, a use for the dreaded un-removable "Newsstand" icon on my iPhone.

It seems like I am the target audience for this. I listen to his podcast, follow his blog, and read tons of other Apple &#38; tech blogs. And use Instapaper.<p>But I really have no desire to pay a monthly fee for more articles. So I guess I'm opting out of this one.

I'd really like to give this a shot but am only interested in trying it on my iPad which can't get iOS6, so unfortunately, rather than passing on this, I am being left behind.

Too bad it is iOS6 only, leaving my iPad 1 out in the cold.

All the articles are available on-line at <a href="http://the-magazine.org/1" rel="nofollow">http://the-magazine.org/1</a> which is useful for sharing and reading on other devices.<p>I wonder how much evil it would be to create an RSS feed for it.

This mostly seems to be a magazine for Apple afficionados. And thats a terrible thing, because there is nothing geeky about that company or even company worship.

Newsstand?<p>ugh!