A few weeks after the New York Observer detailed the publishing industry’s efforts to create a new publishing platform for Magazine content comes this mockup video from Time Inc. which showcases how an issue of Sports Illustrated might appear on Apple’s rumored tablet.
In the video below, a man with a voice that almost puts you to sleep takes you through a pretty impressive representation of what published content in tablet form might look like. It’s interactive, interesting, engaging, unique, and the navigation is, surprise surprise, very Apple like.
According to Peter Kafka over at AllThingsD, the concept above will “be able to run on whatever tablet Apple or any [one] else has up their sleeves.” Which is an interesting and seemingly bold prediction to make because though Apple has yet to officially announce a tablet, stories abound of Apple approaching publishers in an attempt to get them on board the tablet train.
Back in late October, word spread that Apple had been shopping around its tablet to a number of Australian media companies to gauge their interest in providing content for the device. In doing so, Apple necessarily had to reveal some of the specs on the device, and though no one was willing to go into particulars, one off-the-record comment hinted that the tablet would be a somewhat larger version of the iPhone – small enough to carry around in a bag but not quite small enough to fit comfortably inside a pocket. The report also pegged the tablet as being geared towards web surfing and media content such as watching movies and reading books, magazines, and newspapers.
And then, of course, there was the October video clip of New York Times editor Bill Keller nonchalantly referencing the Apple tablet as if it were a foregone conclusion while discussing the growing importance of delivering news content to the ever growing array of mobile platforms.
“We need to figure out the right journalistic product to deliver to mobile platforms and devices,” Keller told a roomful of NYT employees. “I’m hoping we can get the newsroom more actively involved in the challenge of delivering our best journalism in the form of Times Reader, iPhone apps, WAP, or the impending Apple slate, or whatever comes after that.”
And last but not least is a late September report from Gizmodo which noted that 2 people with ties to the New York Times had been “approached by Apple to talk about putting the paper on a ‘new device.’” Which if true, certainly works to make Keller’s remarks all the more telling given that any high-level discussions about publishing NYT content on an Apple tablet would inevitably involve Keller.
All in all, we may not know much about Apple’s rumored tablet, but we seem to know quite a bit about the media content it will purportedly run.
December 3rd, 2009 at 11:03 am
This is New Media done right. It’s perfect. Lots of video, great feature set, functionality and…fun (those sounds make it very real)! Now if they could only make it this simple, quick and bug-free. I think what’s lacking in the online versions of magazines/newspapers is that the Internet has to deliver it, basically via HTML. With something like this, I would imagine it’s a file you download once a day/week/month so it won’t rely on slow, buggy, broadband-sensitive HTML code. And the tablet will be similar to the iPhone/iPod Touch: an ecosystem unto itself. It won’t be multi-purpose like a laptop. Apps will be specific to the tablet.
If Apple is behind this they will create an entire new industry and dominate it. I would pay $20/month for a subscription to five-ten magazines/newspapers. Very cool.
December 3rd, 2009 at 1:30 pm
@Blad_Rnr: I watched a streaming telecast of a basketball game last night on my MacBook, connected to my cable modem via AirPort Extreme (802.11n), and was amazed at the quality and the smoothness. Streaming video has come a long way. I don’t doubt that this content could be delivered online. And they implied that it was a live connection by having a score alert pop up in the middle of the swimsuit segment. Of course this was a mock-up, but if the real thing turns out to be half as slick, it will be “insanely great” as Apple likes to call things.
December 3rd, 2009 at 2:14 pm
I can see real-time alerts overlaying downloaded content in context to what is being viewed.
The concept turns paper media and television media upside down with a dynamic internet twist.
December 3rd, 2009 at 4:23 pm
This is great. It might keep dying media like the NYT on life support via App Store like revenue. But what’s really going to be cool is the new media titans that will be created by small third party shops that are even more adept with the content, but who unlike the MSM, also want to provide more honest journalism. The one who gets that balance right, will be bigger than any other media source there has ever been.
December 3rd, 2009 at 10:02 pm
It will be a nice device text books on various subjects use this concept to publish them. It will be a very good method to publish textbooks on biology, medicine, engineering, mathematics etc. where dynamic graphics will be very good at illustrating and explaining the very difficult concepts.
December 5th, 2009 at 9:24 am
Don’t forget that Apple has the abilty to combine something like this with AppleTV and an iPhone app like Remote to bring applicable components to a TV screen, contilled on the tablet, but viewed on your big screen. That’s a whole ‘nother experience and publishing market for such a device. Truly interactive TV viewing.