Tap! magazine app goes live, driven by unique publishing system that runs on an iPad
As regular readers of Revert to Saved will know, I’m the games editor at the spiffy Tap! magazine, Future Publishing’s iOS monthly. Tap! is one of those magazines I’d happily buy every month if I wasn’t already writing for it, because it’s such a joy to read (a recent edition had a headphones round-up that contained two full belly-laughs—how many publications can you say that about?), but readers had wanted said joy on their iPads, and not using PDF-churn Zinio.
They’re in luck! Today sees the launch of the Tap! app. The app itself is free, and you can either grab single issues for £2.99/$4.99/€3.99 (a hefty saving on the newsstand price) or subscribe for three months, six months or a year.
The app itself goes beyond the mag in a few ways, such as in offering 360-degree views of kit, and short videos and walkthroughs of games (the debut has Jim McCauley showing how he got world-leading scores in the excellent Magnetic Billiards). But, for me, what’s more interesting about the Tap! app is that the in-house guys built the thing themselves.
Editor Christopher Phin has explained on Twitter and elsewhere that existing magazine solutions just didn’t feel right for what Tap! wanted to achieve. Instead, the team started from scratch. Rather than taking an off-the-shelf solution and smashing its magazine into it with a hammer, it started with a blank sheet of paper and a pen. Once the ideas and features were formulated, only then did the team start looking at software, and swiftly decided to build its own. Phin remarks:
This new publishing platform actually itself runs on an iPad, meaning we can take advantage of all the iPad’s features natively.
This means that, unlike many other app magazines on the iPad, Tap! isn’t just rendered JPEGs or PNGs for each page: the text is searchable and resizable. Also, those who make use of assistive tech can use VoiceOver.
I’m clearly not a neutral here—I write for Tap! and so I’ve a vested interest in the app’s success; however, I’d argue that because of the care that’s gone into its production, not least in its integration of assistive technology, it deserves to do well. I hope you agree.
That sounds ideal. In fact, it’s probably enough to make me a subscriber – I like having my ‘house in my pocket’ and every magazine I buy makes me wince at the baggage it creates (bear in mind, I buy a LOT of magazines!)
Glad to hear it’s cheaper than the paper version and not inexplicably more in that CDs-versus-vinyl way.
Intrigued by publishing system. I use a bespoke CMS which has variances in navigation and layout to best cater to the user agent, and as far as I know, this is not unusual. What is it about the Tap! system that particularly stands out? That is – what makes it more than just a webpage designed to look good on an iPad? Not knocking the achievement, I just think I don’t understand it…
Sounds like a great model. Any idea if the rest of the Future magazines are thinking of adopting it? I’m on the verge of cancelling my paper subscriptions to a couple of their music mags, because I want electronic versions which are not approximately the same price as the paper+DVD editions.
Cheers,
Maurice
Well that’s much, much better sounding. I’m sure you remember me on Retro Gamer’s forum ripping apart the excuse for an app they use.
Should I pick up an iPad that’s a definite immediate subscribe whereas with the paper one I’m vaguely considering ditching it because I don’t read it enough.
iphone4 versions ideas?
@elevitate: The Tap! system isn’t a straight CMS—I’m told it’s closer to ‘InDesign for iOS’. The dev created a publishing tool from scratch, to create apps, and that tool itself runs on the iPad. It’s not just a way to populate the Tap! app—you could create a completely different magazine that looks nothing like Tap! with it.
Maurice: No idea. The platform’s owned by Future, so it’s always a possibility.
romanista: There are no iPhone app plans to announce, but the app and game reviews on the website are optimised for the iPhone’s screen.
Hello, folks. I’m Tap!’s editor, and I thought I’d try to offer a few answers to the queries raised in these comments.
@elevitate As Craig says, it’s a full page layout and interaction app running on an iPad (well, iPad simulator) that we use to build the pages. It’s as native as you can get. Though we use WebKit for text handling, these aren’t web pages. You can see a couple of grabs of the pages being laid out using our software at the foot of http://tapmag.co.uk/app
@Maurice Future, of course, is a cautious organisation, but the reaction internally to the platform has been very positive; it would be unusual in the extreme if it wasn’t rolled out slowly.
@Dudley Given that the app closely mirror’s the print magazine’s content, it may not help you. But I’m keen to know why you don’t read the magazine enough, and therefore how we can make it better.
@romanista
Not at the moment. The iPad is a natural device on which to consuming magazine-type content, and it was an obvious target. There’s no technical reason why we can’t address iPhone as well, but at the moment, our limited resources are all dedicated to the iPad.
It looks really good, so much better than any cheap PDF viewer. Consider me subscribed from November. I also like the fact that you’ve been nice and honest with the pricing (given that the cost of printing the magazine on paper is far from insignificant). I remember as recently as a year ago when a lot of Kindle books on Amazon were priced higher than the paperback version, no doubt Amazon trying to take advantage of the novelty.
PS.- OMG you’ve used the word ‘newsstand’, Gemmel is going to give you the snake eyes!
@Sergio: Well, ‘Newsstand’ is what Apple’s calling it, so it’d be odd to call it anything else. As for Gemmell, he’ll be more annoyed you missed off that second L. Watch your back! THE HAT IS COMING!
Fair enough, I thought you were referring to the physical magazine shelf, not the virtual one.
Pfff, I noticed the missing L after I pressed ‘Send’. My brain was overcompensating for unnecessary double consonants. But given that I can’t edit my post the usability hammer of Gemmell is still more likely to fall on you 😉
Actually, I thought you were commenting on a different article (I replied via Dashboard), so not only do I stand corrected, but I’ll get hit by Gemmell’s usability hammer too. Oh well. (Although with WordPress, I don’t think you can open up comments editing without screwing up security, and I’ve already been hacked twice. Discus beckons for the redesign.)
I subscribe to the print edition and also the iPad zinio edition for a friend. I’d like a way to swap the zinio subscription to this new iPad app, but this doesn’t seem to have been addressed. there must be others with this problem…