Recent realization while doing a little house cleaning: I hardly read magazines anymore.
I currently subscribe to several (Wired, MacLife, The Economist, Newsweek) and unread issues resulted in a huge pile, at least six month’s worth, that I barely leafed through. All have been recycled or donated to the library.
The culprit is pretty clear: The iPhone. In addition to being a good phone, it’s replaced other devices I used to carry around. I haven’t touched my iPod in ages, and my MacBook is increasingly left at home. With all the iPhone games, I have no desire to get a PSP, or a portable DVD player to watch movies on.
Another casualty has been reading material, specifically during my work commute via San Francisco’s infamous mass transit. I used to habitually carry a magazine or two, and occasionally a free newspaper. I haven’t done either in months.
Obviously newspapers were quickly toast because of so many newspaper apps (New York Times, LA Times, WSJ, USAToday). I predict magazines are next to fall, what with BusinessWeek and the TIME Magazine app.
I’ve had many people wonder how it’s possible to read so much on the iPhone’s tiny screen. Well, the negatives of the small screen are trumped by convenience. I’m already carrying the iPhone with me 24/7, using it for email, web surfing, games, etc. The iPhone is a constant companion and gets ever-present attention. So given the choice of adding an additional “thing” to carry around or a decent representation of said “thing” on the iPhone: I’ll take the latter.
I did force myself to at least skim through that big pile of unread magazines before tossing them. I was struck by how many ads there are, all to be ignored. It’s hard to find articles to read, because one actually has to page through entire thing manually as opposed to flipping through everything with a thumb swipe. You can’t tap on the table of contents and call up that one interesting article; you actually have to remember a page number and leaf through pages to find it. And sharing an article is out of the question, as opposed to tapping a button to send a link to email or Twitter. You also have to use two hands.
Yes, this is true. Blame Steve Jobs for making reading as brain-dead as working a television remote: one hand and a thumb. Using two hands to turn pages has become a pain in the ass. The future is going to be one-handed and one-fingered (television already is), and “dead tree” reading is facing a usability problem.
So I’m letting all my magazine subscriptions lapse at year’s end, and am expecting the inevitable iPhone app for each. And yes, I’ll gladly pay for them – there.