Peeling away the paper
It’s worth sharing two well-considered critiques of the new Wired app for iPad, which nicely temper my breathless excitement about the app two days ago. First, Information Architects provides a second-blush dissection of the app, finding print design lost in a new land. Second, an attack from the inside out: Interfacelab breaks open the Wired for iPad source and finds little more than a big pile of images glued together with XML. Where’s the HTML5? Nowhere near Adobe, apparently.
I hope the Wired team sees both these articles, not because I want to see their project fail, but to the contrary, because I still see the Wired app as representing the potential success of the magazine format on a tablet computer. Condé Nast’s first foray is a heartening proof of concept, but the publisher will need to quickly tear the prototype foam from their new model, lest Wired for iPad be left as merely inspiration for any number of nimbler, better-looking followers.
(Thanks to TPUTH for highlighting both of these articles.)
