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To iPad or Not to iPad…
By Marta Wohrle
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Over lunch the other day, I responded to questions from a friend about what I was up to these days by giving a rough outline of the iPhone app I am about to launch. The idea is that it will be an on-the-go companion to my beauty Web site, Truth In Aging. The user could be standing in Sephora (for example), staring at an expensive cosmetic and wondering what the heck is in it. The app lists key cosmetic ingredients, good and bad, searchable by skin condition. Users will also get alerts to deals on products in my website’s shop or to those of the app’s sponsor, Osmotics.
The response from the other side of the table was a markedly unimpressed, “Yeah, but when are you going to do something for the iPad." And there was me thinking that the iPad was really just a big iPhone, but without the phone.
At dinner with a magazine editor friend later the same week, I was given my first demo of the iPad. There were a couple of things I enjoyed about it. (Mostly the attention—unusual for two 50-somethings—that we got from 30-something waiters and neighboring tables.) I loved looking at an illustrated Winnie The Pooh (there isn’t much literary inventory yet) and had to admit that this put my first-ever version of the Sony e-Reader into the dinosaur category. Then there is the photographic image quality, which is stupendous. Time magazine looks much better on an iPad screen than it ever has or will on paper.
But it left me wondering why I would buy an iPad (let’s face it, it isn’t going to be a guy magnet for much longer), whether it is going to save Time magazine and if I should be thinking about an iPad app for my own brands.
I can’t help but be struck by the magazine industry’s warm embrace of iPads, e-readers, tablets or whatever you want to call them. The contrast to the disdain aimed toward the Internet is breathtaking. And if anyone is wondering what I am talking about, may I refer you to the magazine industry’s current advertising tagline that relegates online to “instant coffee” (the venerable paper product is, of course, the real thing).
I have spent some time trying to think how my Web sites would benefit from an iPad extension. Can’t hurt. But I can’t really work out why my consumers would benefit. The iPhone app that I mentioned earlier will provide something that is different from my Web site: a subset of the content that is (one hopes) a useful reference tool when away from a computer; plus a way to get product and news alerts; which, in turn, may generate a few impulse buys for my e-commerce business.
The iPad is not something I’m going to consult while on the go. It is almost the size of a small laptop, weighs the same (at least) as my MacBook Air and requires WiFi for me to make that impulse buy. For a large format, interactive experience with my brands, users may as well log on to my Web sites.
I went to paidContent.org to see what magazines are doing with the iPad and watched videos of the Marie Claire and Wired tablet experiences. Marie Claire’s is basically print shovelware with a link to a video. Wired gets off on the touch-screen capabilities of iPad. But what I was most struck by was the Wired guys saying that the great thing about it is that it has all been done by the same designers and editors that produce the magazine.
Having seen a lot of very frustrated people in big media companies wait in line for the tech people to make (or more often, not make) something happen on their Web sites, I can wholeheartedly understand the attraction of this. But on the other hand, I can’t help thinking of that Einstein quote about problems not being solved by the same thinking that started them. Isn’t that one of the greatest all-time lines? And, my (entirely gratuitous) theory is that Einstein was dedicated drinker of instant coffee.
Minsider columnist Marta Wohrle is president of Accord Media and the publisher of Truth In Aging, among other digital content titles. Previously she was SVP, digital media, Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., and director of Mercer Management Consulting.
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Quick note... Quick research tells you the iPad weighs 1.5 pounds and the Macbook air weighs 3.0 pounds -- twice as heavy, not "the same (at least)"