IL magazine landed on the iPad, and it's awful

This morning I was looking at twitter feed and I did stumbled upon a tweet from [Francesco Franchi]¹, announcing that the IL magazine is finally on the iPad Newsstand and that the current issue it’s available for download. Being a long time supporter², I was more than excited about it, imagining the incredible things the staff have pulled out leveraging the possibilities offered by the iPad—Especially considering the intensive use of info-graphics the magazine do, that lead them to won a more than rewarding list of awards, including a Compasso D'oro—. And I decided to welcomely spend the increased price³ to enjoy the experience of reading it on my iPad.

Unfortunately the magazine is not only far for great—not featuring any interactive content—but it’ completely awful. Residing in that terrible editorial space defined by those magazine that, in order to quickly get to the iPad, are presented as a collection of static images and neither went through the effort of adapting the content to the different ration of the layout.

This was bad enough when the first iPad magazines comes out, almost two years ago. But if an awarded magazine like IL pull out something so poor in quality, and charge a premium price for it, I do fell steamed.

I do really want to read the current issue properly, so right now I’m heading to the nearest newsagent to buy a paper version of the magazine, and i suggest you to do the same. Or better completely skip the digital one if you haven’t bought it yet.

For the future I will patiently wait for a proper digital edition that I’m sure Il Sole 24 Ore have the expertise—being also the publisher of the nice and free iPad magazine la vita nòva— and the willingness to craft for us.

The current art director of the IL magazine

I’m regularly collecting the IL magazine since 2009, and I’ve always been pleased by it’s content quality and it’s extraordinary visual appeal.

The regular price, for the paper edition, is € 2,00 if you buy it with Il Sole 24 Ore, the day it is published, or € 0,50 from the day after. The price for the iPad version is € 2,39.