Marco has been on a roll this year first with the sale of Instapaper to Betaworks(you must try their Dots game) and Now the sale of The Magazine to Glenn Fleishman. InBetween these two changeovers Tumblr(marco was a lead developer and an initial member there) got acquired by Yahoo.
Why does this matter, you ask?, If you use the Instapaper app and/or subscribe to the Magazine like I do, you might be wondering on the future of these apps. Knowing and following Marco over the years since i got the iPhone, i am sure this change will hardly be noticed for you and me. Not to undermine the talent of Glenn here, but Knowing Marco, I am sure he must have found the right person for Magazine and hence the transition.
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The Newsstand app on the iPhone has been the unused app on my phone for over a year now. Some how I just don’t need news, I am a person who believes, if any news is worth my time it would come to me no matter what, that’s why I just don’t follow any political news what’s so ever. Most important news for day to day life like fuel price hikes, tax related news etc just comes to me from friends. Yeah you got it, I don’t read a news paper at all. How ever there is an exception, I do follow technology, I try to be on the bleeding edge by following a very cautiously selected set of tech blogs, so yeah Reeder is my second most used app after Mail on the phone. So newsstand had nothing till this Monday, this Monday that changed, and I am sure it changed for good.
Monday was when I found out about the launch of The Magazine. Ideally I should have found out about it last Friday, but given I was recovering from a week long flu and had an epic ride on Sunday, it happened only on Monday. I admire Marco and I trust him and his ideas and he is an inspiration.I read his blog all the time and don’t miss his podcast every week. So as soon as I found of his new idea from his blog, I knew I had to try it and I did.
I have had the magazine in the newsstand for over three days now, but I just had only about 2 hours to dig into it so far and I have to say, I enjoyed it. Time well spent. Below are a few reasons why I like it, and I think it’s very synonymous to the reasons for which the magazine was created and exists.
- The experience is nearly perfect. Navigation is minimal and elegant while the content is elaborate and interesting. Not many flashy images, and unwanted gibberish to skim through to find the important articles. Articles have links in them and links show up as previews right there at the bottom for you so that you can decide to read more of the link or not right there and continue with the article without moving out of the app.
- I don’t need news/ reviews and it doesn’t offer any.
- I can read long insightful articles, from time to time (not everyday) and I think that kind of reading is going to get a big boost from the Magazine, since all articles in the magazine are just that. They are insightful and aim to give u a bigger outlook of how things are.
- I have a predictable number of articles to read through every month, unlike the traditional magazines where I am not sure how much i will have to and how much i will be actually able to.
- I know and follow Marco and I like most of his content and so I am sure, I will like most of the content The Magazine would publish since he is the editor at least for now.
If you like reading technology columns and geeky insightful articles, you mostly will like the Magazine. Even of you don’t know who Marco is, you should just try the magazine free for week and decide for yourself. Just click here to try it remember the subscription is 1.99$ for a month.
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