One of my nebulous personal goals is to read more on my iPads besides tech blogs and doomscrolling. Yes, that includes books and I am currently in the middle of The Fall of Hyperion on Apple Books (with iPad mini). For various reasons, I have also become interested in checking out (digital) magazines again. This morning, I remembered I have an Apple News subscription via Apple One, and it has a pretty decent selection of magazines. I popped my 13” Pro off its Magic Keyboard, went portrait, and started sifting through the srack.
The first issue that caught my eye is video game magazine Edge #403, with a featured article about an upcoming game very much on my wishlist: Revenge of the Savage Planet. Except, that starts on page 54 and Apple News doesn’t seem to have much in the way of magazine navigation. Tapping anything in the ToC got me nowhere, but at least there’s a little thumbnail scroller in the lower left. Better than nothing, but it’s still a weak effort, Apple.
The color magazine really pops on this OLED iPad Pro. Doubly so since Savage Planet is a decidedly bright, colorful game full of corporate satire and wacky monsters. This visual feast quickly made me queue up more photogenic issues from National Geographic, Scientific American, and Amateur Photographer, even though my only camera is my iPhone 16 PM. It’s fun to be able to grab whatever I want and strut out of the store.
Yes, they’re still… magazines; not much has changed since I largely stopped subscribing well over a decade ago. They still look like glorified PDFs (at least in Apple News), there are still ads in between articles, and content feels laid out in much the same way. But so far I do enjoy flipping through articles again as they ebb and flow around photos and sidebars. There is interesting writing here that I can’t find online, but I also can’t link directly to this Savage Planet article to share it with my fellow capital-J gamers. This sword has multiple edges.
I don’t have a grande thesis, just an observation. I’m also not sure how successful Apple News has been as a product, or specifically its magazine section. But for now, it’s a welcome option on my journey to spend a little less time on social media, and more time on reading things that matter.
