i think the bigger question is are you, or are you not going to engage in touch technology of any kind. the bottom line is that it is here, and its only getting stronger. i think to design something specifically for the ipad is a mistake, but to make an interesting interface that interactively tells a story like you mentioned would be a really amazing thing for you as a literary magazine to invest money into.

the other argument would be to denounce all of forms of media accept for print. all though people were saying exactly what you are saying about the ipad 15 years ago about the web, so who knows.

now obviously i am totally biased, and i am not the most avid reader, but i think there is a whole new generation of readers and people who want to be engaged in good fiction storytelling, but no one has truly engaged them. the E-books are a start but they are also trying to adapt a paper book to an LCD screen. ultimately it will evolve into something more interactive. i think its a totally new format that deems an entirely new way of thinking instead of trying to adapt a print book to an interactive touch surface.

my thought is if you start designing stories in an interactive way. there are many more applications for it other than just the ipad. it could live on the web, live on mobile devices, ect. in fact imagine doing something that you read something on the web, the story leaves you handing, then tells you to go somewhere. you take your iphone with you and use your GPS to get there, when you get there something pops up on your iphone and a new part of the story unfolds. it tells you to go somewhere eles, and meet someone or do something while you read your next part of the story. you could get people to read while they are in the environment you want them to be in.

its literally the wild west as far as ideas go. i would say that if huge companies like weird and apple are investing in the e-reading experience than there is some legitimacy into thinking that it is a viable market to spend money in.

thats my 2.3 cents

P.S. i just realized i wrote a short story on a literary blog. so for the sake of everyone who is going to rip me a new asshole for my insanely horrible grammar, commas where there is no need for one, and 3rd grade spelling, i will save you the trouble and tell you that i got held back in the first grade.

one love.

http://www.bornmagazine.org/projects/zoology/

But then again, something like this is can be experienced perfectly fine on the web and I can’t imagine it getting any better on the iPad. What I’d really be interested in doing is figuring out some sort of storytelling experience singular to the iPad, something that requires your physical and mental engagement but without being too gimmicky about it. Hopefully my brain will work that way some day.

- Know your audience.
- Know thyself.

The iPad makes me laugh. At the same time, I plan to develop for it. It’s a market and it will grow and having a larger multitouch device does open up for some fun experimentation. If we’re talking market share, though, Apple as a whole is a fairly large failure. That’s just the numbers. If you want an audience you basically have to design for Windows XP running IE 7 and stay away from buzz words invented after 1998.

But we’re creative types. We don’t always live by numbers even if we know them.

The question really should be: what would your magazine feel like to you on the iPad? Does that idea excite your curiosity? If not, then don’t bother. Because if it doesn’t excite you it’s not going to excite us. It’s something to consider and you have the luxury of time because, you are right, adoption will take time.