Oh no, digital Wired edition won't run on the iPad
By Christian Zibreg 02.03.2010 :: 4:43PM EST 02.03.2010
The upcoming digital Wired edition might not run on iPad at all. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
The ultimate tech magazine is about to get even better (and glossier) when a stunning interactive edition debuts. Unfortunately, it might not run on the iPad due to a growing rift between Apple and Adobe over the latter's technologies. which are are unsupported on Apple's device.
If you have been drooling over an upcoming digital edition of the Wired magazine and lusting after the iPad, hold it right there because interactive Wired issues probably won't be compatible with the iPad due to its inability to run Adobe's proprietary technologies like Flash and AIR.
Although Wired's publisher confirmed late November that it's working on a digital Wired edition for Apple's tablet, those efforts have now hit unexpected roadblocks. According to Leander Kahney, the editor of the Cult of Mac site, the magazine's designers are putting finishing touches on the interactive edition created using Adobe's AIR technology. A former news editor of Wired.com, Kahney shared this first-hand knowledge via a blog post on Cult of Mac:
According to chatter, the app was stunning and fulfilled a long-held dream of Wired's executives — to recreate the glossy mag experience in a digital format (and most importantly, the ads).
Wired's parent publisher Condé Nast opted for Adobe's AIR because they wanted platform-agnostic interactive Wired editions and that's exactly what the AIR technology provides. A short for Adobe Integrated Runtime, AIR is billed as a cross-platform runtime environment for building rich Internet applications using Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex, HTML, or Ajax, that can be deployed as desktop apps. AIR applications are written once and then ran on multiple platforms and operating systems, including Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. A desktop Twitter client dubbed TweetDeck is a great example of an AIR-enabled app that can be run cross-platform.
The problem is, iPhone OS that powers the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad doesn't support Flash or AIR. Adobe has accused Apple of deliberately blocking Flash on the iPad in order to force users into purchasing apps and entertainment content off the App Store they would have otherwise been able to access in the form of free Flash games and TV shows on sites like Hulu and others.
Apple, Adobe says, is protecting revenue streams from content like movies and games. The iPad is powerful enough to enable Flash, Adobe claims. Apple's CEO Steve Jobs has dismissed Flash on the iPhone as both a security risk and a resource hog.
All is not lost because the Wired team could deliver the digital edition as a dedicated iPad app. According to Kahney, considering that the upcoming Adobe Creative Suite 5 will let designers export Flash apps as native iPhone apps, there's a chance that Adobe might add similar capabilities for Air apps before the software ships.
This would help publishers of digital magazines created with AIR, such as the interactive Wired edition, to package, deliver, and sell their digital print products on the App Store – so Apple can take its 30 percent cut.
Read more at Cult of Mac.
digital Wired edition
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