A Tablet Concept That Apple Could Learn From

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20091217-magplus.jpg

Let’s assume, just for a moment, that the rumors of an Apple tablet device are true.

And let’s also assume, just for the length of this post, that Apple wants to use this tablet to do the same to publishing that it did to music: turn everything upside down.

If those two things were true, Apple could to a lot worse than pay close attention to the research and development team at Bonnier and their design partners at Berg in London; because between them, they’ve come up with this video mock-up that’s really very cool:

It’s called Mag+. It’s a digital magazine you can sit down with and enjoy in the same way you sit down and enjoy the paper ones.

It shares many aspects of the Apple way of doing things. There are no buttons. The on-screen controls are kept to a minimum, are easy to remember, and only pop into view when needed. Everything else is just point-and-swipe.

What’s more, I can see newspapers and magazines loving this idea. Because it replicates the form of a traditional magazine, it can also replicate all of the content – including the adverts. And of course the advertisers will be drooling at the thought of filling devices like this with the most gorgeous photospreads they can afford.

Another thought occurs: a concept like this is ripe for development on the iPhone. I was raving only the other day about the new Guardian newspaper iPhone app, but it is still a product born of the web. It’s still all about headlines and links; it’s a hypertext. This magazine concept is an idea born of magazines, making the paper thing digital. Without all that tedious mucking about in hypertext.

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