Out of all the things Apple’s iPad can do, it was the promise from Steve Jobs that it would breathe new life into the titans of the magazine and newspaper industry that caused a flurry of applications from institutions ranging from The Financial Times to Vogue to be born. Looking to capitalize on the popularity of the relatively new device, Rupert Murdoch, owner of The Wall Street journal, is going to be launching an iPad only newspaper called “The Daily” during the second half of January according to multiple sources who have spoken to All Things Digital. This isn’t the first launch date that we’ve heard. According to earlier reports it was supposed to launch in December, but that obviously didn’t happen. “The Daily” is expected to sell for $0.99 per week, customers can sign up for weekly or monthly plans, a new technology that Apple has yet to announce will push new editions of the paper to iPad owners every morning, and it’s set to have lots of video, multimedia content, and “some kind of 3-D effect that lots of people are very excited about”.
Want my advice? Keep on buying magazines and newspapers. Don’t go out and purchase a $500 toy that you’ll likely just keep on your coffee table and use to browse the same websites you already do on your laptop and smartphone. You can get an insane amount of content for $500, just go to Amazon and check out what a 1 year subscription to Wired is going for (spoiler: $10) or a year of one of the best weekly magazines currently being published, The Economist (hint: just $127). Call me old school, but I don’t understand people’s fascination with buying the same magazines they read in print on their iPad, just so they can somehow feel better about dropping half a grand on Apple’s newest gadget.