Condé Nast’s e-magazines must deal with Apple/Adobe uncertainty

In All Things D’s “MediaMemo” section, Peter Kafka calls attention to the effect Apple and Adobe’s dispute over Flash is having on Condé Nast’s plans for iPad versions of Wired and other magazines. (Note: one of the images with the article is a cover from GQ, which may not be work-safe.) That tablet Wired Magazine demo we covered a couple of weeks ago was built using Adobe technology, including Flash, which means it would be a no-go for the iPad as-is.

In effect, unless Apple and Adobe can come to some form of agreement, Condé Nast is going to have to go with two parallel development tracks for the iPad—the new multimedia experience created for the Wired app, presumably translated into some non-Flash setting, and iPad-enhanced versions of the iPhone apps that are already available for such magazines as GQ.

The iPhone apps may be less desirable to users, given that they do not incorporate all the multimedia and user-interface features of Wired’s demo, but Condé Nast does not seem to want to deal with the added uncertainty for magazines that have not already put such significant effort into developing a new framework.

Until fairly recently, e-magazines and e-books seemed to be similar applications of the same technology. But this type of issue shows how clearly they have diverged. If e-books are like webpages, then magazines seem to be more akin to RSS feeds, and require a different way of handling things. It’s just Condé Nast’s bad luck that the way Wired settled on involves a technology Steve Jobs refuses to have on his devices.

In a tangentially-related note, PaidContent.org notes that the Wall Street Journal reports that five leading magazine publishers, including Condé Nast, are getting together to launch an advertising campaign about how printed magazines are better than the Internet, at the very same time they are preparing those magazines for digital distribution.

“Really?” PaidContent asks, “This is the message you want to send your own digital units?”