ZINIO - Der Zeitschriftenkios‪k‬ 17+

I have always liked the Zinio functionality for reading magazines: there was one standardized method for traversing and reading the issues regardless of publisher. Now with the tablet age upon us -- ushered in by the ingenious and innovative Apple iPads -- Zinio now offers two different repertoires for reading and traversing magazines: the original (in which pages can be stretch-enlarged), and a newer one for magazines that want to offer videos and more sophisticated interactions (but where pages cannot be stretch-enlarged). And having all of one's purchased editions available in the Zinio cloud means that one can read issues on different devices depending on one's location. At home I enjoy reading my Zinio magazines on the big iMac desktop, but when traveling on an airplane, the iPad or the laptop are the way to go. Sometimes I've even read articles in Zinio's Text mode on my iPhone when in doctors' or dentists' waiting rooms. The back-lit photography in magazines on these devices is always stunning. Bravissimo!

What more is there to say about an app which allows you to carry your magazines around with you. I currently subscribe to 5 electronic magazines and they are all right there when I want them. No more lost magazines or looking all over the place for them. I always check to see if there is an electronic version when renewing a magazine. Is it perfect? No because all my magazine don't come in electronic form. Hopefully they will eventually.

There are a few enhancements I'd like to see. I'd like to be able to bookmark my position with a label and possible underline things. When you read a great article in an computer magazine it would be nice to find it some months later without reread several magazines and then having to reread the entire article for two lines. Until that happens, I still keep the paper copies that subscription provides me.

I currently use Zinio on my iPhone and iPad. It gets the most use on my iPad, but I have several smaller magazines which are perfect on my iPhone when it needed.

I have used Zinio on Windows for years and prefer digital content (it saves trees and is not bulky to carry around). This app brings that desktop experience to the iPad. It works well. Navigating media content is simple. However, it would be nice if I could queue up multiple items for download. So far my experience is that only one download can take place at a time with no way to specify multiple (to queue up). When I start downloading one item and then select another, the first one stops and the more recent selection is downloaded.

I have noticed the app has had numerous user interface changes. It is a little too early to comment on the recent updates. But, I am frustrated by the not-so user friendly interface. It is not intuitive. Plus, I seem to have lost the local copy of a number of items and have had to spend the time to redownload them. This occurred again when I moved to iOS 5. It is quite annoying.

I dropped my rating a point today as I have been having problems downloading some publications. Zinio has not been overly speedy to respond to my concerns. I have paid for the content and it is not available through this channel.

Many improvements in the app have made it much more friendly. I have raised my rating to a 5 as it runs pretty smooth and has good navigation. Now, if you could allow for background downloads, it would round out the app fully.