Currently Taschen have an iPad app. At first I wondered why they put up the brief if they already had their magazine on the iPad so I decided to take a look and analyse this app to see why they set this brief and what I can do better.
Taschen Magazine Fall/Winter 2010
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/taschen-magazine-fall-winter2010/id410813800?mt=8
Here is what I found.
I got an iPhone and an iPad for research purposes and used the app and was not impressed. I can see why Taschen set this brief to have the app redesigned. It is not made with tablet devices made in mind at all, really. There is some touch functionality in there but it is essentially the InDesign files for the printed version of the magazine displayed digitally and a clunky, unattractive interface bolted on to it. Possibly the worst thing about it is that there are so many legacy features from print.
They have added page turning animations and 2 page layouts which do not make efficient use of virtual space or tablet devices. The page turning animation is really clunky, heavy to load and worst of all, slow. When I think digital I think fast and this is certainly not at all what I would want out of a digital application. It has given me some really interesting points for how I should tackle my UI design and feature set to almost counteract on what they currently have with their iPad app, one that I think is bad.