10 Popular iPad Magazines

Do the barren shelves of the Newsstand icon sitting next to all your pretty apps bother you? Or are you an iPad magazine aficionado? I’ve been a fan of print magazines for years — and an even bigger fan of digital ones. But iPad magazines, which are still evolving, differ greatly in quality, navigation and use of multimedia.

Golf Digest magazine on the iPad ($2 monthly, $20 yearly) has taken scratch-and-sniff print magazines to an awesomely digital level where exploration is half the fun. Digital pages have buttons to launch sound bites and videos, interactive pictures to illustrate golf tips, Twitter feeds, article sharing and more. There’s even a buy button on a product review. The only stagnant pages are the ads. Why would any Golf Digest reader who owns an iPad buy the print version?

All of this entertainment has a downside. A single issue took up 634 MB, compared to National Geographic (223 MB) and Sports Illustrated (146 MB).