LETTER OF THE MONTH

I have a question regarding using the Mac|Life app on an iPad Pro 12.9: Using the Mac|Life app, issues are only available in portrait orientation on my iPad. This is the only magazine app I have that doesn’t offer both landscape and portrait modes, and I can find no setting for this app that allows me to view it in landscape orientation. Portrait mode on a big iPad is awkward. However, the magazine on the Mac|Life app on my iPhone 11 Pro Max can be read in both landscape and portrait orientations. So what gives? Why is the iPad version seemingly locked in portrait orientation? JOE POBINER

As surprising as this might be, we've only been asked this question about three, or maybe four times in the last couple of years.

So, to explain — the magazine that you read in the Mac|Life app is made specifically just for the iPad. We call this edition the HD (hi–def) edition. It’s built from the ground up to work specifically in portrait mode, with pages that can be scrolled, buttons that navigate to different parts of the issue, and some other nice features that just make it a more premium reading experience. This whole process takes about five days, from start to finish (including designing and building it, a production person checking over it, and the editor giving it a final once over).

Now, if we were to make the HD version work in landscape mode, there are a few issues. First, we’d have to go through the whole process again, and we genuinely don’t have the time in the magazine calendar to do that. Second, we’d have to put in a significant amount of development time to be able to (a) create it in this way and (b) have the app support this. Finally, it just wouldn’t work very well because you would be trying to make the magazine work in a very odd space; portrait just reads so much better in this respect.

As to the app for the iPhone, this is a completely different version called the SD (standard–def) edition. It’s basically a PDF page–turner that’s created in much less time than the HD. And because it’s a simple PDF that works in the same way as any PDF, it can be rotated to portrait or landscape mode; it works fine in both modes because it’s not designed for one or the other. (We think portrait works better, but we get why landscape is useful to have.)

We don’t know for sure, but we would imagine most other magazines are created using the latter variety, so the magazine is available to read in both ways to please everyone. If you really must have this functionaity, as an alternative, you can read the mag on an iPad in landscape mode if you get it via either all–you–can–eat services Readly or Zinio.

We have considered “downgrading” the HD version of the app to a standard PDF page–turner on the iPad, but since the majority of people who read the magazine digitally do so on an iPad, and we've only had a handful of these people contact us about reading it in portrait, we can only assume that the vast majority of people are happy with its present functionality.

Of course, if you’re reading this (in whichever way you prefer) do let us know what you think. Should we stick with HD, do you prefer reading in portrait? Do let us know at the address below!