I just noticed that RMC has a digital edition available for iPad, Mac or PC. The Carsten's app is a free download at the Apple App Store, and the December issue of RMC is available to download for free as a trial. I just downloaded it and it looks pretty cool. The price is same as paper copy. I think I'm going to subscribe.
Thx for the link. I just went and checked out their digital preview copy of Dec 2011 RMC - really cool! Have a look at it, folks, you'll like this. (not affiliated with RMC in any way, just really liked what I saw).
Nice....I downloaded the preview issue of RMC as well as Railfan and Railroad on my iPhone. I can't tell you how glad I am that the magazines are going digital! I just subscribed to MR for the first time in a while and I will probably subscribe to RMC and R&R soon. Very, very convenient for me as an apartment dweller and frequent traveler to not have a physical piece of mail to contend with. Now if only N-Scale and NSR would get on the bandwagon!
Review of Application After using the Carsten's app a few months I thought I'd revisit this topic. I don't really like it. I can't figure out how to cancel my subscription. The application charges your iTunes account for the subscription, but aside from the receipt from iTunes, I can't find any information about it on my iTunes account. I beleive the subscription renews automatically, and that sucks because I have no idea how to cancel it. There is an in-App section called subscriptions that indicates what subscriptions you have purchased and when they expire, but no further information is available. There is no way to organize your library of magazines. A graphical image of the issues you have purchased are dropped willy nilly along with other magazines Carsten's is trying to sell you in a multipage layout called My Editions. It's very annoying to search through a bunch of isues of Flying Models and Railfan to find the RMC issues I purchased with my subscription. I've had trouble downloading issues Each month when new isues arrive, you have to select the issue and download it. There is no push feature. They take a long time to download, and I've had it time-out several times. There are no app navigation tools available to assist with reading the magazine. There should be some basic tools like: index, contents, go to page. There is nothing to click on. Very annoying to see all these great ads and you can't click through them to get the advertiser. The impossibley small print is still impossibly small on the iPad. This is basically a scanned document and the impossibly small print RMC. :thumbs_down:Overall, I'm not very satisfied with the Application.
I'm just wondering why the digital edition is the same price as the print copy? Model Railroader charges the same too. Shouldn't it be cheaper? After all no paper or printing costs.
If you subscribe digitally, I would think you can print it out also, if desired? If so, how does that cost factor in to the value? My printer ink isn't exactly inexpensive.
After reading this thread, i went and downloaded the app, and the magazine ( the version that includes videos) It took me about 3 minutes, and the issue downloaded in 48 seconds. So It isn't Carstens with the slow connection. I have no issue reading the mag, the table of contents is linked, and many of the ads were linked to the respective websites. The print size in the mag is the same size as the print on this forum, besides, if you have an IPad, you can zoom to any size you wish http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/ipad_user_guide.pdf Just thought i would offer another review besides just one. Ken, you can't really print it, but I'm not sure why you would want to, it defeats the purpose, so you might as well just get the paper version. Digital editions are meant to read on a tablet, although if you wished you could screenshot it and print it with a pc
Further review Thanks Geared Steam, After reading your post I decided to find out if I was doing something wrong. I downloaded the Carstens app on my iPhone and had the same long delay downloading the demo issue. After 10 minutes it was still only partially downloaded. I did however discover a couple of items. You can click on many hyperlinks. Not the ads themselves, but the url. The table of contents is clickable. That is the table of contents in the magazine copy. To use it, you have to scroll back to the table of contents. There is a thumbnail page slider navigation. It is accessed by sliding your finger up. The demo issue has an in app table of contents. This feature allows you to access the table of contents from anywhere within the magazine. This feature is not available in some of the subsequent issues. The demo issue featured a built in text reader. This feature has not been included in subsequent issues. I should correct my review to note that there is at least one consistent in app navigation feature: the thumbnail slider. The in app table of contents navigation is avaiable sporadically. And the reader seems to have dissappeared. There are clickable links, but only the URL text, not the ad itself. I think I'm a little more encouraged after discovering these features, but still dissatisfied with the overall experience.
I downloaded this too and really like it. I decided to buy one issue and had a small problem because I had some mixup with logins between my iPhone and iPad. Their support for the issue was fantastic. They were quick, more than responsive, and went above and beyond to help me fix my problem. That alone has won me over. The interface of choosing the magazines you have already downloaded could be better, but they are working on it. And I really have to say that I like not having lots of paper pile up. I am switching all the magazines I can to digital editions just to cut down on clutter. I wish the NMRA mag was digital! Oh, and I have subscribed to a couple of British model railroading mags because they are finally affordable as digital. Without them having to send that heavy paper across the ocean the per issue cost is now right in line with the US mags.
Why in the name of everything Holy can't they release the mag on some of the digital magazine stores!!!??? I don't own a iPad, I own a Android tablet, and reading the mag on the browser sucks sooooooo hard! I subscribe to MR and Voie Libre and a few other Model mags on Zinio and Pocket mags. Works so good! I have mentioned the issue to Carstens on several occasions and only get snappy replies..... Wonder if they sold their souls to Apple? Strange none the less that they don't cater for 80% of the mobile market though!?!
I would say give it time. Even MR expanded to other formats outside of Zinio. It's likely just a matter of letting contracts run out...they probably signed up for a year to this provider and now that the market is maturing I'm sure you'll see them reach for the bigger market. I also expect that the subscription costs will dip at least somewhat since they are saving a significant amount on printing, paper, etc. Us "early adopters" are picking up the tab for all of the conversion processes they had to go through...I'm ok with that since I really like having everything digital. I ended up signing up for Railfan and Railroad and I like it. There were some problems but eventually got everything ironed out. Also got MR and Trains, and thinking about doing RMC.
