Adam Lashinsky, a Silicon Valley business journalist, wrote a long article for Fortune magazine this week called "Inside Apple — From Steve Jobs down to the janitor: How America's most successful - and most secretive - big company really works." The article got some good press so I wanted to read it, but on the Fortune website you can only read the first few paragraphs of the article. To read more, you need to go to a newsstand and buy an issue of Fortune, or you can download the free Fortune Magazine app for the iPad and then purchase the May 23, 2011 issue for $4.99. (You can download issues for free if you subscribe to the magazine; I do not.) However, I looked at the Table of Contents for the issue and the Apple story was really the only one that interested me. True, in the past, I have certainly purchased an entire magazine just because one story caught my eye, but it seemed a little much to pay $5 for one article.
However, I saw that Fortune is also selling that single article for the Kindle on the Amazon website for only $0.99. I don't mind spending a dollar for something good, and given the quality of Lashinsky's prior writings, I figured that this would be a good read. I have the Kindle app running on both my iPhone and my iPad (although I haven't used either one very much), and on the Amazon website just below the "Buy now with 1-Click" button there was a pop-up menu letting me select either my iPhone or iPad for delivery. I selected my iPad, clicked the button, and I was told that the article would load on my iPad the next time I started the Kindle app. Sure enough, I fired up the Kindle app, the article automatically started to download, and in a few seconds it was there.
Reading the article using the Kindle app on my iPad was a pleasure, much better than reading it on a website. For one thing, I could sit back on my comfortable couch and read on my iPad, far more enjoyable than sitting at my desk and staring at a computer screen. Also, the text and layout is very nice in the iPad Kindle app.
You can adjust the text size to whatever feels comfortable for you, so here was the default size:
...and here is what I increased it to because I prefer a larger font:
Whenever pictures appear in the article, you can pinch to zoom. For example, here was an interesting organization chart of VPs and Senior VPs that Lashinsky pieced together based on interviews and limited public information on the topic, and it was nice to zoom in and see all of the names and positions:
Once you have purchased something in Kindle format, you can read it on any device. I don't own a Kindle, but since I have the Kindle app on both my iPad and iPhone, I was also able to download the article in the iPhone app and view it there. Had this been a longer article or a book, it might have been nice to catch up on a few pages on my iPhone while waiting in line somewhere, even if all of my heavy reading would have been on my iPad. (Click here for my review of the Kindle app for iPhone from early 2009 when the app was first released.)
I can't say that I look forward to a world in which I have to pay $0.99 every time I read an article, especially something short. But even though the web has conditioned us to believe that we should be able to read anything that we want for free, as a lawyer who is paid to write advocacy pieces for my clients, I certainly understand the value of paying for high quality content. Indeed, although it has been years since my wife and I subscribed to the New York Times, we recently started a Sunday Times subscription, in small part because we thought it would be nice to read that physical paper on Sunday, but mostly because that way we can also read the Times on the web, in the iPad app or in the iPhone app without having to worry about the paywall that the New York Times erected a few weeks ago. I'm also currently paying a buck a week for The Daily on my iPad. The content of The Daily is in many ways the opposite end of the spectrum from the New York Times, but so far I am finding the content just interesting enough to justify the cost, and whenever I want a more in depth story than The Daily provides I just jump over to the New York Times.
And by the way, although my focus in this post is on the technology involved, I will add that the Inside Apple article is worth reading. Lashinsky clearly did a lot of research to write this behind-the-scenes peak at how business is done at Apple, a fascinating company, and the role of Steve Jobs, a fascinating CEO. I encourage you to download the article and read it yourself.
Click here for Kindle for iPad or iPhone (free): 
Click here for Fortune for iPad (app is free; issues cost $4.99 each):
Click here for the Kindle version of the Inside Apple article in the May 23, 2011 issue of Fortune.
Click here for the New York Times for iPad (free, but subscription required for most content):
Click here for the New York Times for iPhone (free, but subscription required for most content):
Click her for The Daily for iPad (free, but subscription required):
