UK Newspaper, The Guardian, has launched its first Apple iPad app, weeks ahead of the platform’s launch in the UK, with its team choosing Flash to create early prototypes.
Rather than create an iPad version of the newpaper’s successful iPhone news app, the organisation has chosen its Eyewitness photography series to lead its charge into the iPad world.
The Guardian Eyewitness app, available in the US app store now, makes the most of the iPad’s large-scale visual impact and is based on the daily, full-colour news photography spreads which have been a feature of the newspaper since it switched to the smaller ‘Berliner’ format in 2005.
The app is available free wherever iPads are available around the world and allows rolling access to the 100 latest images from the Eyewitness series, along with insights into the work undertaken by individual photographers to create the images.
The app has been developed by members of The Guardian’s in-house team, most of whom have yet to lay their hands on an actual iPad.
The newspaper’s website reports that the team worked at pace, using Flash to create the demo-versions of the app “ensuring all along that we kept the scope streamlined to allow us to produce a product of true quality in a matter of weeks”.
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