The Financial Times might have pulled its primary app from the App Store, but the London-based paper has gone ahead and launched the new iPad app How To Spend It Magazine, which provides detailed information on luxury goods and lifestyle news.
Although the magazine will tell you what luxury goods you should drop your hard-earned cash on, you won’t have to shell out to purchase the app itself. The initial launch of the app takes several minutes to fully populate, but I found subsequent refreshes to work more quickly. There’s a lot of content to be found in this app, including myriad high-resolution images. In How To Spend It, users will gain access to more than 60 issues worth of archived material available in its searchable database. In addition, staff of the luxury-lifestyle mag will submit content updates on a daily basis. I’m particularly fond of the 600-plus-item Gift Guide that’s steadily growing. It offers items filterable by category or recipient.
I don’t love that How To Spend It only works in landscape mode, since I prefer my magazine apps to maintain more of a traditional orientation. The app is populated with ads, and it’s clear the stories have been divided into multiple pages to accommodate the ads, since there’s no other reason for the shorter pieces to require multiple swipes.
As for How To Spend It’s content, for U.S. readers, the app should serve more as an idea guide, rather than a shopping guide as prices are denoted in euros or pounds, and website links are typically UK specific. I’d expect some items to have overseas exclusivity, but I’d guess that a Google search would find many closer to home.
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