Fans holding McSweeney’s quarterly tomes in their hands won’t see the point in downloading ebooks from their revamped app, but for casual readers it’s terrific value. Version two takes the first version’s slick design to a whole new level.
Not only can you still read the online articles, but you can receive weekly stories, videos, interviews, art and so on, plus six months’ worth of weekly Small Chair updates (their print articles). They’ve got a rollcall of famous names’ work plus plenty more lesser-known, such as Spike Jonze, Judd Apatow, Weird Al Yankovic and Francis Ford Coppola. Heard of those guys? No, me neither.
Inside the app, you can download ebooks for individual prices, where they keep the original look and feel of their printed brothers. The app itself costs $8, and to receive Small Chair updates for a further six months it’s another $6. [McSweeneys and iTunes]