We still don’t know what the fabled Apple Tablet actually looks like, or if it even exists, really, but this concept magazine reader from Condé Nast gives us a glimpse at what to expect from tablet apps.

Turn down your volume before hitting play, loud techno music awaits. Down? OK, good. Now let’s look at what we’ve got here. It’s about what you would expect from a tablet magazine reader. The big screen lets you soak in the magazine layout without zooming, and the graphics are big and interactive. In a nutshell, it looks like a hi-res iPhone app.

According to the source, Condé Nast doesn’t want to take any chances, and the app is a precautionary measure to make sure they’re ready if/when the device comes out. So don’t take this to mean that launch is imminent. Take it as a sign that even if the tablet doesn’t exist, it should, because a lot of huge publishing companies are more than willing to throw their weight behind it. [Wired]

The device was described as a larger iPhone, “small enough to carry in a handbag but too big to fit in a pocket.”

This makes the tablet smaller than a breadbox, right? [Apple Insider]

According to AdAge, the “issue” will show every actual page of the print mag, plus have text optimised for iPhone. There will be related videos and audio, and an opportunity for you, the paying customer, to visit advertisers’ websites without quitting the app. Aren’t you lucky?

Regardless of whether or not you’ll bite, Conde believes this is the only logical stepping stone across the stream towards tablets and ebook readers. “If you can get here, you’re ready to go there,” AdAge quotes President-CEO Charles H. Townsend as saying. Logistically true or not, the statement certainly supports our recent report that the Apple Tablet is going to be the place where magazines and other publications go to redefine themselves. Well, they gotta go somewhere, cuz standing still sure ain’t working. [AdAge via Romenesko]

The important part of the internal memo is here:

In the coming weeks, we hope to announce initiatives to develop digital versions of our brands that will make use of new devices and distribution channels.

New devices makes it seem like it’s not just moving those four publications online — a move that would have succeeded already if just going online would save magazines. It’s that new devices bit that’s intriguing. [Defamer]

Magazines are going down the crapper as a medium, but the crew at Alexx Henry photography envisions a world where OLED and eInk screens put motion into mags and makes them cutting-edge.

Is this what the future of publishing looks like? Well, I’d be pretty surprised if these techs became anywhere close to disposable anytime soon. Instead, we’ll be seeing things like the Apple Tablet and Microsoft Courier coming along to load up stuff like this. But despite the packaging differences, the finished product loaded on these next-gen displays could be pretty similar to this. And it looks pretty badass. [Living Art Media]

Here’s how it’d work: There’d be a new company running digital store where people could buy and manage their magazine subscriptions that would be delivered on “any” device. Supposedly, Time Inc’s gotten Conde Nast (publisher of Wired, Vanity Fair, etc.) and Heart (Popular Mechanics, Esquire, etc.) ramped up about the idea as well, which would launch in 2010.

Great, except that it’s not going to work. As Peter Kafka points out, they have to convince people to sign up for another service — not an easy feat if they’re already tangled up with a Kindle or Apple. Especially if this new service will be just magazines, and not include newspapers. And there’s no way Amazon or Apple will let the publishers tie a separate service into their devices, pissing in their pool. The whole point of the Kindle is that Amazon controls the delivery method, and that’s likely how Apple’s tablet will work — downloading magazines and newspapers and textbooks through iTunes, just like iPhone apps or iTunes music.

Which basically leaves the the publishers with a handful of generic readers they could get their goods on, meaning they’re screwed. At this point it looks like all roads to eReaders people will actually buy to pass through Amazon or soon, Apple. Sorry magazine dudes: Give in, give up or get out. [All Things D]

Several years ago, a modified version of OS X was presented to Steve Jobs, running on a multitouch tablet. When the question of “what would people do with this?” couldn’t be answered, they shelved it. Long having established music, movie and TV content, Apple is working hard to load up iTunes with print content from several major publishing houses across several media.

Two people related to the NYTimes have separately told me that in June, paper was approached by Apple to talk about putting the paper on a “new device”. The R&D labs have long worked on versions of the paper meant to be navigated without a keyboard or mouse, showing up on Windows tablets and on multiple formats using Adobe Air. The NYTimes, of course, also publishes via their iPhone application. Jobs has, during past keynotes, called the NYTimes the “best newspaper in the world.”

A person close to a VP in textbook publishing mentioned to me in July that McGraw Hill and Oberlin Press are working with Apple to move textbooks to iTunes. There was no mention of any more detail than that, but it does link back to a private Apple intern idea competition held on campus, in their Town Hall meeting area in 2008, where the winning presentation selected by executives was one focused on textbook distribution through iTunes. The logic here is that textbooks are sold new at a few hundred dollars, and resold by local stores without any kickbacks to publishers. A DRM’d one-time-use book would not only be attractive because publishers would earn more money, but electronic text books would be able to be sold for a fraction of the cost, cutting out book stores and creating a landslide marketshare shift by means of that huge price differential. (If that device were a tablet, the savings on books could pay for the device, and save students a lot of back pain.)

Apple also recently had several executives from one of the largest magazine groups at their Cupertino’s campus, where they were asked to present their ideas on the future of publishing. Several mockups of magazines were present in interactive form. It is presumed that more talks took place after the introduction and investigatory meeting. Some magazine company is also considering Adobe Air as a competing option for digital magazines, but without a revenue/distribution system that iTunes has, it seems unlikely.

I haven’t heard anything about traditional book publishers being approached yet, but given the scope of the rest of the publishing industry’s involvement, it’s not hard to imagine they’re on board as well.

Another source corroborates that the January announce date others have reported is correct within the month, with this information heard from a high level.

Some I’ve talked to believe the initial content will be mere translations of text to tablet form. But while the idea of print on the Tablet is enticing, it’s nothing the Kindle or any E-Ink device couldn’t do. The eventual goal is to have publishers create hybridised content that draws from audio, video, interactive graphics in books, magazines and newspapers, where paper layouts would be static. And with release dates for Microsoft’s Courier set to be quite far away and Kindle stuck with relatively static e-ink, it appears that Apple is moving towards a pole position in distribution of this next-generation print content. First, it’ll get its feet wet with more basic repurposing of the stuff found on dead trees today.

My buddy Chris Hardwick posted this video of my buddy Scott Dadich speaking about how he makes covers for Wired Magazine. [Fora via nerdist]

There’s a heap of really good articles inside, like how to protect your Mac against thieves and a guide to switching from PC to Mac. It does take a little bit of getting used to reading a magazine in a web browser, but it’s actually well worth the effort, and you can print out each page if you prefer a hard copy. Considering it’s free, quality content, it’s not like you can really complain, is it?

[Mac The Magazine]

CBS and PepsiCo will take out a video-enabled ad, seen above in all its stamp-sized glory, which will pitch TV content to subscribers, though only in New York and Los Angeles. (Sorry, Real America!) The ads will probably be short, but the company that makes the video hardware, Americhip, says it can support of to 40 minutes of video.

Long-form video content in a magazine sounds pretty cool—think a full episode of a TV show in EW, or a mini-documentary in The Economist—but in an advertising application, it’s firmly in “gimmick” territory. This blurry shot doesn’t tell us much about how video quality is, or how bulky the insert will be. I’m going to make some wagers: low, and very.

There’s an undeniable, retro-futurist draw to the whole thing, but remember what happened last time a magazine tried to incorporate one of print’s enemy technologies into its pages? It was underwhelming, and a little sad. The emotions of the future, folks! [CNET—Image by Caroline McCarthy/CNET]