It seems like nobody has really been able to get it right so far. At least for the moment, everyone has fallen victim to a few pitfalls. 

• Downloads take forever—the layouts are merely massive image sets—nullifying one of the key assets of digital. 

• Each magazine has it's own unique UI and user experience. 

• They try to mimic the physical magazine, digitally. This leads to less than optimal digital page turning.

• EXPENSIVE—Few people can justify spending $5 on a single digital issue.

The new Business Week makes some good progress on at least a few of these areas. 

One. It is one of the first iPad magazines to offer in-app subscriptions. This means that with the click of a button, I can now read an issue per week at a mere $3 per month. Pretty good compared to competitors. Some have criticized Apple for their new subscription policy. But for the user, this is pretty painless. 

Two. Issues are based on simple templates—so articles don't get downloaded as stacks of images. This means issues download fairly speedily, and text is selectable. 

Three. Articles all exist online as well—on the standard website. So articles can be shared just as if you were reading from the website. 

Four. It's a great design. Simple design features like well done section summaries with links to each article in the section, veer from the print layout, but are expected in digital. Each article ends with links to similar articles. Again, a simple tried a true website feature, that's missing from other digital magazines. 

Overall, this feels much closer to how an app ought to sell the idea of paying for editorial content. Take the same content I can get digitally for free, but package it in a more desirable package for a tablet. Simple idea on the surface, but easier said than done. Getting people to pay for quality digital editorial content isn't easy.