Vanity Fair for the iPad

Article: Vanity Unfair from the New York Times

I appreciated this article for its take on the digital version of Vanity Fair for the iPad. Vanity Fair (and several other magazines) have found a seemingly poor solution to the challenge of presenting their content digitally. One has to buy the app for 5 dollars and then spend 4 dollars for every issue. Thus there is no financial incentive to read the magazine on the iPad. If anything it feels like you are paying for the privilege to be able to buy the issues online. Shouldn't the app at least be for free if you are going to be using it to buy the issues at almost the same price that you would be buying the actual physical magazine for? Also, the same app can be bought for the iphone or iPod touch which seems even more ridiculous considering that then you are reading the magazine on such a tiny screen (especially since vanity fair is not just a way to get one's news). In any case, I know I would still very much prefer to read the actual magazine.