The Daily, An iPad-Centered Newspaper Gets Delayed Launch

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It’s the year of the e-publisher, folks, at least that’s some of the current word breathlessly swirling around. And indeed, e-publishing has been gaining for quite some time over its dead tree alternative brethren due to its lower overhead and more rapid movement as well as, in some quarters, fewer perceived biases. But for one such mag, the oft-touted The Daily, there’s a big monkey wrench currently lurking in their virtual press, and it’s pushed back launch of one of the first news publications intended exclusively for release on iPad.

Word was that The Daily was going to launch on the 19th of January, and would even see the bizarre sight of Rupert Murdoch and Steve Jobs on the same stage out at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, but further word says that the launch was pushed back, and pushed back for a matter of “weeks, not months”. New projections suggest a launch at some point in February.

So what’s causing this delay, and holding up one of the first ever (quite possibly the first ever, really) release of a news press exclusively geared toward iPad? The word on this one actually is that it’s Apple’s problem–apparently they’re working on a new subscription feature for iTunes, which would be prime for something like this. Just subscribe to The Daily through iTunes, and boom–you get it every day (which is probably the release schedule; doesn’t exactly make sense to run a publication called The Daily and have it only come out once a week). Though since that subscription feature isn’t exactly up to par just yet, it’s putting a bit of a kink into the full release of The Daily.

But it makes some sense, and gives credence to the “weeks, not months” projection as from the sounds of things, it’s a really rather small glitch holding things up. So how will The Daily fare as an online magazine geared for iPad? That remains to be seen, but a whole lot of folks will be watching with interest.