14 DAY TRIAL // As promised by Hugh Hefner in January (although off by a couple of months) Playboy for iPad has finally arrived, uncensored.
In January, the founder and chief creative officer of Playboy Enterprises, Hugh Hefner revealed that the electronic version of the magazine would offer restriction-free content.
“Big news! Playboy--both old & new--will be available on iPad beginning in March,” Hefner wrote on Twitter. “Playboy on iPad will be uncensored,” he added, responding to a fellow Twitter user’s inquiries.
The popular men’s magazine is not an app that you can download from the iTunes App Store, but rather a web app accessed at i.playboy.com after registering to an $8 monthly subscription.
The subscription grants users access to every single issue of Playboy magazine since 1953.
For those who are wondering why Playboy is not a downloadable app, like The Daily magazine for example, it all has to do with the content, which isn’t all that innocent.
Apple has specific guidelines for the degree of nudity an iOS app can display. And while there is a censored edition of Playboy on iOS devices, let’s just say that one didn’t pass with flying colors either.
So the safest bet for Hefner was to make good on his promise and offer a web-based version, thus eliminating Apple as a factor in the decision making.
Also hosted at i.playboy.com is an introductory video explaining how Playboy for iPad works.
From the demo, the web app appears snappy and quite responsive to multi-touch gestures, such as pinch and swipe. Using them, fans of the Playboy magazine can zoom in or out of a picture.
Flicking through pages also looks fairly natural, and the summary contains hyperlinked highlights that take readers straight to a specific article or photo. The app comes fully loaded with featured stories, interviews, the works.