South Africa’s first iPad app – News24

The team from News24, have just published their latest offering to the already impressive lineup of iPhone apps. The News24 iPad app (iTunes link) is South Africa’s very first iPad developed app. Oops, looks like I was wrong here. The first iPad app in South Africa was the Mix Mobile app from the guys and girls at Mix Telematics

The app encompasses much of the News24 site, with a couple of extra’s thrown in. There is a section for Top stories, as well as the ability to view news in the various categories. The iPad app is also designed to work with the portrait and landscape options offered by the iPad. Also included is a section for the News24, “News in Pictures” section which takes advantage of the large screen

Jannie Momberg, the editor of News24, had this to say about the new app:

As South Africa’s largest digital news brand it is important for us to make our content available on all platforms. Apart from our website and interactive DSTV channel, News24 already has a number of applications for the various mobile platforms. These include apps for the iPhone, Blackberry, Android and Java phones.

The iPad is an important part of the Apple “eco-system” it’s launch has possibly created another publishing platform – the mobile tablet device.

On the usability side we’ve concentrated on developing an app that tries to take advantage of the iPad attributes. Other functionality elements like share options and comments will be included in the near future.

First impressions of the app are pretty slick, and I’m looking forward to seeing a couple more ports of the other Media24 apps to the iPad in the near future