Read The Magazine on the original iPad

Marco Arment’s brilliant The Magazine is only available on iOS 6. Unfortunately it’s doesn’t work on the original iPad which I still use, so I’ve subscribed to The Magazine on my iPhone 4. But I don’t like reading anything longer than an SMS from the phone’s screen. So how do I read The Magazine of the iPad?

I just open The Magazine on the iPhone and send articles I want to read to Instapaper (Instapaper works on iOS 5).

At first I thought that the “Send to Instapaper” button in The Magazine was dumb. Why would I want to save something for offline reading if I already have it available offline in a readable format? Well, now I know: because I want to read it on my iPad. And since The Magazine is about text and not some impossible UI and crazy animation effects which have plagued Newsstand publications, I don’t lose anything by reading it in Instapaper format.

By the way, I fully support Marco’s decision to drop support for earlier iOS versions in The Magazine. I think it will benefit the majority of his customers: by using advanced APIs and better hardware he’ll be able to spend less time optimizing and testing stuff, and more time on great features.