<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"  The Popular Mechanics iPad app has been updated with our April 2011 issue. It&amp;#039;s now live in the App Store, a year to the week (or so) after the iPad was let loose last April 3, and just a couple of weeks since the iPad2 was released. (I&amp;#039;m still waiting for the IT department to deliver one to our floor.) Many months into the tablet age, PopMech remains almost unique among magazine iPad apps in that it&amp;#039;s coded by our in-house programmers using Objective-C, the native language of iOS app development. One advantage: The new issue is a lightweight file at just 45 MB or so. That&amp;#039;s as little as 10 percent the size of many magazine apps built with commercially available publishing tools.  The April issue has lots of good stories in it, including a head-to-head comparison of 4G networks and some extreme DIY skills (such as brewing up sugar-based rocket fuel). Coding everything in-house has allowed us to experiment aggressively with the technology. We have, in various issues, tapped into outside data feeds, made use of the Google Maps API to incorporate mapping functions into our features and had fun with the accelerometer that tells the device how it&amp;#039;s oriented in space. In general, we try to treat the magazine like a piece of software built to capitalize on a good hardware platform. The app is also outfitted with appealing animations and useful user-interface tricks you&amp;#039;ll only find at Popular Mechanics. (Actually, that&amp;#039;s no longer quite true: Cosmopolitan, one of our many sister publications at Hearst Magazines, just released an app that uses the code and much of the UI we developed at PM. It&amp;#039;s an, uhmm, exciting app that we were happy to consult on\u2014but turn down the volume if you&amp;#039;re using it at work.) In the months ahead, we plan to continue pushing forward with iPad technology, while also launching an Android project. It&amp;#039;s all a big experiment in merging the best of print and digital thinking to tell more stories in more compelling and important ways. We love getting feedback. So if you decide to download the app, please let us know what you think. PopMech deputy editor Jerry Beilinson leads our tablet group. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a6624/popmech-ipad-app-april-issue-here/>