Again, this is still the early days for all of this. And I do believe these publishers (moreso in the magazine industry, but we'll give the newspaper industry some time to catch up) are onto something. All I know is that I haven't read this much print media in years. Or, let me rephrase that: I haven't paid to read this much print media in years. And yet I'm happy to do it. It's a weird feeling.
This is a very interesting take on the direction that magazines are taking with the iPad. I for one use Zinio Reader to subscribe and read magazines on my Mac and iPad. I have been using it for years now. That said it is not that great of a reading experience (basically a PDF version of the magazine), so if Magazines started releasing apps that I could subscribe to them in – well I would be all for it.
That being said I am not paying $4.99 an issue. Get it to the same price as paper subscriptions and we can talk.