Article courtesy of http://www.bonnier.com

When the prototype Mag+ concept for tablet computers was released by Bonnier R&D, a video showing the digital magazine application quickly went viral. Now the prototype becomes reality with Popular Science+, the first in a series of new digital Mag+ magazines for the iPad coming out from Bonnier magazines.

Popular Science, the top science magazine in the U.S., has released a new version of the magazine for the iPad: Popular Science+. Based on the Mag + concept from Bonnier R&D, the magazine is available at Apple’s iPad App Store and provides readers with a host of features unique to Mag+.

“Mag+ allows magazines to do what they do best, but on another platform,” says Sara Ohrvall, senior vice president of research and development for Bonnier. “We don’t want readers to feel like they’re working through the screen, or layers of buttons. It should feel like they’re touching the actual product, using a natural and intuitive interface.”

Mag+ features available on the new Popular Science + include an intuitive swiping navigation. Horizontal swiping lets readers scroll from story to story, while vertical scrolling allows them to read an article. A “look” mode lets users tap the screen to make the texts disappear, highlighting the magazine’s photos and illustrations. Another tap returns it to “read” mode. Popular Science + can be viewed in either landscape or portrait mode, depending on how readers hold the iPad.

“The key quality of Popular Science+ is that it’s truly a magazine, but redesigned and redeveloped in a way that makes it work seamlessly and beautifully on the iPad,” says Mark Jannot, editor in chief of Popular Science. “Our goal was to preserve all the qualities that make magazines such a powerful, popular medium—inspired packaging of carefully curated content by a team of expert editors, delivered in a visually dazzling issue with a beginning, middle and end—and at the same time to reinvent it in a way that makes it come to life on the iPad’s screen.”

A wide range of other Mag+ magazines for the iPad from Bonnier will be released in the U.S. and Scandinavia throughout 2010.

To read more and see the video, check out bonnier.com/betalab.

You can also download the app here. You can also read more about it at Popularscienceplus.com. See pics of the app here.