When I began this column a little more than a year ago, content-rich multimedia apps, designed primarily for the iPad, seemed like an increasingly innovative section of mobile app stores. Some iOS developers were coming up with new ways to present plays, books, photos, artwork, music, magazine content, and other materials, often adding both entertainment value and depth to the static, analog sources from which they drew.
That's changed over the past four or five months. Some great developers continue to produce extraordinary content-rich apps, but often off of formulas that they know work. Every once in a while, a stunning new app will appear, but not often enough to warrant a regular column. So this will be the final edition of Digital Reading Room. I've enjoyed it greatly, and hope to continue periodically bringing noteworthy apps of this type to your attention.
For this final column, I decided to draw some added attention to seven apps that have stood out from the crowd.
The Orchestra
The Orchestra is stunning in that it allows you to view many aspects of an orchestra in action. You can change what you view—the score, commentary, closeups of different sections, and so on—on the fly, while also listening to the piece without pause.
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