When Flipboard launched for iPad back in 2010, it was like the Seinfeld of digital magazines, a publication about nothing. A year later the app brought its fluid, touch-based reader to smartphones. Now, Flipboard is finally showing desktops some love.
Of course, Flipboard was designed with touch in mind, so the team had to go back to the drawing board a bit to reimagine the reading environment on a primarily touchless digital canvas. The result is a similar attention to minimalist design but with text overlay and scrolling optimized for desktop. The app also loses no features in the device migration, so you still have access to the app’s 34, 000 topics and millions of curated magazines. Your accounts and carefully curated feeds will follow you to the desktop, and everything you do is synced across all devices.
Coming in almost five years late, it’s easy to think that the Flipboard for the Web as a software dustpan to sweep up any lingering users who prefer content consumption on their PCs. But Flipboard CEO tells Mashablethat the app was originally envisioned as a desktop reader before the team began hearing about Apple’s upcoming iPad, so the new desktop app is really five years in the making.