My dad has been eyeing the iPad’s shiny screen ever since it first came out, but could never find a good enough reason to justify the rather large expense of buying it. But now, with the newest version of the iPad boasting digital versions of the newspapers he buys weekly and the new iCloud allowing him to effortlessly sync up the data from his phone and computer, Christmas was the perfect excuse. 

He couldn’t be happier with the result, spending hours at a time experimenting with and discovering the joys of comfortably carrying the internet around in your hands. One thing that really impressed him was the free Christmas edition of the Sunday Times. As he browsed the Sports section my mum asked how he found the device: “It’s just overwhelming,” he replied, displaying one of the sports pictures to her as he did.

He’s not the only one to get a new digital reader either: it’s estimated that around a million iPads and Kindles were unwrapped on Christmas day, pushing newspapers to invest more in digital versions and hastening the decline of pure print journalism. 
 

For the first time since 1912 publishers have brought out Christmas editions, with the Sunday Times publishing the aforementioned free digital-only edition on 25 December in a bid to attract new users to the digital service.

The Guardian has done an interesting piece on it here.