The Guardian comes to the iPad

The British national daily newspaper The Guardian has come to the iPad. The 190 year-old newspaper is celebrating its iPad launch by allowing users access to their first 86 issues (starting on the day you launch the app) for free when they start using the app. After that time, a monthly subscription charge will only be $13.99 for US subscribers or £9.99 for UK subscribers. Six issues will be "printed" a week. Existing subscribers to The Guardian's six or seven day print subscriptions will get the iPad edition for free.

Though the Internet edition of The Guardian has an audience of over 50 million readers, the newspaper wanted to make the iPad edition align more closely with the print edition. For that reason the iPad edition will be a once-a-day edition, without the live updating of and blogging on the website.

The app itself is laid out quite nicely, with articles arranged into thirteen different sections. The app was designed so that on the front page of each section users only have to swipe a maximum of two times to see all the articles available – a welcome feature since many news apps require so much swiping you forget where in them you are. And since it is part of Newsstand, The Guardian for iPad will automatically download once a day so it's ready for you when you wake up.

You can download The Guardian for iPad for free from the US and UK App Stores.