BlackBerry and Apple itself.

Offline differs from many other magazines on iOS in a couple of very important ways. First of all, it offers both text versions of stories and professionally produced audio that you can listen to at any point in an article. And it also boasts a unique cost structure that the team hopes will allow it to pay 2-3x what normal freelance writers see for contributions.

An hour of broadly targeted content a month, with an emphasis on discovery and intellectual curiosity. That’s what co-founder Tom Smith says Offline is focused on offering. He likens the content to what you might find in the New Yorker, or the early days of TED, where uncovering something interesting — on any topic — was the reward for viewing.

Smith spent most of the last decade cutting his teeth in various analysis positions at Apple from iPhone launch teams to ops, R&D, Siri and Maps efforts. Smith left Apple in August to start Offline. He says that the team he and co-founder Brad Flaugher have put together has an executable product that focuses on writer empowerment."