Open up your mind and say, ahh...

The inaugural iPad edition of Conde Nast Traveler has arrived at Apple’s Newsstand — and it’s hefty.

The issue is 784 megabytes — substantially bigger than even Wired‘s first issue, which attracted a fair number of comments about its portliness when it arrived on the iPad in May of last year.

Should Traveler continue producing issues at that size, owners of 16GB iPads will find that more than half of their storage space is taken up by that magazine alone.

In an email, a spokesperson for the magazine suggested that the size problem is linked to a series of 3D rotating maps of the South Pacific, and that “future issues will most likely take up less memory.” The spokesperson also pointed out that users can archive past issues and redownload them at a later date to save space.

Weight problems aside, the issue looks decent. There’s plenty to tap, swipe and rotate, and the stunning imagery Traveler is known for translates well to the iPad. The publication added more than 100 photos not included in the print version, as well as the aforementioned 3D rotating maps of the South Sea Islands. Just before the masthead appears a time-lapse video taken from a beachside hotel balcony in Barcelona, a personal favorite (screenshot below).

Users can purchase issues for $5.99 apiece, or initiate one of two digital subscription options: 1) a one-month, automatically recurring subscription for $1.99, or 2) a one-year, automatically recurring subscription for $19.99.

Existing print subscribers can enter their credentials for free access to the iPad edition, which is downloaded automatically onto subscribers’ iPads every month.

Currently only the November issue is available, alongside the “2011 Hot List,” a special feature the publication released in August, as well a short free preview.

Traveler is the tenth Conde Nast title to be formatted for the iPad, following Allure, Brides, Glamour, Golf Digest, GQ, Self, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and Wired. Vogue and Bon Appetit are slated to arrive on the device by early 2012, Bob Sauerberg, president of Conde Nast, said earlier this month.

Vanity Fair’s June issue is debuting in iPad form sometime on Wednesday, The New York Times reports. The app will be available in Apple’s App Store for $4.99, the same price as the glossy newsstand edition. Future editions will be priced at $3.99.

“Magazines are actually pretty brilliant concepts the way they are,” Editor-in-Chief Graydon Carter said during today’s preview. “At the same time, we have a few bells and whistles that a magazine cannot provide.”

Those ‘bells and whistles’ include the ability to view the magazine in horizontal and vertical mode, navigate by story or by page, return to the place a user left off reading, and watch behind-the-scenes footage of photo shoots — like the one with this month’s covergirl, Emma Watson. “You’ve got to be a big Emma Watson fan to get through that,” Carter admitted.

The issue will feature the same ads as the print edition, as well as special ads from six advertisers, including Microsoft Bing, Aveeno and Clinique. The special ads contain features like how-to videos and Facebook Pages, and can be viewed in vertical mode. Additionally, advertisers were also able to add links to their regular print ads for a “nominal fee,” according to publisher Edward Menicheschi.

Besides the vertical mode and the special ads, the iPad version of Vanity Fair offers little functionality beyond its web edition. The same video footage of Emma Watson is already available for free to visitors, for instance, as are most of the articles. In fact, the app lacks several critical features that the online version has, including the ability to copy and share articles.

While the app is still clearly a work in progress, it’s going to need to offer better features to get iPad users to dish out $3.99 every month instead of accessing new issues on the magazine’s website with their devices. Conde Nast also needs to develop its own app store to get access to the subscriber data it needs, as Apple will not reveal the names and addresses of the magazine’s iPad subscribers.

Do you think the iPad app is worth the price? If not, what features need to be included to make it so?

[img credit: Media Decoder]