The Daily, the first iPad-only newspaper, is celebrating its first anniversary today. It’s published by Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp and has had backing to the tune of over $30 million before it even hit the App Store.
I did a review of The Daily last March (a month after its launch) – and though I found it a promising concept it was disappointing in many ways as well. Here’s a slice of my sum-up in that early review:
The Daily is a promising title, purely on the basis that it is the first of its kind and News Corp is obviously committed to making it a top-notch title for the iPad and possibly other tablets as well.
It has a long way to go to deliver on its promise though. Right now its speed and performance issues are severe, and they are killing the user experience in the app. They’re bad enough that it is tough to stick with the title.
Sadly, a number of those really basic performance issues stayed with The Daily throughout much of its first year. Millions might have been spent in many areas, but it sure didn’t look like many pennies were being put towards making the app work well.
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The Guardian iPad Edition has been downloaded over half a million times since its release a little under three months ago. I haven’t seen many comparative sets of information from other iPad newspaper publishers, but that seems like a promising number.
I wonder how many of those who’ve downloaded the app though – especially as the three month initial free trial period is about to run out on Friday of this week (1/13). From there onwards you need to take out s subscription plan – currently priced at $13.99 a month.
The Guardian iPad Edition has also added the Guardian’s Weekend magazine to its content mix starting this weekend (in the Saturday 1/7 issue).
The new weekly section, accessible from the app’s top navigation bar, will feature content from the Guardian’s award-winning magazine supplement, including columns from Tim Dowling and Lucy Mangan, letters, fashion and beauty, blind date, recipes from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Yotam Ottolenghi and Dan Lepard and Alys Fowler’s award-winning gardening column.
As much as I enjoy The Guardian’s quality content and breadth of coverage, that’s just not an amount I’m willing to pay right now. There are just too many good inexpensive or free sources of news to justify that price. I hope The Guardian may adjust that price significantly in future.
What about all of you? Any Guardian and / or Guardian iPad Edition readers here? If so, will you be subscribing when the free period runs out this week?
Two quality newspapers’ iPad editions have received updates this week – The Guardian’s Guardian iPad Edition and The New York Times’ NYTimes for iPad.
Guardian iPad Edition has been updated to Version 1.0.2. Notable new features include support for saving articles to Instapaper, native iOS 5 Twitter integration, and the addition of Weekend magazine from mid-January.
NYTimes for iPad has been updated to Version 2.1.7. The big new feature here is the addition of live election night voting results throughout the (Presidential race) year – starting with the Iowa caucuses in early January. It also contains a few bug fixes and performance enhancements.
Both are free apps with subscription plans available via In-App purchase. Guardian iPad Edition works with Newsstand to offer automatic issue downloads in the background. NYTimes for iPad does not as yet.
Well what do you know. It looks like The Daily, the first iPad-only newspaper, may finally be working out some of its major issues. The app has been updated today, to Version 1.2.2 – and the update is said to address some of the biggest complaints about it.
Here’s the change list for the new version:
• Bugs affecting load times have been fixed
• Background downloads and new issue prompts are improved
• Multitasking enabled, so that the app opens quickly to the page you left off
• Facebook sharing is fixed
I just applied the update a short while ago and so far it looks very good, especially on two basics: loading faster and remembering your place. The app is now loading up with a viewable front page in well under 10 seconds. That’s a whole lot faster than it has ever been. It is also remembering where you left off when you switch away from the app and even if you quit it and re-open it.
Obviously I don’t know yet whether background downloads are working better. I’ll see how that goes over the next few days – but what I’ve seen thus far is very encouraging. I’ve criticized The Daily heavily for its failure to address those two basic issues – so I’m very glad to see that they’ve finally got those sorted out and the app performing much better.
I know we have a good number of readers of The Daily here – so please chime in in the comments and let me know whether you are also seeing major improvement after this update.
I’ve always wanted to like The Daily, since even before it launched back in February. Not because it’s part of Rupert Murdoch’s empire. Not because of the implications that has for what type of news it might bring, which way it might lean. But because it was and is the first iPad-only newspaper. I want it to succeed because of that concept.
I also think there’s a lot to like about The Daily. The photography is superb, the headlines are often among the cleverest around. If you’re not after in-depth, heavyweight news coverage it’s an engaging read.
But it’s also an embarrassingly bad title. Since Day 1 it has got many basic things wrong in terms of being an iPad newspaper app. It went months where the app never remembered where you left off reading. So if you popped out of reading a great article to have a quick look at a new email, your place was completely lost and you started again at the front page of an issue. Stupid. And such a simple, basic thing to get wrong – and still somehow this went uncorrected for months!
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