NYTimes iPod App 2.0: better, but offline mode still stinks.

I started trying to use the NYTimes App on my IPT (iPod Touch--the non-phone iPhone) in the hopes that I could queue up the days' news just before going underground on my commute. Underground without WiFi. The "offline" part of the NYTimes app is what caught my interest. Previous versions of NYTimes haven't been worth the frustration, even when connected to WiFi. I'd try each new update for a few hours, grow tired of the crashing, the empty articles, and the general sluggish performance and duly uninstall it.

Version 2.0 is a pretty decent app--finally--for use when you're connected to WiFi. If you want to use it while you're connected to the internet, it's finally usable. Enjoyable, even. It crashes less and is more responsive.

But I'm still not going to use it because the offline features continue to be awful. Yup, I'm going to keep on scraping pages off nytimes.com using Instapaper, the single greatest IPT app out there. Well worth a few clams.

My first gripe about NYTimes app 2.0 is that the synchronization now happens by section, whereas it used to (or at least appeared to--which reminds me, since there is zero documentation for this application and zero response from the emails I've sent the developer(s), I'm forced to conclude the app is maintained, shall I say, somewhat haphazardly) be done once for all sections. What makes this change unbearable for offline mode is that if I want to read the books section, I have to remember to start the app and then click on the books section before I go off the grid. So if during my underground commute I want to read each section, while I'm in my kitchen before I leave the house, I need to click on each section. Bleah. The NYTimes app makes me want to subscribe to the print version of the New York Times, but for all the wrong reasons. Digital distribution is supposed to make the reader's life easier, not miserable. Using NYTimes app 2.0 in offline mode is like trying to read the paper when someone keeps randomly yanking pages out of your hand.



My other gripe has been there since day one: the app is still plagued by phantom updates. The "phantom update" is a situation in which the app tells you that it's updated the section, but when you click on an article in the section, you get an error message telling you that you have to go online to read the article. This violates one of my rules of user interfaces: don't let your program lie to your users. When the NYTime app tells me that a section has been updated, it means that I can read any article in that section. It doesn't mean that I have a 50/50 chance of being able to read any article in that section.




If anyone from the NYTimes app dev team is reading this, I will buy the NYTimes app for $1.00 if you fix these problems. I would have paid you $10 for the application when it came out last year, but having suffered through all the buggy updates which claimed to improve stability but didn't, my good will has plummeted by $9.00 (or more accurately, 90%).