Seattle Times Mobile

Article refresh schedule seems to have been tweaked and is much better. Lack of search for archives or the day’s paper is annoying, but search in general is a mess at the moment and frankly no search is better than AI searches. The ad inserts are problematic because they interfere with phone scrolling, being so oversized. The facsimile app allows you to print out crosswords and take ‘em on the ferry. Previous review: It cannot be this difficult to write an app that automatically yanks the full text of every posted article off a server and dumps it into the app. How many programmers are there in Seattle? Apparently the Times can hire none. No search. Incomplete content. Links open outside the app. Yesterday’s news today. No font size adjustment (for something whose readership certainly trends towards needing reading glasses). Come ON. Update: the late-to-never article posting has been fixed, but links still open outside the app. No good reason exists for a user to have to log in multiple times to read something referenced in a current article.

This app makes it easy to read articles, and you can bookmark articles to come back to. However, there are significant limitations. For example, there is no search function. The articles you can view are limited by what you can browse to, which means you often can’t find older articles or articles that are not being featured. Also, when using the app you can’t see any comments, or make a comment, or even see whether comments are enabled on the story - you would have to open the article in a web browser, which is not easy to figure out how to do from the app itself (if it is even possible). Finally, I subscribe to the daily newsletter to get the rundown on featured stories; but when you click on an article from your email, the link opens the article in a web browser, not the app, and once you hit the paywall, you have to log in every single time you want to view an article in a browser. In general, the app seems to be very poorly integrated with other technologies, and it is very challenging to use the app to find or track a story.

I originally began the online mode when I had a difficult time getting home delivery to a new address after thirty years of delivery at the old address. Very quickly, I appreciated the convenience and mobility and no mess aspect of the online edition. Physically, it is much easier to hold an iPad in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, than a newspaper with both hands. Online has been to both coasts and Hawaii. If our resting place has no WiFi, which is rare, a local bar can be used to download the news faster than I can finish a beer....well maybe. My recycle bin is less full and I will never have to walk up the driveway to grab a wet paper again. I am in my early 70s and as my visual acuity wanes I can easily make the print larger...Kurt