Seattle Times Print Replica

I’ve used this for approximately 6 weeks now. Overall, it’s a nice improvement, but still with some minor flaws—and one major flaw... I often download the paper onto my iPad before I have to go offline. Multiple times now, after having downloaded and then going offline, I attempt to open the paper and it shows it has not been downloaded. This is extremely frustrating if you’re say, embarking on a 5 hour flight planning to read the Sunday paper. And most recently, after I downloaded the paper and went offline, when I clicked to open the paper, it asked me to sign in. But I was offline, so I could not sign in! Please fix this!! Other minor issues are the “section tabs” that don’t always bring you to the correct section. Especially now with some sections combined (i.e. Business). I also miss being able to click the “see STORY, A13” that takes me to the continuation of the story.

The new app is dramatically different, and on the whole, I’m not happy with it. What’s good: -Search capability -Snappy performance What’s bad - Print format only available by paging through pages two at a time - there is no way to rapidly navigate back and forth to different sections (like the upper tab interface on the old app) -If you select an article, it then displays in non-print edition format -Many times the graphics or photos associated with an article do not display when you select that article (imagine a front page story continued on page 11, with a graphic on page 11. You get to page through to page 11 and see the graphic, or to select the article, and read it in non-print-edition format, often without the graphic). Neither choice is good. -No way to navigate through the paper without going one page at a time -When an article starts on one page, and finishes on another, you have to manually flip through many pages -The app is optimized for portrait mode – I use my iPad (and prefer) landscape mode -You can’t readily flip pages until you zoom out to 100% (but you have to zoom in to read the print of any article). So, flipping pages is a multi-step process (zoom out, flip, zoom in). UGH. -The search feature is available at the top level, but not when you’re in today’s paper or in an article. ARGH.

This app exists, because it has to. It has to exist to bridge the gap between the generation who grew up getting the paper on their doorstep every morning and this who never want to cut down another tree for paper again. It’s actually a great idea because it retains the format of the printed edition providing continuity and ease of reference. Poorly executed comes in the form of constant crashes, non consistent publicly times (I’ve waited til 8am before some editions are ready!!), issues being logged out, locked issues because credentials are expired, links within pages that do not go to the proper article. Horribly executed are the pages that sometimes do magical disappearing acts when you select them or resize improperly making the paper unreadable with no fix coming later. Just in recent version as of this writing if you click on an email to contact the paper it just crashes the app. Why? Because iOS 13.2 is out and this app was last updated 3 years ago!! I understand money is tight at papers, but this is like firing half of your delivery carriers and expecting to increase circulation! I love the idea of a print replica but fix it. Make it work and take care of it. It exists because it has to....not as a labor of love and that’s unfortunate.