PressReader: News & Magazines

I prefer reading a whole magazine/newspaper vs individual articles, and when I heard about this app, I thought it’d suit my preferences nicely. So I was dismayed to find out that the app would only work well on one device. Since the default subscription does not cover all publications, I have to purchase e.g. the Economist separately. When I try to access them on another device however, the app does not recognize that I’ve purchased them, instead requiring me to pay for them again. And there is no syncing your library across devices, nor is the search function very effective as it seems to hide/show certain publications at random without telling you transparently regional availability on any of them. When I contacted PressReader support on the issue, the rep seemed more oblivious than I was about how the app works, yet despite his negligence, he responded at first to my concerns as if I were a total idiot. It’s appalling that such a popular platform has not had a simple library syncing feature figured out. That alone would only be annoying, but my experience with the app is made so much worse by the incompetent support.

My premium subscription to PressReader is the best investment I can think of that I've made in the past several years. Full access to over 7000 newspapers and magazines. Personally, I restrict my newspapers to those in the Spanish language, and there are dozens and dozens of them--- so many that each day I can decide which Hispanic country's newspaper I wish to read that day. My only minor frustration is that on the iPad where I use PressReader it does not show the country of origin of each Spanish language newspaper. But it does show the country of origin in the iPhone version of PressReader. So I use the iPhone version to determine the country of origin and then I read the newspaper itself on my iPad. The reason PressReader is an absolutely "must have" app is because I can put my finger on the textual version of any Spanish language newspaper, and Google translate pops up and gives me a great translation. In addition, PressReader has a computerized female voice that will read newspaper articles to me in Spanish if I choose.

The pleasure of electronically reading the newspaper in the paper form laid out by the editors with zooming and links to articles cannot be understated. It works wonderfully with smartphones and computers with pads that permit control with finger movement. It’s the closest one can get to having the actual newspaper replicated in your computer. PressReader still needs to improve the dependability of links jumping to articles and sections of the paper. This function does not always work. It could also be improved with an efficient search tool for finding articles and subjects. One final note. There are no obvious instructions for setting up the app, and using all the available tools. This is a failure of communication all too common today.