Comments for New NYTimes iPhone App Enables Offline Reading

New NYTimes iPhone App Enables Offline Reading

2009-03-04T19:38:03Z

The New York Times released the 2.0 version of its popular free iPhone app today and it's one you'll want to be sure to grab. The app now offers extensive support for offline reading, making it one of the easiest ways to catch up with the news on a plane.

The app store hasn't updated yet so you'll have to grab it and manually update the app. Any stories you load with a web connection turned on will be saved automatically for offline reading. It's easy to customize the interface to highlight your favorite sections of the publication and we expect to be thankful for this app on our next flight.

]]> ReadWriteWeb is a syndication partner with the New York Times but we're just writing about the new iPhone app because we think it's cool. We're not afraid to say that we find the ad for movie listings at the bottom of every page really annoying.

If we had any suggestions they would be to put that movie ad in a more appropriate place and perhaps to include links to some of the several very interesting implementations of the new Times APIs, like this awesome elastic list article browser.

Check out the "browse by photos" feature, too. It's an all around good iPhone app, something we expect other publications to learn from. Offline readers will enjoy Instapaper's iPhone app as well, but that requires users to designate articles for reading from a regular web interface. Sometimes you're in a rush and the new Times app looks like it will deliver.

Comment from Lucia on 2009-03-04

2009-03-04T20:16:31Z

I love the NYT app, but I wish it allowed you to email or text articles. The AP app has this feature and its very useful. Better yet, would be great if I could tweet articles from the app.

Comment from Tony on 2009-03-04

2009-03-04T20:19:58Z

Another misleading title (see http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/amazon_exposes_1_terrabyte_of.php ), Marshall! I thought this meant the app was taken down for some reason...

Comment from kosmar on 2009-03-04

2009-03-04T20:23:51Z

wtf?

Comment from Mike on 2009-03-04

2009-03-04T20:24:54Z

the update is a huge improvement and long overdue for sure.

They need to deal with that annoying ad the same way the Bloomberg app does - after 5 seconds it goes and displayed only at hte bottom of the article = pretty slick.

Comment from Marshall Kirkpatrick on 2009-03-04

2009-03-04T20:26:45Z

Tony, yeah I'm hearing that from some people - I apologize, I didn't think for a moment that some readers would think "goes offline" meant the app was unavailable. I presumed you'd know what I meant - that it enables Offline Reading. I'll change it. Re that other story, Amazon Exposes Public Data, thousands of people understood exactly what I meant, though yeah I heard similar complaints from some readers. I think I stare at tech all day that I assume readers will come from a tech perspective as well.

Comment from kosmar on 2009-03-04

2009-03-04T20:29:20Z

ah ftw!

Comment from Chris on 2009-03-04

2009-03-04T20:49:28Z

Avantgo flashback. :)

Comment from Tom on 2009-03-04

2009-03-04T23:01:35Z

I may be wrong but it looks like you still have to actually open each article to really have that content available offline. Maybe there's a way to have settings reflect what you normally like to look at, e.g. Tech section or NYTimes magazine posts? Currently you can set the 'Access News for' setting in terms of days, but if there were a content type for automatically downloading full article content that would make this work for the subway commute!

Thanks,
Tom

Comment from April Russo on 2009-03-04

2009-03-04T23:05:41Z

If AvantGo would make an iphone app, you'd have that, and for a lot of sites, not just NYT.

Comment from Frederic Lardinois on 2009-03-04

2009-03-04T23:36:47Z

@Tom - I was playing around with the app earlier today and put the phone into airplane mode - all the articles were available in offline mode

Comment from Ankit on 2009-03-04

2009-03-05T00:13:09Z

i just installed and tested the app and it worked. Still wondering how it did that :O

Comment from expects to recover the Palm Pre on 2009-03-04

2009-03-05T01:54:40Z

Maybe there's a way to have settings reflect what you normally like to look at, e.g. Tech section or NYTimes magazine posts?

Comment from Bruce on 2009-03-04

2009-03-05T03:05:26Z

I think the post is somewhat misleading as the app still, in my mind, does a very poor job from a design perspective in distinguising between content that has been downloaded/cached to the iPhone (for offline reading) and what content requires a connection to the server to pull down.

Clearly a step in the right direction is to keep the full contents of an article you have begun to read in the phone's memory, but the app is still extremely poor in pulling down, for example, all the articles in the 'latest headlines' section of the app regardless of what article you are currently reading. While the app continues to pull down information, syncing is now performed every 10/15 min. (changeable in options), there is little to no distinction built into the app that informs the user what articles have been fully downloaded to the device.

This is incredibly frustrating if you want to catch up on articles for a flight, but as soon as you get past one or two of the main articles, the rest of them aren't cached to the phone. What's needed is some granularity for users to specify how/when to pull full articles down locally to the device and demonstrate this to the user - perhaps through the 'shaded moon' icon set Apple uses to demonstrate Podcasts that have been listed to partially versus new downloads (i.e. half-moon signifies lede only, full moon signifies full article has been downloaded to the device), or an option that shows no content in each section until articles have been fully downloaded.

What's really needed, and perhaps in the works, is a 'premium' version of this product that delivers a digital edition of the NYTimes (much like the Kindle) to provide a more robust version of 'offline' access.

An iPhone app that sets itself apart from a design and usability perspective is one that can embrace the ubiquitous connectivity made possible by AT&Ts network, but not be overly reliant on it when it doesn't have to be. An app that doesn't have to rely on constant connectivity to function should only connect for as long as it has to in order to deliver its intended service. That is a constraint that is as important as good UI and intuitive features.

Instapaper, while requiring more setup, gets it right in this regard as you know exactly when it connects to the network and when it's done, you know that you have the full text of your articles whenever you need them, connection or not.

Comment from Adam on 2009-03-05

2009-03-05T23:31:43Z

Thanks for the review and the comments. I'm the Times' lead iPhone engineer... and yes we do listen to all of your suggestions.

Some of the comments are from people who are still using version 1.5 and have not downloaded version 2.0.

@Lucia

Stay tuned...

@Mike

Unlike Bloomberg, the NYTimes core business model revolves around ad sales. I wouldn't expect ads to hide themselves anytime soon.

@Tom
For the record, the "sync" feature of the app DOES pull down all articles, not just the stubs. Depending on your settings it may also grab images.

@Bruce
There are instances where articles may not be cached. These usually result from situations where the sync is interrupted, perhaps several times, before completing.

We're working on better controls over the actual sync process... all in good time. 2.0 was a ground up rewrite of NYTimes with almost none of the original code recycled. Think of it as 1.0 Second Try.

Thanks.

Comment from plasticbugs on 2009-03-05

2009-03-05T23:34:45Z

Offline reading is not new to this verson of the NYT iPhone app. However, it does seem to cache all the articles faster than it did. In the past, it would take about 10-15 minutes for the entire day's news stories to download for offline reading over WiFi.

I think the best new feature is the ability to "save" articles so that they stay on the iPhone past the seven day limit for cached news.

Also, I also highly recommend Instapaper as a great way to read offline web content on the go - great for the subway, the bus and the plane!

Comment from Mike on 2009-03-10

2009-03-10T18:04:57Z

Thanks, Adam. So, if I open the Times icon, the entire day's paper is downloaded? I don't have to go through each individual section? I seem to be having the same experience as other users -- that only a portion of the articles are downloaded and I get a message stating as such and that I should "connect to the Internet."

I'd be willing to pay for this convenience (or provide my Times regular subscription information). Thanks for any thoughts.

Comment from Mike on 2009-03-10

2009-03-10T18:34:09Z

By the way, Adam, the update is much better than the last version. Congratulations.

I'm sure you'll work out the kinks that cause it to crash occasionally, etc.

Comment from Scott on 2009-03-29

2009-03-30T01:14:38Z

Caught this thread and I have to report that v2.0.1 does NOT download the full articles unless you are tapped into WIFI. I am now staring at the screen at an article in the US section and the page says: "This article has not been downloaded. Connect to the Internet to download this article."

I don't know what these instances are that prevent caching mentioned by the developer but it has been my real world experience that whole sections are sometimes missing and some articles always.

BTW developer I realize that the ads are not going away but it is the SIZE of them that I strongly object to, leaving the reading/scrolling space to the size of a postage stamp. Until that is addressed I will probably prefer USA Today.

Comment from Casper G on 2009-04-01

2009-04-01T20:32:25Z

Great app, functionally: but STABILITY! Sheesh, it crashes even more than before, particularly on initial opening! It's by far the most frustrating app that I continue not to delete from my iPhone. (Talk about damning with faint praise). Compare it to, say, the USA Today app, which is fast and never crashes.

Comment from galavanter on 2009-04-02

2009-04-02T23:17:01Z

I just purchased an iPod Touch yesterday and downloaded the NYT app first thing. The offline reading is great, and so is the font sizing. I wish I could adjust the stubs font too. They are kind of tiny for my eyes.

I'd like to see the NYT blogs included.

Adam I hope you see this because while looking for newsreaders in the app store I came across Instapaper, which is the first application to use "tilt scrolling" (only the paid version has it). I was disappointed that my Touch does not have a page down command. The constant scrolling gets tiresome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3717E_AQfI&fmt=18

Better yet, for me, would be "tilt to page down". What do you think? Is it doable? Anyway that's my request.:)