The economic news these days may be grim, but there's one magazine whose excellent writing can be relied on to make it less painful reading: The Economist. My main complaint with this weekly is that it's printed on pretty flimsy stuff, and its ink is liable to smear—not to mention the guilt-inducing amount of paper I consume reading it. Sure, there's a Kindle version, but I'm in the Nook camp, and there's no Nook version. There's a good online version, but I can't bear the idea of reading that much text on my laptop. I was pleased, therefore, that the Economist recently made the big digital step forward by releasing iPhone and iPad apps. I tried out The Economist on iPad (free to download, but you have to pay for content). Initually, it sounded like a shoe-in for our best iPad apps story. In testing however, while I was impressed with the reading experience, the app itself proved to be a bit buggy.
The Economist, for those who don't know it, is a British glossy weekly newspaper in magazine format. Despite the name, it's not just about economics; instead it aims "to take part in a severe contest between intelligence, which pushes forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress." It doesn't endorse any political viewpoint, though it does tend to favor globalism and fiscally conservative capitalism, with a Libertarian bent toward social issues. The magazine's compact writing assumes readers are already well informed and educated and delivers a surprising amount of information in each issue. Time Magazine feels like Weekly Reader, in comparison.
Stress-Testing the Economist
Downloading the iPad app is free—the actual content is not. Full digital access is included if you're already a print subscriber. If not, a digital subscription is $29 for a quarter or $110 for a year, and includes access to everything on The Economist's website, including back issues to 1997—that's a pretty good deal. Print subscription costs vary by region, but in the U.S. it's about double the digital cost. You can also buy single issues, but here there's no comparable price break. Digital issues sell for the same $5.99 as print issues, which seems pricey.
Still, the magazine looks very good on the iPad. The layout is good, and the images are impressively sharp. One definite advantage over the print version is the resizable text; the regular Economist's type can be hard on the eyes after a while—on the iPad it's easy to resize up to a reasonably large font. It takes a slow, steady stroke to get the text to resize correctly, but it worked well enough.
There's not much extra here, though—no snazzy iBonuses. Sadly, the one extra I was really looking forward to, downloadable audio versions of the magazine, simply would not download in my testing. The problem persisted for the several days, in an area with strong Wi-Fi signal—even after updating to iOS 4.2. The online Help and the Help within the app (which is confusingly filed under "About" in settings) were no help, either. I did notice one disconcerting Q/A, however, stating that there was a known bug with the iPhone version of the app, such that if you started it up in an area with a weak Wi-Fi signal, it could become corrupted and need to be deleted and redownloaded.
One other minor bug—according to the in-app Help, you're supposed to be able to tweak how much text and audio the app stores locally via the storage. I thought this might help with my inability to download audio, so I went looking for it. As far as I can tell, however, it's just not there. There are other instances of the help having been written separately from the app, too—you're referred to buttons by the wrong names, for example. It's disappointing, given how carefully written the magazine itself is.
Mixed Indicators
The Economist on the iPad didn't live up to my high expectations. A few annoying bugs, less than helpful Help, and a single-issue price that would feel like a much better bargain if the audio download worked all contributed to the let down. Still, it's the Economist. On an Ipad. I'm sold—I won't be buying paper copies as long as I can hold onto this testing iPad. But I will be waiting for the update that brings this app up to the level of the content and the platform it runs on.
• The Economist on iPad
• Air Display 1.2 (for iPad)
• Dragon Dictation
• Evernote (for iPad)
• Dropbox for iPad
• more
{"s" : "nws","k" : "a00,a50,b00,b60,c10,g00,h00,l10,p20,t10,v00","o" : "","j" : ""} Robert Andrews, On Thursday November 18, 2010, 11:20 am EST