Backward Steps by the WSJ and the NYT on the iPad | Hacker News Reader

Backward Steps by the WSJ and the NYT on the iPad

cjr.org

9 pointsojbyrne7 comments

This isn't just a symptom of the iPad. I've always been confused when news sites build an iPhone app for people to read the same news they can read in the browser or a news aggregator. It seems the time, cost, and energy could be spent improving the site experience, making accommodations for the differences in finger and mouse inputs.

Is it just for the ability to boast that they have an iPhone or iPad app? Perhaps it's just another avenue to increase readership?

Regardless, it's their choice to build the apps and users choice to pay for and use them, so c'est la vie.

There's evidence (both anecdotal and numeric) suggesting that people prefer using an apps to the "raw" web. My mom says about her iPhone, "Safari is still kind of hard for me. So I always look for an app first." I suspect her usage pattern may be somewhat typical, and if so, it may make a lot of sense for these companies to build these apps--because they're what the users want.

It raises their visibility too, because it puts them in the main list of apps, as a top-level thing.

The whole point of having an Iphone app is the userbility. Please have a look at this article. http://carsonified.com/blog/mobile/make-your-site-mobile-fri... Fareita @ Moreover Technologies Ltd. And yes we have an iphone App for live global sports news!

The most bizarre part - WSJ won't even let me subscribe to the iPad edition. Every time I do, they ask me what my account is for wsj.com, and when I give it to them, they tell me "Hey, we'll let you use the iPad version for no additional charge." So, for right now, it's really only $1.99/week for the WSJ (Web + IPad).

Meanwhile the NYT, which is completely and totally free on the Web at nyt.com, is trying to charge me $19.99/Month Now, for the times reader, which is only a _subset_ of the nyt.com (they don't include business graphs and figures last time I checked, just before I canceled my subscription)

I don't really understand their pricing/marketing strategy, and I'm one of their core audience.

Why, precisely, am I supposed to pay the NYT $19.99/month for a _subset_ of what they offer for free on NYT.com?

bizarre.

eh... not to crazy about the article. It makes some statements about how things were deliberately left out of apps without backing up that statement with a quote or anything by those controlling the app. Isn't it possible that these features were left out because the app developers simply didnt have enough time to add those features for the first release??

Wow, this sucks. With as much as the NYT and WSJ are charging, why do I have to look at any ads at all, much less intrusive Web-style popups?

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