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Rant: The Daily

V

vrDrew

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 31, 2010
1,376
13,412
Midlife, Midwest
I'm fast running out of patience with News Corporation's (Rupert Murdoch) experiment with creating an iPad newspaper.

Leaving aside the politics of News Corp. in general, and its editorial page in particular, I've found that The Daily is that rare iPad App indeed: It just doesn't work.

For a daily news publication, it fails the most basic test of all: It doesn't actually seem to be capable of delivering daily news updates. Today (Friday, April 1) - I've still got the same headlines, stories, crosswords, etc. that I had on Wednesday. And this is despite a 2-3 minute startup time that promises that "today's" paper is being delivered. And I'm not alone with this complaint: Half the recent reviews on iTunes complain about the same thing.

This comes on top of a my experience with the first month or so of The Daily, a time where it regularly, and reliably crashed. It got to the point where you literally couldn't read a single page story without the App unexpectedly quitting. It took three weeks, a a complete uninstall, reinstall, update cycle for them to (sort of) fix that problem (The Daily still crashes, just every 4-5 times I use it, rather than 100% of the time.)

In this day and age, I'm utterly amazed that a major worldwide company could actually put out such an utterly dysfunctional piece of software. And I'm a little surprised that Apple approved such a defective App to be sold in their Store.

I'm going to give The Daily one week to fix this. If I'm not seeing regular, daily news stories showing up each day before 7.00 am - then this App, and my subscription, will be history.

Last Note: To anyone thinking of subscribing to The Daily, whatever you do - do not choose the Annual subscription. Pay for it weekly for the first couple of months. That way, the worst thing that will happen is you'll be out 99 cents - and the frustration and anger of dealing with an App that just doesn't seem to work.
 
The Daily actually does release issues on a daily basis. However, there seems to be an issue during the delivery in the morning that causes it to retain the last issue on the iPad. I've noticed this same issue since the update to 4.3.1, but have found a solution (albeit annoying).

When I notice my iPad has a previous issue when it should have picked up the current day, I perform a soft reset on the iPad and open up the app again. Once I've done this, it does actually pick up the current issue. Note, you have to perform a soft reset as killing the app does not work in most cases I've encountered.

Hope this workaround helps even though it's still an annoyance.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
cchanlatte said:
Hope this workaround helps even though it's still an annoyance.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your suggestion. I was able to get it to work. But, as you said, its quite an annoyance, and certainly not the sort of thing you expect from an iPad app.

Thanks again for your help!
 
Yeah, I was on the fence about this and actually find the free Pulse app to deliver more regularly/reliably even if it isn't a newspaper style I get my news.

Nice concept but failed in delivery it sounds.
 
gescom said:
Yeah, I was on the fence about this and actually find the free Pulse app to deliver more regularly/reliably even if it isn't a newspaper style I get my news.
Click to expand...

Zite and Flipboard are two free aggregators that do what Pulse does, but in a magazine type format.
 
dmaul1114 said:
Zite and Flipboard are two free aggregators that do what Pulse does, but in a magazine type format.
Click to expand...

A "must have" feature (for me, at least) of any news app is the ability to download and store content for reading offline - like when I'm stuck on a plane for 8 hours or so. And nice as Flipboard is - it doesn't do this.

On a related note, I did get some feedback from The Daily regarding the failure to update issue I'd reported to them.

They suggested I go into the App Settings (the little "gear" icon in the carousel) and click "Account Information" and then "Reset Content." I did try this - but it seemed to do little more than cause the App to freeze completely.

They also suggested the Soft-Reset, which was suggested to me previously.

They also aknowledged that there will be a 1.0.05 version update coming out very shortly that will be a permanent fix for this issue.

I have very mixed feelings about The Daily. On one hand, I think they should be applauded for "pushing the envelope" as to what an iPad-enabled daily newspaper can do. On the other, I suspect they might be trying to do too much, asking the hardware and software to do more than is really practical, at least on software that gets updated every few weeks. They got the pricing right. And they seem to be responding to reader feedback (ie. they've added a "Business" section recently.)

The politics? Mmmm.....
 
vrDrew said:
A "must have" feature (for me, at least) of any news app is the ability to download and store content for reading offline - like when I'm stuck on a plane for 8 hours or so. And nice as Flipboard is - it doesn't do this.

On a related note, I did get some feedback from The Daily regarding the failure to update issue I'd reported to them.

They suggested I go into the App Settings (the little "gear" icon in the carousel) and click "Account Information" and then "Reset Content." I did try this - but it seemed to do little more than cause the App to freeze completely.

They also suggested the Soft-Reset, which was suggested to me previously.

They also aknowledged that there will be a 1.0.05 version update coming out very shortly that will be a permanent fix for this issue.

I have very mixed feelings about The Daily. On one hand, I think they should be applauded for "pushing the envelope" as to what an iPad-enabled daily newspaper can do. On the other, I suspect they might be trying to do too much, asking the hardware and software to do more than is really practical, at least on software that gets updated every few weeks. They got the pricing right. And they seem to be responding to reader feedback (ie. they've added a "Business" section recently.)

The politics? Mmmm.....
Click to expand...

I had a lot of the same issues as you and did a uninstall/reinstall of the App and that seemed to solve all my issues. I'm now a current subscriber and enjoy reading it everyday.
 
You also have to remember that it's new software, just barely came out. All software has bugs and goes through a period of refinement and improvement. Give it some time, there's hard working Xcoders behind the scenes there who surely love their iPads as much as anybody else. Despite how large News Corp may be, I wouldn't be surprised if the entire team of The Daily developers is around ~10 people, if even that.

Plus, the success of The Daily plays a role, however small, in the success of the iPad and iOS economy.
 
I sort of feel like the OP. I really want to App to succeed but it's not delivering so I'm trying to have patients. I wonder if News Corp Administration is interfering with the operations side. A bureaucracy can ruin anything. They need to consult ESPN gurus. They have very little rules and answer to few.

Edit: should add each time I open the App I get an iTunes Error pop up window saying iTunes Error cannot connect to store. Tried several things to attmpt a fix and it's annoying. Removing the App completely and restarting the iPad does no good either.
 
Last edited:
I too have been quite happy with it. None of the problems listed above. I read it every morning at about 6:30am EST and the new issue has always been there. Loads within maybe 15 seconds. Has never crashed. I have the iPad2 WiFi only and the latest software.
 
Same here. I've had it for the entire 2 weeks subscription and I'm sold on it. It's a great little read and the fact that you can download the entire issue and read it offline is a huge + for me since I can load it up before I leave for work and read on the train. I'm in for 39.99.
 
About one month ago I deleted and re-installed and it's worked perfectly since then. Also, the original poster mentioned a long wait for the latest issue to be delivered but my wait time is 15 seconds (I just timed it with a stopwatch).
 
I've been reading The Daily since it premiered on February 2. And trust me - there was a huge problem with the App crashing that started happening about two weeks after launch. It was so bad they delayed the onset of charging to use the App for several weeks. Go and read some of the App Store reviews from mid-February if you don't believe me.

I'm glad some people are able to enjoy the App without the technical problems that have plagued some of us early adopters. And maybe the iPad 2's greater RAM capacity is more forgiving of The Daily's programming quirks.

I guess the thing I find so irritating about this is that the whole experience is so uniPad-like. Maybe I've been spoiled by my experience with the other couple of dozen Apps on my iPad. They never crash. They start instantly. And they certainly don't require a soft-restart every day in order to work properly. I thought I'd put all those kludgy workarounds behind me when I bought an iPad.

Hopefully version 1.0.5 will bring some stability, and I'll be able to judge the paper strictly on its journalistic and entertainment merits.
 
There was a previous update that told you to delete the current version before installing the new one. I did that I have had no problems since. I really enjoy The Daily.

My husband didn't uninstall the previous version and just upgraded. He still had crashing issues. What he ended up doing is deleting the app, do a hard reset and install with the latest version from iTunes and not the app store on the iPad. Worked for him ever since.
 
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