The venerable gray lady, the New York Times, overhauled its iPad app this week. The original app, which supposedly annoyed Steve Jobs greatly, was called “Editor’s Choice.” Instead of including all the stories in the paper, it included only a selection. And the stories were arranged in the app much as they wold be in a real newspaper, with more important or interesting stories receiving more screen space, if you will, and a higher place in a clearly obvious hierarchy.
Well, to satisfy Jobs or whomever, the paper has revised the app, removed the “Editor’s Choice” label, and thrown in everything but the kitchen sink. Now you get all the stories from 25 different sections of the paper. Great. Well, sort of great. Look at the layout of the “Top Stories” section.
It’s too much of an undifferentiated mess that gets worse as you go deeper into the app. Almost every story receives an similar amount of space and the same length and size of headline. Pages deeper in the app are just a nine square box of identical-looking stories. My brain starts to read and just goes “blah.” Frankly, my time is valuable and limited. I’d rather have fewer stories and more editorial prioritizing.
Of course, give the paper some credit for putting more content online. And I do like the system for navigating around in each section. Once you click on a story, the remaining stories in that same section are listed on a narrow, scrollable bar at the bottom of the page reminiscent of NPR’s well-reviewed iPad app.
So question to the Times’ app developers — what’s up? Please take away this mish-mash and bring a much greater semblance of priority and order and, well, editor’s choice back to the app. And while you’re at it, how about some search functionality and an archive for saving my favorite articles. Oh, right, you zapped TimesFile off the web site two years ago. Bummer.
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