Get the New York Times on iPad via BN... sort ofFiled under: iPad
Update: Barnes & Noble's PR team pinged us to point out two salient points. #1, the message above does in fact note that only the iPod touch and iPhone versions of the newspaper/magazine subscriptions are temporarily offline -- the iPad subs are still available, as I found. #2, via the "Go To" button at the top of the eReader app screen, you can access an abbreviated table of contents (a list of the paper's sections); that's a help, but still not a particularly well-adapted navigational approach for all the stories in the NYT. My apologies for the errors.
We got the heads-up from reader Jehuda S. that Barnes & Noble is now listing the New York Times as available for subscription or single-copy download into the company's B&N eReader app. A quick check of B&N's site does indeed show the paper available for $0.99 a day, or $19.99 for a monthly subscription -- the monthly price is the same as Amazon's Kindle version, but that edition isn't available for iPhone or iPad yet. Amazon's deal with the NYT is a possible explanation for the kneecapped Editor's Choice app, which doesn't offer the paper's full content.
Great, so the paper's ready for prime time on the iPad courtesy of Mr. Barnes and Mr. Noble? Well, not so much. First of all, even though I was able to go through with the $0.99 purchase of today's paper [for my iPad], the site is featuring a banner update as seen above -- newspaper delivery is being 'temporarily suspended' to the iDevices iPhone and iPod touch, with a 'better reading experience' around the corner.
That's good, because the current reading experience is downright cringeworthy. There's no navigation to speak of except for section front pages and 'next story' / 'previous story' -- in order to see the whole paper, you have to scroll via the page scroller at the bottom (today's edition shows as 525 screensful, not easy to manage). There's no master table of contents, no overall list of sections, no moxie whatsoever. It's a bit like someone faxing you the New York Times, story by story -- not at all a positive way to consume this premium content.
I can't recommend you get the Times in this fashion until B&N revamps the reader; good news is, it looks like there's consensus on that point over at B&N.
Thanks Jehuda!TUAWGet the New York Times on iPad via BN... sort of originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 21 Jul 2010 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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