Filed under: iPhone, App Store, iPod touch, App Review
Stop the presses! AP News for iPhone is a mess
My, my. Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The Associated Press has updated the AP News app for the iPhone and iPod touch. They took a mildly aggravating program and turned it into a mass of bugs, freezes and GUI mistakes.Let's start from the beginning. The iTunes store notified me that AP News 2.0 was available. Great idea. The older version wasn't too stable. I did the update, and it started asking questions, like 'where was I?' so the local news would kick in. I answered the question and went to the next screen. Lockup. I force-quit the app, and tried again. Blank screen, followed by a slow return to the iPhone home screen. Tried again. Same result. And so on.
Deleted the app, and then reloaded it again. Got past the location screen, and then was presented with endless options to configure the news I wanted. If the iPhone screen didn't scroll, this list would have extended all the way to the floor. I'll bet I missed some important news while I was fiddling with that screen.
Anyway, it's up and running. The GUI is not improved. Instead of getting the top national news stories I get a mixture of national, local, wacky and other stuff that it defaults to. I liked the old way where I got a whole scrollable screen of top national news. Now I get 2 stories before the other stuff shows up. You can change this setting, but no more than 5 stories in any category. Not exactly a tribute to free choice.
There are a lot of new features, mostly about customizing this app. You can now see stories in landscape mode, but here's a good one. The story lists won't work in landscape, only the individual stories, so you are constantly changing the orientation of the phone. You can localize the app to crash in Spanish or French, which I guess is an improvement. It also says there are major increases to stability. Really? This thing is a bug-fest.
Amazingly, the AP support page notes that many people will have trouble installing the app, and to download it again with WiFi. Hey, how about making a proper installer so I don't have to do that? Gee whiz.
I don't think the people who developed this app have much of an idea about how people consume news, or how to make a simple and useful interface for controlling it. Judging from the reviews this new app is getting, it might be time for the AP to go back to the drawing board and start again.
Frankly, if you like this update, it will be news to the rest of us.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Brad said 2:23PM on 5-27-2009
The new application icon displayed with the update information should have been a warning sign.
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derajhcuam said 2:29PM on 5-27-2009
This update is likely a placeholder before the full 3.0 release with Push. I was hoping to hear that those with 3.0 (beta) would see Push notices but that does not appear to be the case. I also had to delete and reinstall the application to make it work. It seems it's easy to corrupt their data in the update. I would expect another update in a few hours/days.
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Adam said 5:01PM on 5-27-2009
The developers don't see push with this since push requires the 3.0 SDK. If the app were built against the 3.0 SDK it wouldn't work on 2.x. I (as do the rest of the developers) have a separate copy for 3.0 that receives push notifications.
nittany4 said 2:31PM on 5-27-2009
i like AP news (i suppose I'm one of the few) Is there a way to tell the store you don't want an update without getting reminded all the time that the update is available?
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beenyweenies said 2:36PM on 5-27-2009
All I can think of is "La Brea Tar Pits." No wonder their industry is dying, with all the cash and resources at their disposal you'd think they could at least put out a working app. Maybe I'm just a cynic, but it seems like all of these dinosaur industries FAIL when they try to do anything outside of the one business model/product they've relied on since 100AD.
It's things like this that give me little hope the news industry will pull out of their death spiral in time.
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Dustin Ravize said 2:38PM on 5-27-2009
That's a shame to hear that 2.0 is buggy and a bummer. the 3.0 version test for me has been extremely stable, lets hope they are just using this as a stone before they roll out 3.0
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Johnny said 2:47PM on 5-27-2009
Yeah, I've been using the 3.0 beta and it works great. I'm still not sure what they consider 'breaking' news and wish there was a way to specify what you want notifications for, but so far I have been getting notifications every now and then. I think the notifications will actually work better in the full release and they are only sending them for testing purposes at the moment.
AJ Morris said 3:55PM on 5-27-2009
I've had the 3.0 (beta) on my 3.0 phone since they announced they were testing PUSH and have got a total of 12 alerts pushed to my phone since then. Most happened on the first day. There's two things I see with this. What happens when a twitter client of IM client starts with PUSH. It's going to BRING DOWN the service. Second, don't you think that Apple should have been smart enough to plan on having an app like Twitteriffic or AOL IM client? I'm worried that PUSH is going to turn into this years Mobile Me disaster.
NutMac said 2:39PM on 5-27-2009
I had to delete and re-install as well. And as Mel pointed out, the defaults are quite horrible. After customizing what appears on the front page then going to setup to boost the number of stories, it's more or less usable now. I wish tabs on the bottom are customizable. I don't need Weather and Local occupying the tab (would prefer Search and Saved).
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punkassjim said 4:12PM on 5-27-2009
Man, it's amazing how much you and Mel had to endure, y'know, twiddling all those settings that AP put in their app. Are you alright, you need to sit down or something? Being given all those choices and all that flexibility should really be made optional.
Mel, you clearly wish to see mainly Top News. Looks like you can tap on Categories, then on Top News, and it'll persist across app launches. I hope that helps.
I had the upgrade crash on install, too. Delete, reinstall, launch and I was pleased to see the new features. I guess I'm the one.
Galley said 2:53PM on 5-27-2009
As fas as news apps go, the best-working ones I have used are All Things Digital and USA Today.
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Matthew said 3:19PM on 5-27-2009
I updated this app this morning as well and I was really disappointed in how bad they made it.
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Gene said 3:33PM on 5-27-2009
I'm surprised to hear all the negative reviews. I have been using the app for the last week and think it's a great improvement. I stopped using the old app because it was a mess but this one brought me back. I like the organization, especially how you prioritize your favorite sections.
It reminds me of reading a real paper but with more customization. I would imagine their most recent release is gearing up for 3.0 and I have been using it on the beta with no issues... Although I haven't gotten one notification yet. But here's hoping.
T_G_T_101 said 4:00PM on 5-27-2009
There was a push notification test last week using AP, seemed perfectly stable to me, received notifications and everything. However I don't think there'll be any more push notifications coming through until OS 3.0 is officially released. Does it say you should be receiving them in the Settings pane?
Todd said 3:22PM on 5-27-2009
> Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
No kidding. Doesn't that pretty much sum up the entire newspaper industry's experience with the web? They had prestige and content and threw it all away in pettiness and incompetence.
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tabaks said 3:23PM on 5-27-2009
What application?
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That Guy said 3:54PM on 5-27-2009
Newsflash! University freshmen don't major in journalism because it technical or hard -- they do it because they need to go to university to learn the art of rendering tattle-tales to the populace in C-level eighth grade English. Journalism is dead. Long live strippers with teleprompters and HD cameras!
Peace!
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Todd said 3:56PM on 5-27-2009
This is not the first time that this app has wreaked havoc - I think it was version 1.1 or 1.2 that did the same.
After 2.0 tanked my iPhone, I uninstalled and gave USA Today a chance. I like it better, and it actually WORKS.
TK
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b9b said 4:16PM on 5-27-2009
I still have the original AP app on my phone -- no updates. It is pre-advertisements and works just fine, thanks.
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Mystic said 4:16PM on 5-27-2009
Did any of you having problems try and reboot your iPhone?
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