No Bookmarked Progress, Magazines Don’t Download as PDFs
The last time I subscribed to the New Yorker was about six years ago. As with public library borrows, you could download issues of the magazine as PDFs to be opened in the reader of your choice. Additionally, you could keep your progress within a particularly long article within the app. Fast-forward to the new and improved version of the app. Downloaded magazines seem only accessible within the app, which destroys the effect of the magazine layout. Worse still, the app refreshes even if you haven’t closed it and are only checking another app for a moment. This means you not only lose your place in the story; you’re also pulled back to the landing content of the app, which might never have interested you in the first place. Additionally, you cannot bookmark your progress in an article or a downloaded magazine; you can only bookmark an individual article without progress. You can’t even highlight a passage to give you a clue where you left off, which is why I spend more time searching for my place in Aviv’s long piece on Alice Munro than I do reading the article itself. I only just subscribed a week ago and am thinking of cancelling my subscription.