The Economist - News, Podcasts

So frustrated with all the feature regressions in the new app.

The magazine is wonderful. The app used to be too. But the new version doesn’t allow you to read an issue linearly - it prompts you to jump around. Downloaded content disappears making offline access problematic. And it’s hard to know which articles you’ve read. Please go back to the old version.

The Economist doesn’t need my endorsement of the quality of their journalism. It speaks for itself. Rather, I’ll comment that their app is wellAdesigned and refreshing to use. Their developers have made large leaps in the past several years to make the interface less buggy and more focused. I love being able to easily download entire editions, listen to articles with real narrators, and search for past articles. I have no complaints. Some uses complain of the ads, but I’d encourage you to hold your criticism. Media companies cannot survive on subscription fees alone—that’s been largely true since their inception. I suppose that makes me an ad-apologist, but if these ads enable the high-quality journalism we all love, then I feel we should grin and bear the ads. And for what it’s worth, I’ve never found the ads to be particularly distracting.

First it has no memory: I am unable to resume reading from where I left: when I switch or walk away from an article and come back, it resets to main window. Yes I remember what I was reading earlier today but it is annoying to refind from main window. This app is supposed to be the reader of the newspaper. Second, the audio option has many bugs: e.g: you can’t even see the queue. You say “clear the queue” but it does not. When you build audio queue the sequence from the newspaper is not followed (US section should not begin with Lexington column). I did stick with the Legacy app-was much better- and the Apple Podcast option (no longer available). It sounds like this app developer never finished the project since at least 3 years…

Nothing against the content, it’s good, but the app testing experience is not becoming of the publication’s reputation. No guidance, no feedback, and no thanks. What was I supposed to look at? No idea. Was any of the bugs or commentary I submitted appreciated? Clearly not. Will I be doing this again? Nope. This is not how one should treat users who volunteer to help

I have a multi year subscription. The app had been working fine, then all of a sudden it doesn’t recognize me. The print edition is still coming in but completely lost digital access. The UI is silent on what happened or how to recover.

I have been looking forward to my subscription of the economist for a while. I like to listen to the podcasts throughout the day and think the reporting is phenomenal. My difficulty is with the app, specifically the podcasts: picking up where I left off if I go out of the app, checking if I listened to an episode, and things of that nature. I haven’t explored much else in the app, but for what I have used, I find enough frustrating to leave a review.

Please bring back the old version. It is so much easier to download and read issues. It is now hard to see which issues have been downloaded. Same with trying to read The World and 1843. Please, please, please.

Coming back to this mag was a mistake

I paid full for this app and I wasted my money! I wanted an unbiased news feed as this advertisement to be and it’s just as bad as the others out there. Why is it so hard just to tell us the truth and stop being one sided one way or the other. Americas are sick of being lied to!