The Economist for iPad News App Review (iOS, Free)

Description

The app is free to download and includes free access to the Editor's picks – a weekly selection of articles from each week's edition of the Economist.

Digital and print subscribers to The Economist receive unrestricted access to each week’s full print edition on iPad and iPhone.

NOW ON NEWSSTAND
The latest version of the app will appear in your Newsstand folder instead of an icon on the home screen.
Auto-download of new issue coming soon (watch this space for update).

FEATURES
•Each week’s issue available from 9pm London time on Thursday
•Download each issue to your device to read without an internet connection
•Switch easily between reading and listening with The Economist in audio
•Store and access back issues
•Purchase single issues using In App Purchase
•Subscribe from within the app and register your details with us for full access to The Economist on iPhone and iPad and The Economist online

SUBSCRIPTION OPTIONS
•Subscribe quarterly (12 issues) for USD $39.99 or annually (51 issues) for USD $129.99 or buy a single issue for USD $5.99. If available you will be charged in your local currency at the prevailing exchange rate as defined by iTunes.
•Payment will be charged to iTunes account at confirmation of purchase
•No cancellation of the current subscription is allowed during active subscription period
•Subscriptions automatically renews unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24-hours before the end of the current period
•Account will be charged for renewal within 24-hours prior to the end of the current period at the price of the original subscription
•You can manage auto-renew of your subscription in your iTunes account settings, where it can be turned off if you wish
•The app may offer a subscription with a free trial period. At the end of the trial period the full price of the subscription will be charged
•You may cancel a subscription during its free trial period via the subscription settings on your iTunes account. This must be done 24 hours before the end of the subscription period to avoid being charged. Please visit http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4098 for more information
•The subscription will renew automatically unless cancelled more than 24 hours before the end of the current period. You will be charged for renewal within 24 hours of the end of the current period, for the same duration and at the current subscription rate for the product
•You may turn off the auto-renewal of subscriptions through your Account Settings, however you are not able to cancel the current subscription during its active period
•Full terms of use can be found at http://www.economist.com/legal/terms-of-use

ABOUT THE ECONOMIST
The Economist is a weekly international news and business publication, offering clear reporting, commentary and analysis on world current affairs, business, finance, science and technology, culture, society, media and the arts.

ALSO AVAILABLE ON iPhone
The Economist is also available on iPhone, simply search in the App Store for “The Economist on iPhone”.

Customer Reviews

• worthy digital edition, but

  by sonnyinbj

  for non-english speaking reader, the word define function strongly required. could this be added in next update?

• A worthy investment, and a must buy subscription.

  by Krod9596

  Never, from what I can recall, has this app failed to give me the updated issues, let alone offer all the previous issues that I did not receive due to my recent subscription. Once downloaded, I can read the articles anywhere -- no need for wifi. I am a high school student, and this newspaper has helped me craft my writing skills. More importantly, it has quenched my thirst for understanding the world around me. Money well spent.

• Dictionary

  by Gotoswim

  Hope I can use dictionary like I do on my phone!

• Great content

  by LTR2

  The app provides access to the Economist reliably with only a few quirks based, I assume, on their need to track our usage. I am issued a dire warning when I am not connected to the internet with no consequence beyond sometimes losing my place in the article I am reading.

• Good, but...

  by nroose

  It would be much better if I could put this on my home screen instead of in newsstand.

• Great content / average app

  by Ron Cellini

  It's great to be able to view the content on the ipad. However the app is often updating with bugs that lose your subscription info and stop you from being able to view issues. Would be better if the subscription issues would be more stable.

• Best Ad Platform on the iPad!

  by PacoHope

  If you're looking for full-screen ads on your iPad, then this is the app for you! Every release brings new and more creative ways to display ads: videos, interactive apps, and full-screen graphics from some of the best advertising agencies in the business. Some of them even enforce a pause, making sure you don't miss a great ad. Sometimes the very first thing you get in the issue is an ad. No more hunting for them in the middle of articles, it's right up front and easy to find. Your ads tend to be interspersed throughout the most insightful financial, political, and international journalism available anywhere. You might have to read some of those world-class articles to find the ads, but they'll be worth it. Sometimes the app will remember where you were last time. Sometimes it won't. That just gives you a chance to flip through the articles a bit again, enjoying some of those lovely ads anew. It's a mystery, really, why they charge for those articles, when they're really focused on delivering such lovely ads. It might not restore the content to a readable form when you come back to the app from being asleep. Luckily turning it to another orientation and turning back will fix that. Don't worry about them taking time away from delivering a great ad platform to fix silly glitches in content presentation. They will make sure your ads look great no matter what. Content bugs (you know, the stuff they charge for?) can wait. I've never had an ad fail yet! The only gripe I have is that I couldn't get my ads when I upgraded to iOS7. I'm not going to remind them that the new operating system was massively hyped for months and developers had advanced beta copies to work with for months before the final release. When iOS 7 finally came out, the Economist Ads for iPad app had to be deinstalled manually and reinstalled in order to work. I spent a good 10 minutes getting my ads back. And all the ads I had downloaded previously were gone. If there is a downside, it's that they don't test on 3G iPads. Unlike the iPhone app, which will let you read some articles that have been downloaded while the app downloads the rest, the Economist Ads for iPad waits until it has downloaded all the beautiful, interactive, high quality ads before it lets you look at a single thing. Since all iPad owners only use them on fast WiFi connections, this is OK. Any fool who uses an intermittent 3G connection (say, on a train) to download such beautiful ads gets what he pays for. (Or not...) I wonder if they've ever considered charging money for a non-ad version. I bet there's a market for people who want just the content that they're bundling with my ads.

• Good not great

  by Sheltie.Dad

  Adequate lightweight magazine app. Wish it would download issues automatically. So basic yet missing.

• Better. Still could use some improvement.

  by tim012

  Much less buggy. It could have been even better if it became possible to select texts within an article. And I would suggest the app have the dynamic text size function in ios7.

• Impossible to cancel

  by Ktmbc

  Shady, if you ask me.

• Rather good

  by NYCSmart

  Since there is so much negative out there. I would just like to say my recently downloaded app seems to be providing content rather well.

• Great application, needs iOS 7 update

  by RohanGupta

  This is a great app and one of the few that allows you to pick an article rather than delivering a scan of the print edition. I give the app 4 stars for the functionality and the content. However, an iOS 7 design update is needed along with the ability to manage your account within the app and reduce the number of stored audio and print issues.

• Good app

  by Golapago

  I like the app but wish it would stop story in place when listening to it via BT. Is there a general, systemic issue regarding app's understanding of BT? Would also suggest option which when set would bookmark current story on stopping BT.

• Economic disaster

  by upnorth85

  It is funny that the magazine is about efficiency of economies. Yet even several years now, it is not able to manage a simple App login process! I knew life is laid back in Britain. But 3 years and even now they can't find their own Customer number after they have mailed the printed magazine? This company needs to be out of business for this level of incompetence. A freshman should be able to write code to do this. Please sack who ever is heading your App division. I would love to read an article on the gross incompetency in your own detail subscription department?better outsource it and shut down your over paid department.

• No longer works

  by Bjarmaland

  I've used the app for many years. It's always been great. Now it does not work any more. When I open a story, it crashes ; (

• Have to pay twice for issues

  by arajul

  It looks like I have to buy each issue twice, once on my iPhone and also on my iPad. If that's the case, however, it is not cool.

• totally unstable subscriber access

  by P1ngP0ng

  As indicated by some of the other reviewers, the app repeatedly loses my subscriber info, at which time I lose access to all but the editor's choice articles, even for the issues that had successfully downloaded before the CTN stopped being accepted. When I attempt to re-input my CTN I get a message that my info can't be found. You'd think a publication as classy (and expensive) as The Economist could do better by their suscribers.

• Disappointing

  by Iruthfnej

  Can't seem to close it, will have to delete it. Waste of time.

• Edit your ads

  by WhiskEClear

  I only get two options on the BMW ad when opening the app, request a test drive, or sign up for e-mails. I want neither. I want to read "The Economist". Is that too much to ask?

• Lost subscriber info

  by JasonCline13

  I am a print subscriber, and this app cannot seem to find my customer number when attempting to activate digital subscription (a digital subscription that happened to be active a week ago). Emailed customer service and got a canned response that due to an unusually large number of inquiries, it will be a week before somebody can address my issue. The email also directed me to their website account management page, which was of no use whatsoever. Adding in additional intrusive advertising, breaking subscriber access, and taking a week to address customer service issues adds up to one star. This was my first Economist subscription and I do not expect to be renewing.

• App Lost Subscription info, New Won't Update

  by boozinf

  An update of this app lost my subscription info, and the new iOS 7 update perpetually "cannot be downloaded at this time." And that isn't even getting into the ad mess yet.

• Horrible ad labyrinth

  by lunarmod

  Skip reading the Economist through the news stand and go to the web. The user is confronted by an ad page that is difficult to bypass. A paid subscriber should not have to deal with such games.

• Bookstore??

  by Gtrc73954

  Who the F uses bookstore? Bring back the home screen icon!

• Seriously Not Bright!

  by LynneB

  I regret to downgrade this edition of one of my favorite apps. Beware the Seriously Bright advert for Intelligent Life! Neither swipe left nor swipe right will rescue you from the black hole in the middle of your reading!

• You know...

  by Jokiestrunk

  It is not very cool to read only three pages after you see four advertisements. I might not a paid subscriber but this is obviously not the way you attract potential users, right?

• Very Bad ... It won't recognize my subscription credentials!

  by Fatigued by Bad Apps

  Unable to access subscription ... Worked fine for years until latest update. I want a subscription credit for time that this app doesn't work.

• Won't open

  by Hotdog256

  The app won't open, crashes immediately as of dec 7, 2013

• Still doesnt ....

  by Smi02382

  ...download new issues. Please fix this ASAP.

• Garbage ... and I'm angry

  by xopshed

  Once again the app doesn't work - can't download editions because it can't find the internet. And once again after updating to this new impotent version all my old downloaded editions have been deleted. So nothing at all to read on the long train ride. A subscription to The Economist is not cheap! Subscribers can expect better.

• (Slowly) Improving

  by dcmcg

  Works about 90% of the time at this point. At random intervals it will get stuck between pages and need to be restarted. I also just deleted and reinstalled it to get around an error where it would come up with a blank white screen with two boxes even after quitting the app and restarting the iPad.

• A bloody, crying shame...

  by JordanDM

  I have been a user of and subscriber to the Economist on iPad since the very first iteration. While things have improved to a degree, the reality is that it is far from being the ideal experience. Think about how any news app should ideally work... It updates in the background, so that at any time I have the latest edition of that publication. It doesn't lose my place when I exit and re-enter the app. It doesn't require a lengthy connection and synchronization before I start reading. It pops up immediately and without issue, with the latest content available before I dropped off the Internet, when I launch it when off the Internet (on a plane, the train, at my cabin in the woods). It allows me to easily browse back issues, perhaps organized into months and years, instead of forcing me to scroll back through dozens and dozens of screens until I find that issue I want to reference. It lets me 'clip' articles for future reference. It let's me look up words in a dictionary and terms on the Internet and see cross-references to other content. It lets me decide if I want bandwidth heavy 'added value content' and reject it if 8 so chose. And how does the Economist app do on these? It fails miserably. Clearly, the use cases for which it is built and the testing conducted doesn't reflect how people, are actually going to use it. I know that the staff at the Economist knows about these issues, because I have sent them emails detailing them again and again. I have even offered to help them. And while I get responses, kudos to them for that, they promise things are getting better, but the rate of progress is so slow! It is a shame. A bloody, crying shame. This could be a wonderful app. But it fails miserably. The Economist should be leading the way. Heck, if they got it right, I would pay for an Economist daily edition!

• Can't purchase anything?

  by trg2SF

  I hate to pile on the bad reviews, but I get an error message when trying to buy an issue - and the error message gives me a non-existent URL. Hope you guys can figure this out soon! :)

• Rather poor

  by lucahimself

  If you change the font size, those boring ads cover part of the text, and you cannot read the full text of the articles any more. Avoid. Just use the website.

• This site just does not work for magazine subscribers

  by NotsoyoungUser

  THere is simply no way to activate to access my subscriptions. Tried to write to customer service and got zero reply. DO NOT download if you are a magazine subscriber!

• Why is zero stars not an option?

  by DaJoFr

  Cannot access despite following all the troubleshooting instructions. Perhaps this was farmed out to CGI?

• It won't even begin to work

  by Vincenz Buhler

  Just tried opening up for the first time since updating. The app itself is fantastic, but I'm giving it a star since it won't even open and stays as a blank white on my screen.

• Stay away

  by Blood_Donor

  While the older versions had many problems this one takes it to an absurd level. App does not recognize my customer number. All of the magazine issues that I had downloaded before the update were deleted. Hopefully they can fix this mess.

• Can't read it

  by Guats83

  FIXTHIS

• Doesn't work :(

  by acouplemiles

  Can't logon. Connection Error every time.

• Worse than Obamacare

  by orangeman75

  To Economist executive management: This app is less reliable than the Obamacare website! I will cancel my subscription and never renew if you don't fix this soon. Can't authenticate with CRN. This stinks! What a waste of time!

• Execrable

  by Jeffrey Nolan

  Total reset of account. No access or memory of my username, ect., including on the website. You've just lost yourself a customer.

• Lost subscription

  by Jsnrthmp

  Can't activate my subscription. It's amazing how often this app breaks. Love the magazine, but get some UAT and professionals to design the app

• Awful

  by djdjdj007

  Agreed. Awful.

• Broken - no access to subs!

  by DiDiFi USA

  Latest version 2.10.2 is broken, none of my subs are available and customer number activation fails. Help desks just express sympathy and want to diagnose what OS and device I'm using. Simple, latest iOS 7.02 + Economist 2.10.2 = broken. Test before release guys! Very irritated. Existing subscribers - just don't update!

• Bad app

  by AjAmin825

  I cannot download magazines easily with this version of the app and with ios7. I don't have access to old issues of the magazine. Please fix!

• Resume reading not supported, pricing messed up.

  by ThanosDia

  This most basic use case is not supported and thus you get 1 star until you fix this: I start reading an issue, and at some point I have to stop. There should be a way that when I run the app again, I can pick up where I left. Bookmarks almost do this, but they have a fatal flaw: if you navigate to an article using a bookmark, when you swipe to go to the next article, it goes to the next bookmarked article, not the next article in the issue. That's a ridiculous use case. Who navigates from bookmark to bookmark? It would be much more useful to continue to the next article in the issue. Also, extra points if I could sync bookmarks across devices. Last, why on earth does it cost $127 to renew for a year (offline) which includes the print edition, but the in-app purchase (for online only) is $129?

• Simply can't read any issue

  by Daniel Becker

  Impressive...

• iOS 7 problems

  by Alireza Vaezzadeh

  I have not been able to download any of the new editions since I installed iOS7. This very frustrating...

• British tech

  by Cyrusnc

  British technology at its worst. Everyone else gets it right with iOS 7 but The Economist does not. I get my print edition on Tuesdays after Friday publication and rely on the digital edition. An embarrassment. Hire some young people.

• Seriously guys, it's not rocket science

  by Tama7777

  Crashes, won't download new issues..... It's a basic app, beyond me as to why The Economist keeps messing this up. Sort it out.

• Bloody Awful

  by NikolaiGranakov

  SIR- Your newest update is horrendous. If you designed it to prevent subscribers from reading your publication on the iPad, then bloody hell! You've succeeded! -Nick G, Washington, DC

• Just waste money

  by On air with drtom

  STILL DOES not WORK on IOs7...despite update(s) ....

• Cannot activate subscription - please fix

  by Hajerah

  The new update crashed my subscriber access. Cannot log back in or activate with CRN! Please fix this.

• Disappointing

  by Egregwells

  I have had this app for months yet as a print subscriber have never been able to get full access. Save yourself the aggravation. Stick with the print version.

• Awful!

  by Jorito

  Have not been able to read the magazine for a week now. App does not open. Blank screen. Unbelievable!

• Can't get through sign up process

  by fhllc

  Like the other reviews, cannot get digital access even though I have the magazine subscription. Won't be renewing.

• Pathetic app and even worse service to boot!

  by #1Skibum

  After two phone calls to Apple and two calls to The Economist neither could solve the problems I've had since updating this app. I lost ALL of my prior issues! And now I can't download any issues at all. The Economist was basically useless in trying to solve these problems. I cancelled my subscription and deleted the app. Buyer beware.

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