I´ve wanted to like the New York Times app since it came out but simply haven´t been able to (apparently, I´m not alone based on the ratings in the iTunes store for that matter).
On the other hand, the WSJ app actually improves upon the paper´s reading experience.
I documented pluses and minuses for both apps (and both had minuses, all is not perfect with the WSJ) in
an article in Executive Road Warrior magazine that is now available on the Web - but I would be interested in getting the feedback of FTers here as well since I presume many of you carry your newspapers on your iPad.
All the News? New York Times versus Wall Street Journal iPad Apps – Review
With the advent of portable devices such as the Kindle eBook reader and Apple iPad, how we get our newspaper has started to change dramatically.
In designing their first generation iPad interfaces, both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal started with a tabula rasa. The Wall Street Journal chose to adopt iPad conventions in terms of the use of gestures. As a result, the experience the reader gets doesn’t simply replicate the look and feel of the print paper, but the interface is actually an improvement. The Times, on the other hand, is a different story.
A Journal reader on the iPad can get the day’s paper or the most up-to-date news and swipe from article to article. The look and feel resembles the print edition but the images are far superior. Thanks to its intelligent use of gestures and scrolling, I find reading the Journal on the iPad more enjoyable and far more informative than reading the paper version. Readers can swipe between articles and sections (left and right for articles, up and down for sections) and can also close an article and return to the both the front page of the “paper” or of each section by pinching the screen. Finally, I can also switch to the European or Asian edition with two taps, a feat that is not obviously possible with the paper version.
On the other hand, I find that reading New York Times via its iPad app is an exercise in frustration thanks to a poor user interface that leaves me constantly wishing I had the actual paper in front of me.
