Seattle Times Print Replica

This app exists, because it has to. It has to exist to bridge the gap between the generation who grew up getting the paper on their doorstep every morning and this who never want to cut down another tree for paper again. It’s actually a great idea because it retains the format of the printed edition providing continuity and ease of reference. Poorly executed comes in the form of constant crashes, non consistent publicly times (I’ve waited til 8am before some editions are ready!!), issues being logged out, locked issues because credentials are expired, links within pages that do not go to the proper article. Horribly executed are the pages that sometimes do magical disappearing acts when you select them or resize improperly making the paper unreadable with no fix coming later. Just in recent version as of this writing if you click on an email to contact the paper it just crashes the app. Why? Because iOS 13.2 is out and this app was last updated 3 years ago!! I understand money is tight at papers, but this is like firing half of your delivery carriers and expecting to increase circulation! I love the idea of a print replica but fix it. Make it work and take care of it. It exists because it has to....not as a labor of love and that’s unfortunate.

Two stars only because you *can* actually read the paper. That said, about 70% of the time I open the app it requires me to log in, and 100% of the time I tap on an article it takes me somewhere other than the start of that article. Usually it’s the bottom of the page, requiring me to scroll back up to the top. The same thing happens when I tap the “continued on page...” link. It will take me to that page, but it will be somewhere in the middle or the bottom of the page rather than at the start of where that article continues. Extremely frustrating... I recently wiped my iPad clean and installed everything fresh (not restoring anything from a backup) and the app behavior hasn’t changed. I like the replica format, but wish The Times would move to Press Reader instead of Olive as it’s a far superior app.

Twice this week the morning paper wasn’t available online until later in the day -not sure how much later, but it still wasn’t there at 9 AM. Even though I am a long-time monthly subscriber, I am required to re-sign in at least once a week, often more. Today I experienced another of the common problems: the paper is available to a point (for my husband it was page 4, for me it was through the opinion page) and when you flip to the next page it says loading, but it never does load, even if you close and reopen the app. They may not be putting the resources into the mobile app to get people to go back to print, but frankly we are talking about cancelling our subscription totally. A morning paper provides yesterday’s news so we don’t get much value out of the paper anyway and these irritations from a lousy app are the last straw.

Recently, it has become more and more annoying. I see from other comments that I’m not alone. I’m talking about the e-paper’s availability. It’s 6:40am Sunday morning. No electronic paper. I’m reading the hard copy instead. The comment about flipping to part two of an article and winding up at the bottom of it rather than the top remains after more than two years. I think the Times wants hard copy subscriptions but I’ve moved away from that and don’t want to go back. This increasing unreliability is most annoying. Nothing has been done to update the app in two years. It’s time to renew for another 90 days. I’ll renew one last time and if this continues to get worse, well part company after 24 years.

It was there yesterday afternoon, and then it disappeared, never to return even after today's paper was loaded to the app. One other suggestion... When I load the paper thru the app, and click on comics... It should take me to the front page of the comics. Instead I have to choose some other option on the page, to open the newspaper in that section, then page forward 2 pages in order to get to the start of the actual comics. That's a lot of user entry that isn't necessary, and I would imagine others feel similarly. Thx!