The Sydney Morning Herald 12+

Good newspaper. Okay app. Weird subscription model

SMH is a great newspaper. One of the few left that actually have journalism. The app itself is okay. Could be improved but perfectly adequate. The subscription is odd though. There are two levels starter and premium which is $9.50 a month more but the only thing extra you get us basically a PDF like version of the physical paper which is a pretty useless thing. More of a gimmick really l, no practical use for computer. And it’s not even an actual pdf so you can’t do anything with it outside the app. And secondly you get puzzles. Which is 2 crosswords and 4 sudokus a day. The suduko part of the app is pretty ho him, but a particually annoying thing is that sometimes when you solve a puzzle it doesn’t recognise that and it still calls it “in progress”. Not sure how these two features (broken suduko and pdf like daily paper) is considered worth paying $9.50 a month for! I would have expected them to be thrown in for free and premium subscription gives access to more articles than basic.

Developer Response ,

Thank you for supporting The SMH and sharing thoughtful feedback. Your input is important to us as our apps team is actively working on improving puzzles.

Keep it going. Keep it growing.

You guys are doing a fantastic job. I would suggest you cover humanitarian crisis more, both local and abroad. We’re living in a growingly disunited and unequal world. Conditions that lead to war and with it drown out the voice of the oppressed. Be the media that seeks to be the voice of the voiceless Keep pursuing the truth. Don’t bring news for news sake. Use your independence to toil for the ugly, impalatable and unpopular truth most cower away from. Opinion piece your hearts out bringing the agents of injustice to account. I see great work here. I see great potential too. Keep it going. Keep it growing.

Developer Response ,

Thanks for your support, Adoneus.

Backward step

It’s hard to escape the conclusion that this new app was developed without any user acceptance testing. Most of the features that currently make the "old" app so usable have been left behind in a rush to create something different - not better, just different. A case in point is the herding of all news into "Sections" - previously, I could just quickly browse headlines and decide what interested me; now, for example, I have to guess whether there might be anything useful under the “Sydney" or “NSW" or “Politics” headings today (how would I know, unless I laboriously trawl through each of those?!?). This, I suspect, is what happens when you let your I.T. department design your new-and-improved product - THEY like it, so too bad about the end-user . The old adage “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it" applies here ..... Sadly, after years of being a subscriber, the advent of the new app will force me to seek an alternative source come 1st January.