As far as news and information curation apps go it’s not bad. It’s easy to use, and good use of sectional partitioning for articles on the mobile app (which is all that I use). But to be great it needs to have its users more front of mind. It seems obsessed with getting our eyeballs on to the adverts; be they videos that auto play for 15 secs before you can watch a ‘news’ related video, or a pop up ad. I wish it didn’t play me the same ad multiple times. 2 tops; but when I’m scrolling through articles and those articles include videos, the constant pushing of the same video to me is infuriating; not to mention I am forced to watch it. Why can’t you just give me an opt out of video ads for a fee. I’d happily pay $40 a year to not be assaulted by video ads. Lastly it is really clear the bias towards whether an article allows viewer comments. So many of the controversial political topics or opinion pieces written by people with a clear bias don’t allow for debate through comments. Every article should allow comments. But I’m nitpicking. I use Stuff daily so it passes the toothbrush test as a mobile app.

This app suffers the same problems as the website. There are so many little things that the developers have no done that make this app a waste of time... I liken the experience of using this app to a real world scenario where you are sitting at the tab”d reading the paper, but while you are reading page 3 some-one shuffles in pages from last Sunday’s paper and worse moves something from page 1 that you have read to page 4. It is eternally frustrating. 1) you have to open an article before you can bookmark it (you should be able to flick through the main page and mark articles of interest without opening them as you go (which is how the phone app works). 2). Articles persist in the main page days or weeks after you have read them - with no marker or indicator that they have been read. Worse still they reappear with a different title - so you open it only to find it is an article you read over a week ago. 3). Random rearranging of home screen. The home screen sometimes is rearranged, so when you return after reading an article - you have to start perusing the main page again just to find where you were up to. 4) articles do not have a date or time, some not even on the article, but ideally this should be on the main page. C'mon stuff make the app stand out.

I MUCH prefer the values that underpin stuff and I would prefer Stuff to be my daily morning news read. Indeed, I make a regular contribution to Stuff. BUT in FRUSTRATION I find myself switching to the Herald app (and others) for my morning news even though I do not like its editorial values. BUT.....I am SURE I am not the only morning reader who needs to monitor the time as I get engrossed in a well written news item. SO....WHY, I ask, does the Stuff App block out the time?!?!?!?!I can keep an eye on the time when I read news on the Spinoff app. I can keep an eye on the time when I read the news on the Herald app. I can keep an eye on the time when I read news on the Google News app.I can keep an eye on the time when I read news on the Facebook app. Given that many of Stuff’s competitors leave the time at the top of the screen when their app is opened I can only presume:(1) It would not be hard to modify the Stuff app so that the time is visible. (2) Stuff’s app developer has made a decision not to allow the time to be visible when the app is open. I suggest that the app developer needs to reconsider that decision because it is more than likely that every time a reader switches AWAY from Stuff just to check the time (so as to not miss the bus/train/ferry/plane) that is the end of their time on Stuff as they move to an app that displays the time. I am sure that Stuff would prefer readers STAY with Stuff. Therefore my message to Stuff is, PLEASE fix the app so that the time is displayed!!

Lots of variety to read, you can find something for every mood while also seeing the important stuff and sometimes you even get to comment. In a perfect world you could comment on all articles but they legally can’t risk it with many stories. In a perfect world the proof reading would be perfect but the variety of content means a fast turnaround and less time for triple checks. It’s worth 5 stars but my main dislike is when we are forced to watch a video to get the details of a story (I want to read my news not watch it) so I skip those stories, I am also not a fan of the Twitter format, where some stories are a copy and paste Twitter feed or similar... it tends to happen with breaking stories so perhaps they don’t have time to create an article but I cant read them, to disjointed so I skip those too. But the majority is great and worth 5 stars.