Bon Appetit 4+

When I learned my normal subscription to Bon Appetit included a digital copy, I was ecstatic. Initially, on my 1st generation iPad, the experience of reading the magazine I loved on a touch screen was good. Then, when I upgraded to an iPad with retina display - wow. The images are more eye popping and more beautiful than the paper version - that is for certain. Some people have complained about the size of the download, but Bon Appetit is a highly visual experience so it makes sense that high resolution graphics are going to require a sizable download. Typically, I keep all back issues archived and only have the current and previous issue downloaded at a time to conserve space. I've seen others post about numerous technical problems but I haven't experienced any of them. It's an amazing cooking magazine and an excellent application if you have one of the newer iPads.

As a print subscriber, I look forward to each and every month. A subscription to the very affordable print edition gets the digital edition. Register and it downloads to your iPad Newsstand. So well done (not the food, the magazine). This is the way ALL e-magazines should be. Totally love it.

The food photography looks good enough to eat on the Retina Display iPad. The beautiful layout is easy to follow. The interactivity works great. Recipes full screen to follow on your kitchen counter. There are even embedded videos! It just keeps getting better. Highly recommend.

* July 2012 downloaded within minutes. Previous issues did take longer so perhaps they've addressed the problem.

I’ve loved the Bon Appétit iPad app for years and preferred it to print issues (I’ve been subscribed for about 4 years and seen the app experience get better and better over time, with fun swipeable layouts for articles, animation, modules you could toggle to make photos easier to view, etc.) The new update gets rid of all the best features about the app and makes it the same as reading the print issue. In particular, the recipe index and separate section for recipes was very important and made it much easier to cook from directly. In the new version of the app, the recipe text is as small as the print issue (actually smaller because I have an iPad mini) and very inconvenient to actually read. I’m so disappointed I’m considering canceling my subscription—it would be easier and more legible to just pull up the recipes on the website than try to read them off the app. I don’t understand why they would go backward like this unless they fired their whole app team.