Seattle Times Mobile 12+

I originally began the online mode when I had a difficult time getting home delivery to a new address after thirty years of delivery at the old address. Very quickly, I appreciated the convenience and mobility and no mess aspect of the online edition. Physically, it is much easier to hold an iPad in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, than a newspaper with both hands. Online has been to both coasts and Hawaii. If our resting place has no WiFi, which is rare, a local bar can be used to download the news faster than I can finish a beer....well maybe. My recycle bin is less full and I will never have to walk up the driveway to grab a wet paper again. I am in my early 70s and as my visual acuity wanes I can easily make the print larger...Kurt

The app and its stability is pretty great, but the way they go about the articles feels a little cheap and unbecoming of the Seattle Times. I understand having to pay a subscription fee, and that’s not my beef with the app. My beef is the way they push notifications to your phone that seemingly have a full story, but then you click to open the story using one of your sixteen articles for the month just to find out the story is 1-2 paragraphs long. In fact, 1 out of every 4 articles or so is like this, and as a result makes the app feel cheap and like a money grab, especially when they’re constantly reminding you of how many you’ve read that month and then pushing you to subscribe.

I enjoy a relevant, quality news organization as much as anyone, and understand the need to pay for news, but I think the non-subscription method could be fixed in order to draw in more people, people who would actually pay for the subscription at some point in time if it weren’t for the cheap, tacky feel the app gives off.

I use several news apps and Seattle Times is the only one that gives me consistent problems. Scrolling! When scrolling, if my thumb comes anywhere near an ad, it swipes instead of scrolls, which takes me back to the main menu, where I have to select my article and skim through the article to find where I left off. Super annoying, especially when I’m deep in an article and it happens several times in the same article. This is a daily occurrence. I thought an update might fix it, but nope.

Also, the app consistently cuts off the last couple of sentences of articles which requires going back to the main menu and reloading the article. Also annoying. I appreciate having a local news source, but really hoping they can get these bugs fixed.

Also, I am not seeing how to read or leave comments on articles. If this is not an option it should be, and if it is, they should make it more apparent on how to do it.