NYT Update Breaks iPad App, Annoys Subscribers

jbrodkin writes "The New York Times, which recently started charging iPad readers $20 a month, has a lot of angry digital subscribers after an update broke the NYTimes for iPad application. The update was designed to make it easier for readers to subscribe to the Times through iTunes (irony!) but instead left readers unable to access any articles. Worse, the Times didn't bother to fix the app over the long weekend or reply to users who complained on Twitter. It's not the first time developers have broken an iPad application with a poorly constructed update, but reader complaints noted that the size of the New York Times and the high price it charges make this gaffe particularly galling. Angry users have driven the app's rating down to less than two out of five stars."

$20 a month

[Ceiynt]

and they call MMO fees too expensive.

Re:oh noes, the newspaper is broken

[Pope]

That's the bigger WTF: who in their right might would push a huge update like this before such a huge holiday?

Apps!

[Ptolom]

I can't stand all this app bullshit. They seem like websites, only you have to pay for them, they only work on one platform, and they all have they all have different interfaces and different ways of working. What's wrong with an RSS feed?

Lemme get this right...

[Anonymous Coward]

People are actually paying $20 a month to read news they can't even consider trustworthy?

I can make stuff up, and spin whatever the AP and Reuters printed the day before. Can I have your $20/mo ?

Re:oh noes, the newspaper is broken

[Richard_at_work]

Did they push it on the Thursday, or did they push it a week ago and Apple approved it on Thursday?

Hilariously Out Of Touch

[rabtech]

The NYT wouldn't dream of just shoving printed copies of the paper out the door without checking the plates, checking registration/color alignment, etc. Yet that same attention to detail is nowhere to be found when it comes to their digital app.

I'm just one guy writing small iOS apps in his spare time and I sure as hell don't release an update until I've installed in on every device I own and handed a beta to anyone I can wrangle into testing. Then when it goes live I immediately download and run it just to make sure everything is working.

The first rule of software: don't annoy your users.
The second rule of software: all crashes annoy your users.
The third rule of software: anything (eg updates) that goes from working to non-working really annoys your users.