5 ms·

Why "The Daily" is an Abomination (and how to fix it)

38 points by jemmons 16y ago

philiphodgen 16y ago
Pearls before swine. I have no bias against Mr. Murdoch but why waste the limited amount of time and energy afforded each of us by freely offering unrequested and uncompensated advice?
- raganwald 16y ago
  ...because every one of us reading these reviews is thinking "I don't want my app to suffer the same fate. Let's make a note about what not to do..." It's also easier to remember tips and dictums when given an example to ponder than if provided in a vacuum.
  - robryan 16y ago
    Good way for the author who works in the area to be able to organize their thoughts on the app. Without the structure of the blog post it can be hard to clear your mind and gain some insight from what you are seeing.
tectonic 16y ago
Who developed the app?
amchang 16y ago
If I was Apple Inc, I would be happy with people who came up with ideas like the "The Daily." It provides Apple another source of high revenue for almost zero cost. The only thing Apple would need to setup is a payment system for this type of content.
corin_ 16y ago
I can't comment on the quality of the application, because for some reason that I can't understand it doesn't seem to be available for non-US iPad owners. Well, not in the UK at any rate. Ah well, I guess I'll get by with The Times, Guardian, Telegraph, NY Times, LA Times, FT, WSJ, Int Herald Tribune and La Monde. (And from the reviews I've heard, seems the content is fairly shoddy anyway, guess I'm not missing much.) edit: I haven't yet had time myself to bother reading anything, but for anyone who does want to read the content without downloading the iPad app, check out http://thedailyindexed.tumblr.com/ http://thedailyindexed.tumblr.com/ which links to all the day's articles, as they are available on The Daily's website.
- tmgrhm 16y ago
  >I can't comment on the quality of the application, because for some reason that I can't understand it doesn't seem to be available for non-US iPad owners. Well, not in the UK at any rate. It's coming to the UK "soon" according to @daily. Content seems to be pretty heavily US-focused, and as it seems to be (at least in large part) a gossip rag, it was decided against shipping US gossip to rest-of-world customers.
  - ugh 16y ago
    That doesn’t make any sense, does it? They don’t have to market it, why not just make it available everywhere? I’m not in principle opposed to the App Store but this is one of those stupid things about it. The cool thing about the web is that by default, everything is available everywhere and it is hard and not foolproof to make something not available everywhere. I can read nytimes.com in Germany despite clearly not being part of the New York Time’s target group. What reason could there possibly be for not making The Daily available everywhere? Sure, hardly anyone will buy it outside of the US but at least Apple is footing all the bandwidth costs and making it available everywhere must be a matter of clicking some checkbox. Wired and Popular Science are, for example, both available in the German App Store. (Not that I would ever want to buy The Daily but this is just so stupid.)
    - jemmons 16y ago
      FYI, an app submitted to the app store is available everywhere by default (there's an "everywhere" checkbox). If you want to limit its availability, you have to go in and specifically check the regions it'll be available in. So yeah, it's harder to distribute US-only than to the world. Not sure what The Daily's reasoning is there.
      - p0ppe 16y ago
        It could be a license-issue. The Daily seems to use wire material from AP. Not sure about their pricing, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's cheaper to distribute their texts in the US alone.
ryanpetrich 16y ago
"The iPhone and iPad have to work a lot harder to display JPEGs than they do to display the equivalent PNGs" That is a myth. It is the pixel format of the CGImage that matters, not the compression format of the source file. 32bpp premultiplied CGImages are the only format that the GPU will render natively as the contents of a CALayer. Since all JPEGs decode to 24bpp and most PNGs are saved as 32bpp, it's easy to see why this would be confused. Simply copying to a 32bpp CGImage is enough to make drawing quick again. Coincidentally, this blog post also scrolls poorly on the iPad.
- rbritton 16y ago
  The iPad (not sure about the iPhone) also has a JPEG hardware decoder. iOS 4.2 finally provided at least some level of access to this and it makes a huge difference.
  - ryanpetrich 16y ago
    Oh, that went public? I've been using it on the jailbreak side for ages :) All devices back to the iPhone 3G at least have a hardware JPEG codec.
- wazoox 16y ago
  However PNG is much better than JPEG at rendering texts. So using JPEG for articles is ridiculous.
j_baker 16y ago
Is it just me, or can anyone else not scroll down to read the whole post on the iPad?
- iron_ball 16y ago
  Can't read it all on my Android phone, either.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- spolsky 16y ago
  ironic, isn't it :) Because of the way the designer is using frames, you have to use the ever-so-intuitive THREE FINGER DRAG on iOS to scroll
- halostatue 16y ago
  I managed to do it by using the "two finger scroll"; use two fingers to scroll the text section. Go figure.
- jpadvo 16y ago
  Here's a mobile formatted version that is readable on my iPod, at least (courtesy of Google): http://www.google.com/gwt/x?source=m&u=http://fourstarstudios.com/thedaily.html http://www.google.com/gwt/x?source=m&u=http://fourstarst...
- jemmons 16y ago
  Fixed. Very sorry.
robryan 16y ago
I am a little confused on what the daily is try to achieve. I've read that they were bringing together a top notch team of journalists to product top notch content. From other thing's it seems like they are content light and are playing on the interactiveness of the ipad to produce somewhat unique and engaging multimedia. And from everywhere I've read that even if they are doing this well the tech fails it horribly.
- rorrr 16y ago
  They are trying to replicate the old media experience (newspaper) on the new technology. It's a pretty dumb idea. That's what HTML is for, websites have been around long enough and are good enough to present information, especially such simple information as news. I have no idea why anyone would care about this piece of crap app, when you can just open your browser and go to your favorite news site.
  - robryan 16y ago
    The only stuff I would consider paying for would be those great long investigative articles that magazines like the atlantic or vanity fair do. Normal shortish news articles have become a commodity that is best monetised by advertising. If traditional newspapers can't make a dollar there online leave it to the blog style sites like tech crunch and go after the real substance.
cubicle67 16y ago
if the red of the lhs is distracting, try this javascript:document.getElementById('menu').style.backgroundColor="#c0c0c0" [Edit: just realised it's only red if your mouse is over that area, which mine was]
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
PanMan 16y ago
It's strange to find a blog of an iOS developer, complaining, which you can't actually read on an iPad. I can't scroll the page at all.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- tmgrhm 16y ago
  Not sure where his comment's gone, but wzdd correctly pointed out you can scroll this (and any other seemingly unscrollable area) using two fingers, as with a multitouch trackpad. But I totally agree with you. Not only is it not possible to scroll without the two-fingers trick (which I didn't know about until now, despite being a pretty advanced/heavy iOS user), it also scrolls really jumpily. But the hypocrisy shouldn't detract from the merit of the article: his points are well-made and correct. Although the article suggests the methods are the problems and that they should change them (e.g. the removal of the carousel and introduction of greyscale thumbnails), but actually these aren't necessary: some iOS developers have taken it upon themselves to improve the daily, and have come up with the following: Loren Brichter (Tweetie/Twitter) optimised the carousel [1] and Jonah Grant optimised page turning [2]. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9C6s9BLyur4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9C6s9BLyur4 [2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IHOCFb_hDE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IHOCFb_hDE
- jemmons 16y ago
  Mea culpa. Like I said in the post, I'm not a blogger. I just threw some static html up not thinking of how it would interact with my site styles when needed to scroll. There's now a bit of UA sniffing in there that will display a simple text version if viewed on an iOS device. As an aside, is it really so unusual to see an iOS (or any mobile platform developer) ignorant of their platform's corner-cases when it comes to things like mail or the web? We spend all our time on laptops coding, just like everyone else ;-)
cabalamat 16y ago
I went to their home page (http://www.thedaily.com/ http://www.thedaily.com/) and clicked on the link "Am I going to be billed automatically after the free period". It told me "The URL you requested could not be found." So let's get their value proposition right. This is a paid news source, appallingly badly executed, that doesn't bring any value that I can't get from free news sources such as Reddit or the BBC or Guardian. I predict it will sink without trace, after wasting millions of dollars.
cwbrandsma 16y ago
I've used the app a bit as well. At first I thought it was just design by committee, but I think that was wrong. It is probably closer to design by committee with a non-technical designer, followed by a development staff that never said no to any request. Either way, more effort was spent on 'cool factor' rather than usability.

38 points by jemmons 16y ago

Pearls before swine. I have no bias against Mr. Murdoch but why waste the limited amount of time and energy afforded each of us by freely offering unrequested and uncompensated advice?

raganwald 16y ago
...because every one of us reading these reviews is thinking "I don't want my app to suffer the same fate. Let's make a note about what not to do..." It's also easier to remember tips and dictums when given an example to ponder than if provided in a vacuum.
- robryan 16y ago
  Good way for the author who works in the area to be able to organize their thoughts on the app. Without the structure of the blog post it can be hard to clear your mind and gain some insight from what you are seeing.

tectonic 16y ago

Who developed the app?

amchang 16y ago

If I was Apple Inc, I would be happy with people who came up with ideas like the "The Daily." It provides Apple another source of high revenue for almost zero cost. The only thing Apple would need to setup is a payment system for this type of content.

corin_ 16y ago

I can't comment on the quality of the application, because for some reason that I can't understand it doesn't seem to be available for non-US iPad owners. Well, not in the UK at any rate. Ah well, I guess I'll get by with The Times, Guardian, Telegraph, NY Times, LA Times, FT, WSJ, Int Herald Tribune and La Monde. (And from the reviews I've heard, seems the content is fairly shoddy anyway, guess I'm not missing much.) edit: I haven't yet had time myself to bother reading anything, but for anyone who does want to read the content without downloading the iPad app, check out http://thedailyindexed.tumblr.com/ http://thedailyindexed.tumblr.com/ which links to all the day's articles, as they are available on The Daily's website.

tmgrhm 16y ago
>I can't comment on the quality of the application, because for some reason that I can't understand it doesn't seem to be available for non-US iPad owners. Well, not in the UK at any rate. It's coming to the UK "soon" according to @daily. Content seems to be pretty heavily US-focused, and as it seems to be (at least in large part) a gossip rag, it was decided against shipping US gossip to rest-of-world customers.
- ugh 16y ago
  That doesn’t make any sense, does it? They don’t have to market it, why not just make it available everywhere? I’m not in principle opposed to the App Store but this is one of those stupid things about it. The cool thing about the web is that by default, everything is available everywhere and it is hard and not foolproof to make something not available everywhere. I can read nytimes.com in Germany despite clearly not being part of the New York Time’s target group. What reason could there possibly be for not making The Daily available everywhere? Sure, hardly anyone will buy it outside of the US but at least Apple is footing all the bandwidth costs and making it available everywhere must be a matter of clicking some checkbox. Wired and Popular Science are, for example, both available in the German App Store. (Not that I would ever want to buy The Daily but this is just so stupid.)
  - jemmons 16y ago
    FYI, an app submitted to the app store is available everywhere by default (there's an "everywhere" checkbox). If you want to limit its availability, you have to go in and specifically check the regions it'll be available in. So yeah, it's harder to distribute US-only than to the world. Not sure what The Daily's reasoning is there.
    - p0ppe 16y ago
      It could be a license-issue. The Daily seems to use wire material from AP. Not sure about their pricing, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's cheaper to distribute their texts in the US alone.

ryanpetrich 16y ago

"The iPhone and iPad have to work a lot harder to display JPEGs than they do to display the equivalent PNGs" That is a myth. It is the pixel format of the CGImage that matters, not the compression format of the source file. 32bpp premultiplied CGImages are the only format that the GPU will render natively as the contents of a CALayer. Since all JPEGs decode to 24bpp and most PNGs are saved as 32bpp, it's easy to see why this would be confused. Simply copying to a 32bpp CGImage is enough to make drawing quick again. Coincidentally, this blog post also scrolls poorly on the iPad.

rbritton 16y ago
The iPad (not sure about the iPhone) also has a JPEG hardware decoder. iOS 4.2 finally provided at least some level of access to this and it makes a huge difference.
- ryanpetrich 16y ago
  Oh, that went public? I've been using it on the jailbreak side for ages :) All devices back to the iPhone 3G at least have a hardware JPEG codec.
wazoox 16y ago
However PNG is much better than JPEG at rendering texts. So using JPEG for articles is ridiculous.

j_baker 16y ago

Is it just me, or can anyone else not scroll down to read the whole post on the iPad?

iron_ball 16y ago
Can't read it all on my Android phone, either.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
spolsky 16y ago
ironic, isn't it :) Because of the way the designer is using frames, you have to use the ever-so-intuitive THREE FINGER DRAG on iOS to scroll
halostatue 16y ago
I managed to do it by using the "two finger scroll"; use two fingers to scroll the text section. Go figure.
jpadvo 16y ago
Here's a mobile formatted version that is readable on my iPod, at least (courtesy of Google): http://www.google.com/gwt/x?source=m&u=http://fourstarstudios.com/thedaily.html http://www.google.com/gwt/x?source=m&u=http://fourstarst...
jemmons 16y ago
Fixed. Very sorry.

robryan 16y ago

I am a little confused on what the daily is try to achieve. I've read that they were bringing together a top notch team of journalists to product top notch content. From other thing's it seems like they are content light and are playing on the interactiveness of the ipad to produce somewhat unique and engaging multimedia. And from everywhere I've read that even if they are doing this well the tech fails it horribly.

rorrr 16y ago
They are trying to replicate the old media experience (newspaper) on the new technology. It's a pretty dumb idea. That's what HTML is for, websites have been around long enough and are good enough to present information, especially such simple information as news. I have no idea why anyone would care about this piece of crap app, when you can just open your browser and go to your favorite news site.
- robryan 16y ago
  The only stuff I would consider paying for would be those great long investigative articles that magazines like the atlantic or vanity fair do. Normal shortish news articles have become a commodity that is best monetised by advertising. If traditional newspapers can't make a dollar there online leave it to the blog style sites like tech crunch and go after the real substance.

cubicle67 16y ago

if the red of the lhs is distracting, try this javascript:document.getElementById('menu').style.backgroundColor="#c0c0c0" [Edit: just realised it's only red if your mouse is over that area, which mine was]

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

PanMan 16y ago

It's strange to find a blog of an iOS developer, complaining, which you can't actually read on an iPad. I can't scroll the page at all.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
tmgrhm 16y ago
Not sure where his comment's gone, but wzdd correctly pointed out you can scroll this (and any other seemingly unscrollable area) using two fingers, as with a multitouch trackpad. But I totally agree with you. Not only is it not possible to scroll without the two-fingers trick (which I didn't know about until now, despite being a pretty advanced/heavy iOS user), it also scrolls really jumpily. But the hypocrisy shouldn't detract from the merit of the article: his points are well-made and correct. Although the article suggests the methods are the problems and that they should change them (e.g. the removal of the carousel and introduction of greyscale thumbnails), but actually these aren't necessary: some iOS developers have taken it upon themselves to improve the daily, and have come up with the following: Loren Brichter (Tweetie/Twitter) optimised the carousel [1] and Jonah Grant optimised page turning [2]. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9C6s9BLyur4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9C6s9BLyur4 [2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IHOCFb_hDE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IHOCFb_hDE
jemmons 16y ago
Mea culpa. Like I said in the post, I'm not a blogger. I just threw some static html up not thinking of how it would interact with my site styles when needed to scroll. There's now a bit of UA sniffing in there that will display a simple text version if viewed on an iOS device. As an aside, is it really so unusual to see an iOS (or any mobile platform developer) ignorant of their platform's corner-cases when it comes to things like mail or the web? We spend all our time on laptops coding, just like everyone else ;-)

cabalamat 16y ago

I went to their home page (http://www.thedaily.com/ http://www.thedaily.com/) and clicked on the link "Am I going to be billed automatically after the free period". It told me "The URL you requested could not be found." So let's get their value proposition right. This is a paid news source, appallingly badly executed, that doesn't bring any value that I can't get from free news sources such as Reddit or the BBC or Guardian. I predict it will sink without trace, after wasting millions of dollars.

cwbrandsma 16y ago

I've used the app a bit as well. At first I thought it was just design by committee, but I think that was wrong. It is probably closer to design by committee with a non-technical designer, followed by a development staff that never said no to any request. Either way, more effort was spent on 'cool factor' rather than usability.