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."

Comments

New game for iPad

[countertrolling]

Angry Users... all chattering like a bunch of parakeets

Re:New game for iPad

[berashith]

I would like this game... you can fling ipad owners from a catapult into a giant concrete paywall of NYT. I dont care if the wall crumbles or the users just go splat.

$20 a month

[Ceiynt]

and they call MMO fees too expensive.

Wow ...

[gstoddart]

Well, it's one thing to have a crappy update. But having a crappy update that locks out the people you're charging $20/month ... well, that's pretty sad.

I wonder if the NYT fully realized what all is involved in maintaining software like this.

If I was paying $20/month, I'd be pissed at them if I was locked out for several days. Of course, I wouldn't pay that to access any site either.

It's always been bad

[Maury Markowitz]

I would love to love the NYT app on my iPhone, but it's always been bad. The common lockups, CPU eating and random failures to update took way too long to fix. And now that it's pay, I love the way it downloads the headlines for articles I can't read before the ones I can.

Ask apple for a refund

[juancn]

Ask for a refund. Apple will grant it to you, but it will still charge the Times it's commission.

oh noes, the newspaper is broken

[alen]

it was a 4 day weekend for a lot of people since they took friday off and probably went somewhere far away from work. can't fix an app if all the developers are gone

not like there aren't any other news apps in the app store. just ask for a refund from the NY Times for not getting access to a paid service, not a big tragedy

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?

Re:oh noes, the newspaper is broken

[drolli]

Well. Pay your critical developers/administrators a premium, dont be a PITA if they need some holiday or some flexible worktime for their family trough the rest of the year, compensate them in a generous way for over hours, agree on a person beforehand (and compensate appropriatly) who is in standby or has his laptop with him/her, who has the knowledge and authority to rollback the app version, and you will be fine.

Oh... and: dont roll out new versions just before a holiday. A good time to roll out new versions/chance something is one day before the end of the holiday.

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?

Re:oh noes, the newspaper is broken

[frank_adrian314159]

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

It doesn't matter. If you choose a distribution channel that has an approval process, you should know enough about its approval timelines to make sure that something like this doesn't happen. This should be no surprise to someone in a time-sensitive market with approval processes like news. This is just gross negligence on the part of the Times.

Besides, if your name is on it, you should take responsibility for it. The Times chose to put up a paywall and issue an app. They chose the distribution channel with all of the approval issues that were involved. They obviously did not test the deployment well enough. They, and they alone, are responsible.

Re:Must Read READ ReAd... News....

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice Goatse dude.

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?

Re:Apps!

[foobsr]

What's wrong with an RSS feed?

Even those accustomed to acronyms have difficulties to properly convert 'RSS' into a convenient sound, whereas even the dumbest ass can do so regards app.

CC.

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:Lemme get this right...

[Tr3vin]

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Fixing the issue isn't quite that easy.

[Thud457]

The review queue is probably in a dark basement, at the bottom of a set of broken stairs, in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ' Beware of the Leopard '.

Rating

[jginspace]

> "Angry users have driven the app's rating down to less than two out of five stars."

Reminds me of of the Noscript - Adblock fiasco. Registered members at addons.mozilla.org all drove Noscript's rating down to one star but then Mozilla decided in their infinite wisdom that they should delete all those votes. If this campaign continues the same will happen here.

NYT articles inaccessible due to programming error

[Spy Handler]

and nothing of value was lost...

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.

This is why apps suck

[LynnwoodRooster]

If it was just web-based, you wouldn't tend to have these kinds of problems. For 99% of these "apps" it's just a built-in browser with some pre-defined bookmarks. Seriously - drop the "app" thing, NYT, and just focus on your website.

Re:Respond to Twitter?

[Overzeetop]

If not, suck it up. It was a three-day weekend based on a national holiday. You should EXPECT services to be unavailable.

Perhaps, but in this case, you're paying for access to the material which is (a) created and distributed on said national holiday and (b) has a nominal 24 hour life span of relevance. You sure as hell should expect to be able to access your material.

As for complaints via Twitter, (FTFA) "The Times has kept readers up to date on mobile app problems thorugh its NYTimesMobile Twitter feed . In fact, an update also ruined the iPhone app last week, and the Times used its mobile Twitter feed to let readers know that a new version had been released to fix startup problems and to advise readers to remove and reinstall the app."

If you're getting official updates via twitter, it's a small leap of logic (even if false) to believe that the twitter feed might be one place to register a complaint.