UK newspaper The Guardian this morning launched its iPhone app.
And wow, it’s pretty damn good.
Here are some things I like about it, in no particular order:
- the app does the Right Thing about updating itself with new content. It updates when launched, or every 15 minutes if you’re doing a lot of reading. You can still carry on reading stuff while it’s updating.
- it’s been optimised for the real world of mobile reading, so it also does the Right Thing in other respects: it downloads text first, and it downloads the stuff you specify in the Offline Browsing prefs
- you can star articles and they’ll be saved to your faves list. You can send items to Facebook, or email them to pals. No Twitter integration yet.
- it’s flexible. Don’t want to see business news? You don’t have to. Only want the sport? OK, fine. It’s the personal newspaper people were predicting back in the days when they predicted flying cars.
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it includes direct, nicely-designed access to loads of audio content.
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it’s excellent value for money. The initial fee gets you a great deal of news, forever, at no extra cost. The Guardian’s FAQs says: “We are committing to offering a core level of service for the one-off charge but that doesn’t rule out the possibility of charging for extra functionality at some point in the future.”
Giles Turnbull is a freelance writer in England. He also writes for the Press Association and The Morning News. You can find out more at his website, and follow him on Twitter @gilest.
