Journal Le Monde Reviews

It's hard to imagine anything being worse than this. JournalLeMonde runs on both iPad and iPhone, but you have to buy each edition twice, once for each device. When you buy an edition, the immediate response is "an error has occurred, please try again later." At first, you could just tap the edition again and it would download. Now the error seems to be permanent. Oh, I'm sure the problem will be fixed in a week or two, but I wanted to read today's news TODAY!

The problems don't end there.

I purchased both the May 1 edition and the May 2 edition, only to discover that they were identical and both dated May 2 in the text.

When you go to a new page, it takes forever to display. You have plenty of time to go get a fresh cup of coffee between pages. This also happens when you resize a page or move to a different article. Oh, it also refreshes the page at random times, for no apparent reason. You'll be reading along, and the whole screen will blur-out and the excruciatingly slow display starts all over again ... Kerchunk, kerchunk, kerchunk ... Time to go wash the car or mow the lawn.

If that weren't enough, JournalLeMonde fails completely at random times. You'll be reading along, and whoosh ... Good bye! JournalLeMonde is just gone.

So who did win that presidential election anyway? If JournalLeMonde were my only source of information, I'm sure I'd never find out.

Keep in mind that you have to pay for each issue you want to read, which I did for a while. Not only I takes ages to download but most of the time you can't read the bloody paper as JournalLeMonde won't work at all. Now I'll have to delete JournalLeMonde and lose all the issues I've purchased. I'm French btw but I have no trouble to say that JournalLeMonde is a real shame. Le Monde, you should fire those who've created it, your image is at stake. Amateurs.

Update: I gave it another try today...bug again & another .99 p wasted. What's wrong with you people at Le Monde, aren't you just a bunch of "inutiles". Shame on you.

Clarification: JournalLeMonde gives you access to your Le Monde subscription. They give you one free issue but that's all.

JournalLeMonde itself is well designed. Only complaint: bad page turning interface.

But the economic model is wrong.
- Your are paying an app to get to your subscription. Shouldn't JournalLeMonde be free then?
- The monthly subscription is 15 euros / month. All the publishers are in hurry to have us pay the full price. But in this modern age, you are not reading only one newspaper, you are getting your info from multiple sources. So if I want to read some articles from Le Monde + WSJ + NYT + Economist + a dozen of other papers, I will have to pay about $200+ a month, or $2000+ a year. We are seeing an old model conflicting with new technology possibilities.

This is like being forced to buy a full music album, when you really just want one track.

Although the initial purchase price is a little high for one free edition, the ease of use and many alternate ways to read the articles make this a great way to read a newspaper. For those complaining about the cost of the each edition have a look at how much the Financial Times charges. I think $0.99 for a paper is reasonable.

Until a few days ago, I was very happy with JournalLeMonde which I have been using for several months now. I even cancelled my print subscription. But now that I have paid for a full year subscription and updated JournalLeMonde (3 days ago), I am encountering problems uploading the daily editions. It takes forever and I am getting a blank screen!

The application keeps crashing. Today it only downloaded the first 6 pages of the pdf. Pages were grey although text was available in non-pdf view mode. Turning pages is a pain. More time needs to be spent on this application. I'll try a couple more days. If it keeps crashing I'll give it up.

La personne qui dit que c'est juste un bete PDF n'a utilisee l'application tres longtemps. Ce n'est que la premiere vue de l'application. Si tu choisis un article tu peux le lire comme un ebook, ou tu peux mettre la page de navigation sur la gauche. Cela est bien fait, ou le lecteur peut choisir entre une mise ne page 'papier' ou quelque chose plus proche du web.
A $1 l'application et l'edition du jour gratuite tous le jours (anciennes editions a acheter), c'est un bon modele, suprenant considerant que toute la presse americaine est en train d'essayer de faire payer tout le monde...
Bravo Le Monde, un expat aux etats-unis.

After paying 17 Euros for the subscription on JournalLeMonde store, I try to enter the fields to create the account. After entering the userid and password, I try to enter the other required fields. JournalLeMonde immediately crashes every time. The subscription money is lost; JournalLeMonde , useless. NOT impressive!

World-class content, and the iPhone version works as expected but although I've bought a couple of issues for the iPad as a test (in addition to buying JournalLeMonde itself, of course) I've never been able to download even one, no matter how long I wait while the download icon spins. For now, the free online version is the better option.

It used to be good when reading on my IPad 2, but I thought with the new IPad 3 and its retina display the resolution would be a terrific boost, but the opposite happened!! It is VERY SLOW in showing a clear image of the pages..... Even tough it is previously downloaded , it seems that it doesn't have enough memory to handle the resolution the retina display has to offer. Plus: it crashes constantly. PLEASE HELP!!!!

The new approach by flipping pages horizontally is nice. Jumping from the index on the left hand side to the content is convenient, but please work on the stability of your app. This is a disaster, it crashes permanently. I keep sending reports, I hope someone take them seriously.

I would LOVE to purchase and read Le Monde through JournalLeMonde - the presentation and content is excellent - but it still will not reliably load content. If I uninstall JournalLeMonde , and then reinstall it, it will download perhaps 1 or 2 issues. PLEASE fix this, so I can be a regular reader of Le Monde! It's unbelievable that such an otherwise excellent app has such a horrible bug.

Réparez ce si vous plait!!!

I tried to buy some issues of Le Monde with an iPad 3g. After paying, you can spend days to try and download the journal. I have never been able to get it. No message about what is going on, unreliable progress bar, frequent crashes....

I am upset because JournalLeMonde should be free. It only permits to visualize one edition of the newspaper.
To use it, you need to subscribe to a really expensive montly plan or buy each edition separately.
I think therefore, you should'nt have to pay for JournalLeMonde . You get racketed enough to read the paper.
Better go online to read Le Monde !...

Don't get this if you don't speak French there is no English edition. JournalLeMonde should be free, you have to pay for JournalLeMonde and a subscription. If you want better mowed stick to the American and British papers, they have much better buisness models.

JournalLeMonde allows you to BUY single editions... But the eventually disappear leaving you with nothing. I paid and bought additional editions that I had not yet read which are now gone!!!

You are just purchasing the interface. There is no content that comes with the $0.99. You have to purchase each individual paper / section.

On an iPad2 with AT&T 3G, will not complete loading any issues of the journal. I can get a part of the content, but not all of any one. Frustration.

This program will accept your payment for a daily issue, then crash before downloading it.
BEWARE.

Cannot connect to my subscriber's account. My info is correct; I just get stuck with the spinning loading wheel, then nothing else happens!!

I very rarely have any problem with it.
It would be nice to be able to flip to the next page in the text mode instead of scrolling down.

Quel plaisir de lire son journal 'on the go' pour moi qui vit à l'étranger. J'aimerais toutefois voir dans LeMonde des articles propre au format digital, mais aussi des photos, des clips, des vidéos. Un peu plus d'interactivité, des notes de lecteurs, bref un format un peu plus ludique.