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This is another case of an update that doesn’t seem to do anything to improve any function, but takes away useful features instead. Someone needs to come up with a term for this phenomenon, similar to Moore’s Law, but in the other direction. There’s so many updates and upgrades that throw really good features away. For example, I used to be able to start one of the articles, and if I couldn’t finish it, when I went back it would still be exactly where I left off, even if I read another article in between. Now, if I leave the page, it goes back to the library home page, so I have to open the magazine again, and scroll down to where I left off. Also, the text size only goes from the original size to very large, and huge, instead of anything in between, which is very annoying, and renders it almost useless. Sorry, but the previous version was so much better; much simpler and more streamlined. Update: While there seems to have been a slight effort to improve things, it still has the same annoying bugs, like not being able to go back to where you were in an article. Sometimes it’s managed to work, but then it stops again, and I have to scroll down to figure out where I left off. The text size is still virtually useless, as the choices are the default size, and then very large, and then gigantic. On the website, it works perfectly, like the app used to, with much more incremental options.

Well now they’ve made it even more difficult to read my favorite magazine. I switched from the print edition several years ago because I had trouble reading printed material. I have to shout this but THIS MAGAZINE NEEDS SCALABLE FONT!!! Reading the new and exciting version is even more exasperating than before. The choices are tiny font too small to see and then a big jump up to the next font that you can’t hold far enough away. Next step is gigantic, presumably for first-graders. Every other magazine I read on line can allow zooming using the standard motion every iPad user can accomplish. When I complained about it in the past they referred me to a digital format that is even more impossible to navigate. I don’t know if that still exists but I gave up on it ages ago. Is the any help for a hapless reader? I pay a lot for great writing in a poorly thought out format. Has anyone actually tried to read this thing???? Also, no going back to last article read, and no returning to same place left off in an article. Piece of junk, a disservice to readers and an insult to some of the best writers on the planet. Will this review change anything? Doubt it. Wake up! The digital format is SERIOUSLY TERRIBLE!

A comically bad roll-out of an updated app. The glitches are numerous and glaring, my two favorite so far being: in multiple issues there’s no way to scroll through the cartoons in the cartoon round-up at the end, you can just see the first cartoon and that’s it; in another issue (July 8 & 15) they left out ALL THE ARTICLES. I tried downloading it multiple times and you get everything up through the Goings On About Town, then it skips directly to the cartoon round-up, which leaves out, umm, the entire magazine. On the plus side, at least in that issue the cartoon round-up is functioning! Oh yes, and as someone else mentioned, if you’re part way through an article and you scroll to a different article then scroll back, you’ll find yourself right back at the top of the article. It doesn’t remember where you were. For a magazine whose reputation is built on a sort of snooty, self-satisfied perfectionism, suffice it to say the app feels decidedly off-brand.