Climbing Magazine Reviews

Climbing magazine has a paywall for their website now. It’s only accessible to their subscribers. Unfortunately, subscribing through Apple doesn’t qualify as a subscription. This comes directly from there online support.

I'm a little surprised to read the positive reviews. I was initially very excited to see Climbing magazine in Newsstand but this implementation is severely lacking. In short it's nothing more than hi-res images of pages which must be viewed in portrait mode, making the process of reading an article or viewing a photo a frustrating exercise in pinching, zooming in and out, and moving a page back and forth. There are blocks of text which span an entire page that are too small to read when zoomed out, so the reader is forced to pinch-zoom in and move the text back and forth. Very clunky and annoying. Likewise, there is some beautiful photography which would benefit from a double-tap-to-zoom mechanic to isolate the image from the text, like in iBooks. Look to apps like Cook's Illustrated for and excellent example of digital print media presentation.

I've been reading climbing magazine since i was a flatland-locked kid in Chicago climbing in my local dirt hole (Gravity Climbing gym). It's been my inspiration for the high alpine, it's been my companion for travel planning, it's been my lust for simply not being at my desk. Now, with beefed up skills content and super-charged digital content, this brand steps into the new era with better service, superior design, and high-caliber writing. I am looking forward to this year now that the title has been completely redesigned and that there is a fresh voice in the editorial chair. Love this magazine, and i only hope for better as the season goes on.

The content of the magazine is great, but ClimbingMagazine is not appropriate for iPhone. The presentation is just medium-res page images, making is necessary to zoom to read anything but headlines, and sometime content is 3/4 or full-page width so it's basically impossible to read without zooming and swiping back and forth. On the other hand, viewing one page at a time it's impossible to take in some of the beautiful two-page spreads in the magazine. The zooming also coexists with page-turning, so my normal method for zooming on a specific part of an image on iPhone ends up turning the page--so instead I have to zoom, swipe, zoom again.

Many of these things are probably fine on iPad. But you presumably still can't see two-page photos.

I've been a subscriber since the first issue came out on iPad, and I was pretty pleased then with how great the magazine looked on a tablet. But it's gotten so much richer. The amount of interactivity and the bonus video, map, and tech tip elements makes the magazine a multilayered experience that delivers a lot more information than what you get in print. As an intermediate climber who never feels quite skilled or fit enough, I especially like the touch-point technique diagrams. The combination of visual and reading learning is very effective.

I'm a fan of the Climbing Mag app. Unlike a lot of publications that think you can just PDF the print version of the magazine, slap it online, and wham-o, it's suddenly iPad compatible (never the case), Climbing's app has fun and playful interactive features. The forward-thinking multimedia components (Videos! Sound effects! Collapsable captions!) combined with its top-notch photographs, useful tips, and motivating articles make this one of my favorite magazine apps. This is how all publications should be thinking when it comes to tablet-friendly editions.

New update requires restoring purchases if you bought tour subscription thru ClimbingMagazine Store. BUT, the new update wont let me restore purchases. This never happens with my other magazine apps. Others have complained about the new update, so it doesn’t appear to be peculiar to me. Please fix ClimbingMagazine!!

Update: my app now works as of 5-8-19!!!! Nice response from app developer in quickly fixing my complaint!

Photos absolutely jump off the page and look stunning!! Plus there's so much more interactive content, it's like getting a whole bonus magazine. The slideshows and additional photos are wonderful, so I can't wait to see what they'll do when they add video. You get more content for less money, don't waste any paper, and it's delivered right to your hand. Doesn't get any better. A definite must-download!

I like what you've done with ClimbingMagazine and I never have any problems with it but it would be nice to be able to enjoy some of the beautiful images featured in this magazine in a higher resolution format.

A surprisingly great app! Such a good deal for a year long subscription and you don't have to worry about it coming in the mail messed up or what to do with it after if you don't want to keep it...or if you do! The videos are pretty cool and I like how there can be different picture in the same spot that will cycle through. Great!

Every issue tops the one before, the design team really pushes the possibilities of a magazine app.
The articles are always intelligent and well written.
It would be wonderful to do a few more stories on European climbing, we read it here too!

Great magazine, but text is so small on my iPad that my eyes hurt after a page or two. It looks basically like a PDF of the print magazine, fixed in a vertical format, without any way to magnify the print. One solution would be to show the pages in horizontal rather than vertical format on the iPad.

LIVE all the content. I'm an avid climber and I work at a climbing gym, and this magazine is super fun and helpful. ClimbingMagazine could be formatted to be responsive and fit me screen though. Other magazines do it; I wish climbing did so I didn't always have to zoom in.

It's so cool to see Climbing on the iPad, especially because it's not just an exact replica of the print magazine. The extra stuff like the slide shows and topos is really cool, and the photos look great. Would love to see more video!

ClimbingMagazine is not optimized for the iPhone Plus, and thus it's content is enlarged and blurry. I assumed apps like Climbing would be better on the larger screen of the iPhone plus, but instead they are worse. Instead of being able to view more content, the buttons take up much more of the screen and everything is pixelated.