QuickAdvice: Get a Customized Newspaper with Times for iPad
Times for iPad ($7.99) by Acrylic Software is the iPad version of an original Mac OS X RSS feed reader app.
This app utilizes the iPad as a news consumption device. And for what it does in the first version, it does it pretty well. The entire interface brings the idea of a 'customized newspaper' directly to your iPad's screen, and it can be used in either portrait or landscape mode, like most other news apps on the iPad.
Various section pages can be added in the app, and you can add as many feeds to a section as you want, as well as keeping or deleting the feeds that come pre-loaded with the app as default feeds.
The interface is divided into grids, where you can add or delete columns and feeds as you see fit with the 'Edit' button at the top. It seems that the customization of the columns is not quite that easy to get the hang of or really customize, but for now it'll have to do. I found it hard to resize a column to what I wanted it to be, in fact, I don't think I figured that out if it's even possible. I also noticed that it will sometimes not be able to fetch any RSS feeds from sites, which I'm not sure why.
When you're on the main screen of viewing articles, it just downright feels like a newspaper. Tap an article and you can read the full article, complete with photos, and email and comments links at the bottom.
But for now, the 'Email this' option of articles will just load a blank page for me. Seems like a glitch that should be fixed ASAP. The sharing by email option can be accessed through the landscape mode sidebar when viewing an article, along with options to share on Twitter and Facebook. You can view the article and comments with the in-app browser by either hitting the 'comments' link at the bottom or having it in landscape mode and hitting the 'View on web' button.
To get back to the main listing of articles, simply place your finger at the bottom where it looks like a curled up paper and drag it upwards - you will magically be back at the front page of the paper. It really adds that 'newspaper' feeling to your digital reader. Read articles will appear grayed out, and any unread articles will appear in black text.
In any feed source, you can add more stories to the main page by hitting the down arrow beneath each feed. Also, articles can be saved for later by adding it to 'the shelf'. You can add items to the shelf by viewing the article (in landscape) and hitting the 'Add to Shelf' button. Or just tap and hold an article on the main page and get the 'Mark as Read' or 'Save to Shelf' option. I also discovered that if you drag an article, the shelf will pop up for you to place it directly.
All-in-all, this app is decent for being a 1.0 version of a Mac OS X app. It really does bring the feeling of a real newspaper, but I do wish that there was a bit better handling of customization of columns as well as being able to fetch more feeds. I'm not sure why it was unable to find certain feeds off popular news sites, really.
Also, if you're looking for Google Reader integration, you aren't going to find it here. This app currently only allows you to manually add in various RSS feeds from different sources. So if Google Reader is a necessity for you, I'd suggest you to find something else for your needs, unless the developer will implement Google Reader support in the future.
I also did notice that you can't just move news sources into different columns without having to delete a feed and add it again. There is also another problem with viewing articles in a feed that is set to 'inline' only, and other feeds that are set to display the full article. Each feed must be manually configured...this is a problem. There should be some sort of setting to make it all universal and consistent.
The Shelf is only useable in the app. Instapaper and ReadItLater are pretty popular nowadays, and people would like to be able to read an article later. I believe that Times could benefit from integrating these types of services into the app. Without it, the point of saving articles to the 'shelf' for later is kind of rendered moot.
But I do love the smoothness of the app and I also experienced no crashing so far. It seems pretty stable, which seems to be quite the opposite of the original Mac OS X version.
The app is decent at this point in time, but I don't believe it's worth the $8 price tag with its current problems.
