It is useful for me as it saves a couple of precious seconds in the morning, not having to get ipad, open app, wait for download etc. My wifi isn't bad but something like The Times still takes a couple of minutes to download and then process and some magazines are hundreds of megs in size. Half the time I forget which sort of defeats the object of having a daily subscription. Whilst obviously not life-changing it is certainly a useful addition, for me at least.
PS no 4G/LTE for us in the UK - and not for a good many years I think!
Thanks. I had a feeling it might be something like that. Some apps I use, (e.g. Washington Post, NY Times) download only a "front page" and expect the user to access individual stories. On the other hand, the New Yorker downloads an entire issue at one stroke (120mg or so) and that takes a minute or so. Although you can begin accessing the app before it is fully downloaded.
The apps that download only a "preview" as noted above do allow individual stories to be saved offline for later reading. (Much browsers that enable the same behavior for websites.) Otherwise, of course, one must remain connected to navigate the app.
Obviously, there are costs and benefits of the different approaches. Periodicals that resemble "books," i.e. content you'd like to save and refer to at a later time or periodicals with long form articles that may require an hour to read are more suited to the download all approach. The New Yorker fits that model.
Newspapers on the other hand, where the content is frequently of fleeting importance and composed of relatively short individual articles are more suited to real time (connected) reading or skim and save. I have no interest in accumulating an entire week of the entire content of the WP, for example.
Further, on this side of the pond most users now have fairly tight limits on download volume. That means an automatic download of an entire large newspaper that one doesn't get around to reading on a particular day can be relatively expensive if it pushes one into a higher priced tier. (My impression is that 3G access in Europe is both less expensive and has higher limits than in the US.)
Bottom line is that at least for me keeping journalists employed is a fairly high priority. I even subscribe to a daily (hard copy) newspaper here in Seattle that I frequently don't read just because I think it's important that a local newspaper survive in this town.
As a result of that attitude I'm happy to pay a subscription price for the content I receive digitally. What I don't appreciate is seeing the market for content carved up according to the device that is used to deliver it and for the originators of the content to face a Hobson's choice with regard to those devices in terms of paying for the delivery of their content.
That's not to say, of course, that firms like Apple don't deserve revenue for content delivery. On the other hand, I suspect consumers may soon face a media landscape where content is carved up among delivery devices and access to particular sources of information depends on the manufacturer of the device one happens to own. In a world where fewer and fewer sources of content have the means to distribute it, placing still another hurdle to distribution is not a good sign.
