Tag Archives: apple

News Corporation ‘working around the clock’ to fix Daily bug

News Corporation has said it is “working around the clock” to fix a technical problem in its new “iPad newspaper”, the Daily, that has prompted hundreds of complaints and negative ratings from users.

Readers have left comments on the Apple’s US app store to complain of frequent crashes, load problems and other stability issues when the Daily attempts to fetch a new update of the newspaper.

Since its high-profile launch in the US last week, the product has attracted more than 3,600 reviews on the Apple online store.

While about a third of people gave the app the full five stars, the next most common rating was one out of five, with almost 1,000 people giving it the lowest score possible.

One reviewer wrote: “Is this the future of news? The app crashed the first time I ran it. After rebooting and restarting it hung while downloading the current edition.”

Another person adds: “Very slow loading, better fix it within two weeks or we are gone.”

In a blog post on the official website, the Daily’s tech developers wrote: “We’re working around the clock to improve the stability and functionality of The Daily.

“We’ve had massive uptake since Wednesday’s launch, and with that kind of audience scale in such a short period of time, we’ve seen some stability issues and bugs that need to be addressed.

“We’re working as quickly as we can to find these problems and fix them. The beauty of the application ecosystem is that we can constantly iterate on and improve our product, and we’re aiming to put out an update within the coming weeks.

“We are addressing the technical issues that we’ve seen and we want you, our readers, to know that this is a major priority for us.”

News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch says the Daily will “push the boundaries of reporting”, offering news, features, photography, audio, video, and graphics for 99 cents a week or $39.99 for an annual subscription.

European publishers to hold meeting over Apple’s proposed subscriptions change

Earlier this month it was alleged that Apple had told a number of European newspapers that soon they would not be able to offer print subscribers free access to iPad editions through the App Store.

According to this report by Apple Insider, Apple is keen to make the change to prevent publishers cutting it out of the 30 per cent fee it requires.

The story developed this week as reports such as this one by the Financial Times claimed that Apple had told book publishers customers could be given the ability to purchase books outside of an app as long as the same option is also available to customers from via an in-app purchase.

It’s not yet been confirmed whether this will apply to news media apps as well, although some reports are claiming it will.

Last week the International Newsmedia Marketing Association announced that it will hold an invitation-only roundtable on tablet subscriptions at the Park Inn Hotel at Heathrow Airport on 17 February, claiming that “Apple is changing the rules”. The roundtable will analyse Apple’s new plan, discuss ways to work with it and look at alternative subscription models.

Today paidContent reported that publishers in Belgium and France are taking the matter to the authorities, “making requests that Apple be investigated by antitrust watchdogs”.

Apple has not responded to requests for comment but paidContent points out that the situation may be made clearer later today when Apple’s VP of internet services Eddy Cue joins Rupert Murdoch to launch News Corp’s new iPad newspaper, the Daily.

The Cutline: Steve Jobs to join Murdoch on stage for unveiling of new iPad publication

According to Yahoo blog the Cutline, Rupert Murdoch will be joined on stage by Apple chief executive Steve Jobs later this month for the launch of News Corp’s new iPad publication, the Daily.

Known as The Daily, Murdoch’s iPad publication has been the talk of the media world over the past couple months, and the News Corp. chief has even dubbed it his “No. 1 most exciting project.” The hush-hush project has been taking shape at the company’s Manhattan headquarters, but it will also have staffers in Los Angeles.

But while news of the editorial hires has steadily leaked out, The Daily’s brass have remained tight-lipped about the launch.

The Cutline’s full report can be found here.

Related Content:

Guardian: Murdoch and Jobs teaming up for iPad newspaper

NYTimes: Apple dominate technology news, suggests Pew study

The Times’ Media Decoder Blog: Analysis from the US-based Pew Research Center suggests Apple and its products dominate US technology news reports with 15.1 per cent of tech articles surveyed by the centre over the past year focusing primarily on the company.

It’s not as if Microsoft lacks for public relations people. But Apple is especially effective at seizing journalists’ attention, said Amy S. Mitchell, the deputy director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, citing the anticipation for new devices and Apple’s “very public way of releasing products.”

Full story on NYTimes.com at this link…

Nieman Journalism lab launches iPhone, iPad app

The Nieman Journalism Lab has launched its own app, available on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.

The app offers the latest stories and videos from the site itself, as well as pulling in updates from its Twitter feed, updated link lists from Hourly Press and other third-party content recommended by the lab.

The app is free to download from the iTunes store.

not on the wires: What does the iPad offer working journalists?

Multimedia journalism collaborative not on the wires looks at what the iPad offers working journalists – the video below was originally published on the team’s website at this link.



Sit back and relax as Alex Wood from not on the wires takes you through the iPad’s top applications for media creators, not consumers.

iPad or why pad? Mixed messages for UK news publishers

For those of you that have been in hiding and didn’t know, Apple’s iPad launched in the UK today with granular reports from the media on who was the first to buy the device to who was the first to emerge from Apple’s London store holding one (hopefully we’ll soon have details of who’s been the first person to leave theirs on the London Underground or to ask for a refund).

Bit of a love-in for the Apple store in the Telegraph’s report:

While braving the cold, the trio were given food and drinks by sympathetic Apple staff with several other customers offering them hundreds of pounds to replace them in line.

As Jake ran into the store, after a countdown, he was greeted by screams and cheers from dozens of excited staff members who hugged and high-fived him before posing for the world’s media.

And plenty of coverage from the Guardian, which, despite having its website on much of Apple’s pre-launch marketing material, has decided not to launch a news app on the device in time for launch. The title did announce today, however, that its Eyewitness photography app has been downloaded more than 90,000 times since the US launch of the product in April.

The Financial Times, as expected, and the Times have jumped onto the new touchscreen bandwagon. The Times iPad edition comes hot on the heels of the launch of its new website earlier this week, though the app’s pricing structure adds another layer to News International’s paywall plans.

Accompanying the Times’ launch, an article on ‘How iPad may make the future of newspapers a different story’, which suggests that:

Many media organisations think that it will give them the opportunity to correct past mistakes with online journalism, allowing them to charge customers for content and in return provide an enriched experience more compelling and interactive than printed newspapers.

Let’s hope the latter does come hand-in-hand with the former to make these news apps something worth paying for. New research from analysts Ovum warns publishers about sticking all their eggs in one Apple-shaped basket and ignoring other devices and a digital strategy addressing all platforms: web, mobile, tablet and future. At least the Financial Times, which is operating a standard, tiered pricing structuring across its various digital outlets, seems to get this. Meanwhile, media journalist Patrick Smith wonders whether you need a news app at all, arguing that apps are a convenient, but limited way of publishing information.

As a Financial Times report earlier this week says:

[M]any of the most popular European publications on the web – including the Guardian, the Daily Mail and the Economist – will not be in the App Store when the iPad launches in nine countries this Friday.

Digital publishers, analysts and design experts say the first publishers’ apps are confusing to use or boringly faithful to the offline product, and are not being used as much as hoped.

Media organisations might get the charging for content right this time around (although the Times’ model leaves some questions), but will content and designing to make the most of the iPad’s features be overlooked by some news organisations in the rush?

Explained: iPad’s role in the media ecosystem

This is an edited version of a post that first appeared on Kristine Lowe’s blog, Notes on the Changing Media Landscape.

Since its launch earlier this year, the media industry has been abuzz with talk of how the iPad will change the industry. As a media journalist I’ve already attended quite a few talks and read an extraordinary number of articles on the subject, but INMAs Tablet summit in Oxford this week gave me new insights into what kind of role the iPad might come to play in the media ecosystem.

Convenience or uniqueness?

That is not to say that there is a consensus about this role. For instance the Guardian’s Jonathan Moore said his newspaper saw the iPad more as convenience device, it’s iPad app offering pretty much the same content as you find on the Guardian’s news site, while the majority of the presenters saw it as the perfect device for offering unique content people were willing to pay for.

“This has to be a premium content. If you approach it as something free: let’s just turn off the light and go home. It has to be premium, paid for, from day one,” said Juan Senõr, Innovation in Newspapers UK director. He asserted that we can’t talk about tablets without talking about the rest of our platforms, pointing out that you have to have different content for different platforms.

“Tablet and paper will be premium, provide background etc, while we have to see online and mobile as mass media. You will have to charge perhaps five times more for print paper and for tablets,” he said, citing some of the products Innovation in Newspapers has remade, especially the successful Portuguese daily news magazine I, as perfect journalism to be transformed to the iPad.

Long form journalism and the ‘lean-back device’

Media consultant and commentator Frédéric Filloux said the iPad offers long-form journalism a new chance. In his view, it provides three major rehabilitations: 1) Re-bundling the news. Tablets and mobile can re-bundle content, 2) Visual 3) Length.

He also sees the device as being primarily about media consumption rather than production: “The iPad is the lean-back device: it’s a consumption device rather than a production device – it has nothing in common with a lean-forward device such as the PC.” Read more of his thoughts on this here.

Jon Einar Sandvand, digital strategist at Aftenposten, Norway’s newspaper of record, said iPad readership figures suggested it was most used in the evening, between six and eight.

Juan Antonio Giner, president and founder of Innovation in Newspapers, reiterates similar ideas to Filloux on media consumption: “Research suggests iPad will become the leading platform in terms of how much people spend consuming media on it. It is a media consumption device. If you are a mono-media operation producing second-hand stories you won’t win from iPad: garbage in, garbage out.”

Now, let me confess, I often find that big media conferences tend to focus too much on ideology and too little on how people are actually approaching a certain issue or innovation, but the Tablet Summit offered some excellent insight into how different news organisations are approaching the iPad.

Among those, the most useful was the very hands-on presentation by Saulo Ribas, creative director at Brazilian Editora Globo’s Epoca Magazine.

Useful iPad tips for publishers

His newspaper wanted to be first in the country with an iPad app, so they built a light version first, and will launch the full version in July. He offered five useful tips for newspapers wanting to develop iPad apps:

    1. It’s an app, not a magazine or newspaper. We have to make the best use of the interface Apple has provided.
    – Good apps are non-linear. You can access content from everywhere in the app.
    – Good apps don’t require users to learn how to use it, or at least not so much. If you need instructions on how to use the app it usually means it’s poorly designed.
    – Good apps have very simple information architecture. Simplify and eliminate the unnecessary
    – Good apps allow the users to leave and then come back to where he left. Try to produce the best reading experience possible
    2. Think about templates not pages. What is the role reserved for the editorial designer in the age of the tablets? If it looks awesome on the iPad it will look awesome on any other tablet.
    3. Personalise: the reader is really in control. Allow the reader to define the settings of the app, the more the better. It’s a big change for us because we’re very attached to our typography in our mags and papers. We have a search view. Can’t be static, people are used to search. We’ve tried to put the basic controls at the bottom of the page.
    4. Technology is content. Have programmers part of the newsroom
    5. Choose the right flow of information inside the iPad app

Who controls the data?

“I do believe Apple wants to become the world’s kiosk. We could end up like the music industry; we do need to be aware of what’s happening. They control pricing and they control customer data – and if you loose those, you loose out,” said Senõr. That Apple also controls the customer data was new to me, but it was also mentioned by one of the other presenters. If that is the case, it sounds very worrying indeed.

Repurposing vs. reinvention

Many industry experts have looked to the iPad as a potential saviour for the media industry. In essence, the sound bite I took away from the Tablet Summit which best answers this proposition was that yes, there is a future life for the news industry if we reinvent, not if we just repurpose.

While I made extensive notes during the summit, Marek Miller was doing such an excellent job of live blogging it that I thought I’d afford myself the luxury of taking some time to reflect a bit on the event before I started writing about it. I will return to a few other thoughts I took away from the event a bit later, but, if you want to read more about the individual presentations, do check Mareks excellent live blog from the event here.

CNET: Media denied in Gizmodo iPhone investigation

A Californian judge has turned down a media request asking police to reveal the justification used to search the home of Gizmodo’s editor Jason Chen for information about the sale of a possible iPhone prototype to the technology site.

Gizmodo reportedly paid $5,000 for what may be a 4G iPhone found and sold to them by Brian Hogan, who says he found it after it was left in a German beer garden in Redwood City, Californian, reports CNET. On 23 April, after Apple contacted the police, Chen’s home was searched and kit including three Apple laptops, an iPad and a 16GB iPhone were seized, says Gizmodo.

The request was jointly filed by news organisations including CNET, the Associated Press, Bloomberg and the Los Angeles Times, but was denied on the grounds of security of the ongoing investigation.

Full story at this link…

Wired.com: 26 per cent of Wired mobile traffic now from iPad

“Less than three weeks after its launch, Apple’s iPad already accounts for 26 percent of the mobile devices accessing Wired.com,” the technology site and magazine reports.

Overall, mobile devices account for between 2.3 per cent and 3.5 per cent of our traffic. For April 3 to 19, iPad users represented 0.91 per cent of total site traffic.

Full story at this link…

(via Martin Stabe)