Disappointing – National Geographic Review

This app in its current version is a tremendous disappointment to this 4 decades-long National Geographic reader. While NG was a pioneer in magazine apps and previous versions were an attractive extension of the print magazine, with vivid article layouts and rich supplementary content, including videos, the current version is flat by comparison and has none of those extras. The article presentation previously mirrored the graphic design in the print version, but now we get just a boring, webpage-like presentation on a plain white background. Navigation is confusing, with much of the content, aside from the feature articles, inexplicably hidden and accessible only if you click on a very inconspicuous link within each article. You will then find yourself prompted to login, but even after you do, the app will continue asking you to login again anyway. Extremely annoying! Finally, the one very nice addition to the app is the inclusion of some archived issues going all the way back to the magazine’s founding in 1888. But one wonders why, months after this feature was introduced, NG’s team have still not made the rest of the full archive available in the app. This is, after all, content that is already digitized and readily available to subscribers on a website. But the reading experience is much better within the app, which takes advantage of the iPad’s full screen and is much faster. So I really hope the entire archive will be available in the app soon. In sum, NG definitely has the digital expertise and the big budget to do much better. In fact, they already have in the past. So here’s hoping they do.
Review by carribas on National Geographic.