The problems with The Daily iPad app

For those that don't know, The Daily is a new electronic newspaper available for the iPad. If the numbers are right, by the end of 2012 about 1 in 3 Americans will own some tablet computer. Most of them will be iPads, but a significant number will be the new rush of Google Android based tablets that are about to take over the market.

So the time is right for a news application that only exists to target tablet computers. I have to say the man behind this, Rupert Murdoch, is taking it seriously. They have a dedicated staff of talented people that produce a very nice tablet experience for reading and watching news.

With the support of Apple, they are trying something else that's new - they actually want you to pay for it. Apple has added the ability to purchase subscriptions within an app. Until the 15th of Feb. it's free. Starting then, it will be 99 cents a week or $39.99 a year. As much as I love the FREE internet, I understand that good journalism costs money. I think the price is fair.

There are still just a few things about the app that I think need to be tweaked in order to make it PERFECT.

1) The app opens with a carousel view of all the pages of that days issue. I begin to read, and maybe I get 10 pages in - when I shut the app down and restart it, I'm back to the carousel view at page one. FIX: Remember the page I left off on.

2) When you start the app it automatically downloads todays issue. If I didn't get a chance to look the day before, there doesn't seem to be a way to get it to deliver the issue I missed. FIX: On startup, show us all of the available issues and let us decide which one to download.

3) On the train I have my iPad in it's keyboard case sitting on my lap in the landscape position. As I scroll through pages of The Daily, there are some articles that reserve the landscape view for full screen photographs that are part of the story. They display a little help text at the bottom of the screen that tells you to rotate to portrait mode to read the full story. FIX: Remove that immediately. I don't want to be twisting and turning my device while I'm sitting next to someone on a crowded LIRR train car.

That's it. I'm not asking much. Fix those three simple things and for me, The Daily will be near perfection. And I may just plunk down $39.99 for a year subscription to support the effort of everyone behind this revolutionary approach to tablet journalism.