Mac Desktops
Smartphones
Cameras
Camcorders
Mac Laptops
iPad & Tablets
HDTV
Networking & Wireless
iPods
iPhone Apps
Printers
Storage
iPad, iPod touch, & iPhone app reviews from our editors—and you!
USA TODAY for iPadCurrent Version: 2.0 (iOS 4.0 Tested)
See more Free News app reviews »
- Read stories from USA TODAY's News, Money, Sports, Life, Tech and Travel sections. Enlarge images, watch related videos, and share stories via email, Twitter or Facebook. Download all stories to read offline; ideal when traveling.
- Review national weather maps and get current weather conditions, up-to-the minute radar images and the five-day forecast for your current location and other locations you set as favorites.
- Get the latest sports scores for NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, college football and basketball. Stay up-to-date on the USA TODAY-ESPN Top 25 Polls for college sports.
- Stay current on airport delays and closures. Get delays information via a nationwide map or a list with specific information about each airport.
- Keep up with recent iPad apps with USA TODAY's App Insider. Read reviews and ratings, view app screenshots, and easily open the App Store for convenient download.
- Watch the latest tech reviews and interviews from Ed Baig and Jefferson Graham in TechWatch and share via email, Twitter or Facebook.
- Check the market numbers by index and create a 'My Stocks' list, a personalized list that will keep you updated on how your stocks are performing. (Market data delayed up to 15 minutes.)
- Play USA TODAY's popular crossword puzzles. Puzzles are available from the past two weeks and can be played even when offline.
- Flip through the day's best news, sports and celebrity photos as well as Week in Travel and Week in Space images in full-screen detail. Share your favorites via email.
USA TODAY for iPad Review
iPad newspaper has improved since original release, though flaws remain
USA Today for iPad arrived in the App Store shortly after the original iPad made its debut. That initial release was decent, but buggy and flawed—certainly not up to the standards set by the iPhone version of USA Today. More than a year later though, USA Today has had some time to work out the kinks with its iPad release. But does the revamped version deserve a spot on your iPad?
Viva Sections: When USA Today first launched, Tech and Travel were MIA. We’re delighted both sections appear in the app now.
USA Today really attempts to make its app resemble its newspaper counterpart. Thus, the app avoids most visual navigation elements when you launch it. Instead of using a more traditional tab bar, you jump between sections by tapping on the large, colorful square at the app’s upper left corner. Tap it, and you get icons for all of USA Today’s sections—and that all is a good thing. When the app first launched, it lacked the paper’s Tech and Travel sections; their appearance in the app is a welcome improvement.
Also welcome: The app is far less buggy than it used to be. It may be a bit odd to praise USA Today for loading the sections you tap on, but since that functionality wasn’t quite operating at 100 percent the last time we reviewed this app, it’s worth celebrating here.
Sadly, USA Today’s general layout problems remain largely unchanged—and what changes appear aren’t necessarily for the better. We complained a year ago about the blurbs that appear below each headline as you browse the paper’s sections. Back then, USA Today simply pulled the first sentence of each article, and those sentences would often end abruptly, because they didn’t fit the allotted space. Now, it appears that someone at USA Today is handcrafting the blurbs—I found several that didn’t appear to exist within the articles themselves. But here’s the kicker: These manually written blurbs still don’t fit, and thus still make the app look rather dopey: “A Missouri River levee failed near the Iowa-Missouri border Monday, prompting a flash flood warning for the,” one reads. That USA Today still can’t figure out a way to fit its blurbs is either tear or laughter inducing; I’m not sure which.
Column as I see 'em: USA Today's use of columns feels cramped and unnecessary on the iPad.
USA Today’s article view remains mostly untouched. Articles are broken into columns (two in portrait, three in landscape). You swipe left or right to move between articles, and swipe up and down to advance between pages of an individual article. I don’t love multicolumn text in The Daily, and I don’t love it here, either. It works fine, but it breaks with what’s become iPad convention. Most apps focused on reading fit their content into a single, scrollable column. USA Today violates both tenets, with multiple columns, and scrolling by the page instead of freeform. Again, though, it’s manageable—just not to my taste.
That said, USA Today is a solid app, and you can’t beat the price: The app remains completely free, and while the company said at launch that one day we’d need to pay for our digital subscriptions, it appears that—for now, anyway—the ad-supported model still works in this case. Adding the missing sections and fixing the annoying bugs made USA Today go from decent to good. To enter the realm of greatness, the app’s designers need to focus a bit more on its presentation.
[Lex Friedman is a Macworld staff writer.]
Critic Reviews of USA TODAY for iPad iPhone App
No critic reviews from around the web found
User Reviews of USA TODAY for iPad iPhone App
Our user review snapshot
Our user reviews IN DETAIL:
Here's why there's columns
Having worked in newspapers I learned that smaller columns are used because its easier for the eyes to track the story. Reporters are trained to write two and three sentence paragraphs so the paragraphs won't appear lengthy. The use of multiple columns on the app doesn't bother me in the least. It's a very readable app and part of my day. I agree that I will pay a subscription price for the whole paper once that option is offered. The current e edition is awful online is awful.
Missing?
I can't find sports team standings. Is it just me?
Lex fails, again.
I also completely disagree with this silly review. Of all the news apps I have downloaded and kept on my iPad, this is the one I find myself using 80% of the time, precisely because of the clean and very pleasant to read design and interface. mrmkirsch took the words right out of my mouth in describing what makes this app a gold standard for news delivery on the iPad. I just LOVE using this app and can't wait to use it on an iPad retina display...
Story issues
I too enjoy this app. It is probably the one app I use most on my iPad after Mail and Safari. The issues I have are: 1) Time after time I will come across a story that says something along the lines of "...see the below picture (or movie).." and there is no below picture or movie. 2) The story trails off without finishing (I find this in the entertainment area a lot). 3) The story says it has multiple pages and when you get to the last page it is only 3 or 4 lines long, I wish it would be smart enough to reform itself so it does not do that.
Way off base
Lex's review is way off base in my opinion. First, in another article Lex talks about how he loves RSS readers. RSS readers are notorious for giving you just a glimpse of the story with sentences often cut in the middle or ending awkwardly. Yet here he makes it sound like an incredible flaw. I have never had this bother me on the USAToday app and find their snippets to be just enough to let me know if I want to read the story. Second, the column layout is very nice and very easy to read. I personally don't like large blocks of text and find the column view much easier and quicker to read. This is very true when I'm reading and the kids interrupt me I can quickly find my place vs doing so in a large block of text. I also am very happy to see USA today added more sections and improved the offline reading experience. In general I think USAToday is one of the best, if not the best news layout/function app out there. My one big complaint is USAToday often doesn't have the latest news. No real breaking news, no breaking APwire news, etc and I find this more than anything else hurts the app.
Disagree
I have to completely disagree with the authors premise. Placing short leader items on the main page as a summary is a very good way of quickly scanning for things you wish to read in more depth. The interface is significantly cleaner and easier to browse than nearly any web based newpaper. Column layout is a time honored professional magazine technique for ease of reading. The swipe paradigm is the natural way to use the Apple devices, regardless of your opinion on the technique, so to implement something completely different would have been bad. In general, I feel this review was very poor and completely off the mark.
Nice app
USA Today is an attractive, user-friendly app. My only issue is that there is no local news. I hate to have to have two news apps, but without local, this can't be my only one.
Great interface
This is my favorite app on the iPad! Check out those brilliant pics of the day -- wow! Love the interface...it's simple and not gimmicky. Almost as good as the paper itself. Would love to see the whole issue, and will definitely be buying this when it goes on payment plan.
too buggy
I wanted to like this app so much I tried it twice. But for me it is too buggy. Scrolling doesn't work like it should, sports scores don't update, pages are incomplete when and if they load. To me it just doesn't offer enough substance anyway, even for a free app.
What's going on on Planet MacWorld?
I think the USA Today app for the iPad is the slickest, most ingenious iPad app I've seen yet. They designers have managed to preserve a sense of reading a traditional newspaper while using the high-tech capabilities of the iPad to provide a genuinely user-friendly experience. I think this app sets the gold standard for news delivery on the iPad platform, and wish that the Wall Street Journal and New York Times would make their rags available in a very similar, a licensed, or a knock-off of this app!
Ad Choices