The Mercury News

As a long time reader of the Merc, I adopted the electronic version about six years ago. Generally I like it. There are a few bugs that might be worked out. 1) The blocking of parts of the weather page is inconsistent from day to day. The same is true of the puzzle page. 2) It is common to have words fuzzed in odd ways, like “reportedwith” or “ haveseen”. 3) The newest version seems to think I have a new edition ready to download every time my IPad goes to sleep. This causes the viewed page to return to the first page. 4) Parts of the paper do not display clearly when the downloaded is viewed off line. The comics is a good example. I am a strong believer in edited, fact checked and independent reporting that is not filtered to put a person in their own bubble chamber. I would be willing to pay more for more content and editorial.

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I have been a subscriber to the Mercury for decades but the paper keeps getting smaller and most of the stories are from the Washington Post and AP, they have few reporters of their own anymore. The app is the worst piece of crap ever. You will constantly have to give your user name and password because it forgets it almost daily. Further you have to keep zooming in and out to read any article on you iPad or phone. If you double click on a story to get just the text version if you read to the end you will have to scroll all the way to the top to close it. It basically makes reading so frustrating you wind up just closing it and going to another news source. The Wall Street Journal is a much better app. I am probably going to dump my print subscription soon as I can get almost everything they print from other sources at a better price.

In contrast to the slick verticals scroll news sites this is just like the physical paper. I read on an iPad mini and zoom the article, touch the colored “go-to” to continue to another page. Touch again to return to the page I came from. To correct a previous reviewer, you can download for offline reading, which I use on the airplane. There is an options setting. 30 days of back newspapers are available. Yes, downloading issues will take up room. Previous reviewer who was critical of APPs data use might have a 16g tablet/phone. I have no problems on a 64gb device with MANY apps and a very active email inbox.

There appears to be a new release that has some annoying bugs: asking me if I want to view the current edition when I’m already reading it, jumping to previous pages after I shut off my iPad then return to it, warning me that offline after I’ve fully downloaded the edition, and a couple others. Having said that, I love being able to read the Merc this way, and I think they do a fine job as a news organization.

This app makes for a good alternative to hard copy. A real paper lets you see more and scan, but the links to continuing articles makes up for limited view. Unfortunately, it has a few bugs. One is that it will inevitably crash 2-4 times each day I use it. Most annoying is that it randomly gets in a loop of blurry text redrawing clearly, then blurring again repeatedly, sometimes for minutes at a time, preventing reading. Sometimes it stops and stays blurry and unreadable. Been this way for years.