Sight & Sound at Mac App Store analyse

There are five stars for the magazine with its in-depth high quality articles. However, the app it is presented in is no fun at all. Double-tap zooming often makes the text too big so that manual readjustment is necessary. There is no tap like scrolling in either direction so that one has to constantly move the text around. It is not possible to directly swap to the next page if you are zoomed in. The menu bars top and down are always visible and turning from landscape to portrait sometimes brings you back to the cover page. Finally very few multimedia features are included (more links to previews and a bookmark feature for films to your watchlist would be welcome). Its a pity that the reading experience of such a brilliant magazine still can be so poor.

This app description is most confusing. Unlike most magazines where after you paid for a subscription, you get to read the magazine you purchased, paying for a subscription means you get to read all the magazines for the past 2 years when youre subscribed. Once your subscription expires, you cannot read anything. And this is not stated anywhere in the app description except on the regular Sight and Sound website. So when I paid for a 1-month subscription and couldnt finish the issue I wanted to read within that month, I can no longer read the issue I thought I paid for. Should have bought the print copy instead. The worst part is the when I emailed my concerns on three occasions to the app developer, they just ignored me. If I hadnt gone to the Sight and Sound website, I wouldnt have figured their strange subscription model out.

Average quality. Needs to be updated, doesnt work with iOS 7!

I thought the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite was a shoddy tablet magazine creation tool, but PageSuite makes Adobes apps (The New Yorker, National Geographic, Fast Company) look downright exemplary. First of all, why are the menus on top and bottom of the page ever-present? One tap on the screen should hide them, theyre distracting and ugly. And pages load in what can be described in film geek speak as a checkerboard wipe. For a classy, standard-bearer publication like Sight & Sound to be presented in such in a clunky way is disappointing. I was looking forward to a digital-only subscription but after having looked through this first issue Im going to have to stick to the newsstand or, more likely, not reading it altogether. Prove me wrong with subsequent updates, please!

Its really not much more than scans of the magazine pages, but the biggest flaw is that it doesnt remember your page when you close the app. So you have to go through a lot of slow-loading pages to try to figure out where you were.

This app, in addition to being poorly designed, is painfully slow even on a 4S and the new iPad. The content is there but is worthless without usability. I love the magazine but this is just depressing. Hoping for an upgrade soon, especially because Id love to get the subscription to the archives. Until then, Ill be relying on my physical copy.

I have been a print subscriber for two years, S & S offered a free digital edition and access to archives. The registration process tedious, password assigned does not work and zero customer support. Great mag in print, if they cant up their game digitally dont offer digital issues!