The Spectator Magazine

What have you done? I was looking forward to one of my favorite magazines every week, because the digital format looked exactly as the physical magazine, the nice font, the cover, everything. It worked perfectly well and was easy on the eyes. And now we have this, something that looks like it's 1998 again, black fonts with no grace, no original cover, takes ages to download, crashes, and it's frankly ugly and blandly coldly digital. And where is my scrapbook of saved articles?!!

Brilliant magazine; my favourite reading of the week. But the latest version of the app is no fun at all. It’s one glitch after another. I feel the Spectator is spreading itself too thinly these days (TV, podcasts, etc.) rather than concentrating its efforts on its core business: the magazine (print & app) - and on getting the basics right.

The magazine itself is fantastic, of course, but the app is so frustrating and not designed for real-world use. Two or three times it tries to download an edition I have already downloaded and read most of. I'm often on a train with poor connection. So guess what. The download fails and then I can't read the edition - that would be the edition I've already downloaded! Incredibly frustrating

The old app worked perfectly on my android phone and was easy to use. I loved it. The new app is extremely disappointing. Tap on articles and the app closes! I haven't had chance to test the new layout because the app doesn't stay open long enough. Unless the glitches are fixed, it's unusable. 2/8/21 I keep hoping this app will improve but if anything it's getting worse. Come on Spectator, please sort it out!

Keeps closing. I can't get past page 3 of the magazine. App just stops. I've uninstalled, reinstalled, rebooted, recycled, given it a good talking to and even threatened to send it to bed with no supper but no change. If I can't use the app, then there is no point to the subscription and I will have to cancel it. If lots of people are having this problem, that could cost the Spectator a lot of subscriptions.

I've had to uninstall this app. If I can get it to open - a big if - it looks great and is a neat idea but it often freezes on opening, if it opens then it crashes often, and the podcasts automatically stop and kick me out. I've cleared the cache and forced stop but to no avail. I can do everything I need on the website version and use a different dedicated app for the podcasts. Disappointing, buggy and a surprisingly large app.

I don't understand the indifferent or disappointed reviews. This app works fine on my phone. A downloaded issue stays downloaded until I archive it and bookmarks my place while reading. Admittedly I download where I have a good WiFi connection (not on trains, etc), but that's just common sense. The reading is clear, the scrolling works fine and the chess and bridge diagrams can be zoomed for ease of reading. Sending an article link to interested friends is easy and works fine. Two of my friends have already subscribed as a result! All in all, a good app for the wrold's best magazine. The only puzzle is not being able to see where issues are stored on your phone, to know how much drive space is being used per issue.

Incredibly frustrating experience. Doesn't load at all if there's no internet access (so what's the point of being able to download issues?). Carousel view on issues is buggy and infuriating. Can't select text or view larger versions of pictures as per the old app. In my more cynical moments I've wondered if the whole exercise is designed to turn digital subscribers into print ones...

Slow buggy mess. App crashes on opening and, when it does open, it incredibly slow to get there. Magazine, coffee house and podcasts are slow to switch between (there's even lag when you turn pages on a downloaded magazine). This will be great when the bugs are ironed out but until then this probably needed more time in the oven. Edit: Now cannot get past page 3 of the magazine without it crashing. Will need to cancel if this isn't fixed

Update following release of new app... Whilst the look is an improvement, the implementation is poor. Often, no, frequently, crashes out and its not clear if one of the best features (having the magazine off line on your phone) is still the case. I need constant connectivity yet the app has a massive 543Mb of 'user data'... And still we don't have a "dark theme" (white text on a black background)!

Ever since the new update it's been unusable. Old app worked fine and you could read the magazine from cover to cover anywhere once you'd downloaded it. Now you need to have an internet connection just to open the app (terrible if I'm already on the tube). The app is painfully slow to load anything even if you downloaded the issue, and seems to forget that you've downloaded it half the time. It's prone to crashing at random while reading and heaven help you if you accidentally lock your screen.

It's hard to see the point of this app when the Spectator's website does the job better (e.g. provides reader comments) even on a small-screen phone. Having to download an entire issue before reading any content is tedious, and tends to make the Latest News section (which must be downloaded separately) out of date. The issue-downloading system means it should be better for offline reading, although its tendency to want to re-download mitigates agaionst this. In its favour, 'see all' mode lets you skip through an issue as if flicking through the printed magazine, and the app chews up less battery on my phone than a web browser would..However the lack of dark mode shows that it simply isn't being kept up to date.

The Spectator is a great mag but the app could be better. After downloading an issue, reading some, going away and coming back later, it often wants to go back into download mode again (presumably for updates). But, if you don't have a good internet connection, this prevents you from reading what has already been downloaded. Why can't the download happen in background?

There is a serious issue with the functionality of this app. Often when you click on an article it either shuts down or just randomly shows a page saying just "Spectator" before crashing. I've tested this on 2 mobile devices and a tablet with the same result. More work is needed or I'll just cancel the subscription.

Still can't get to the Diary page in this week's edition. An absolute disaster of an update, truly horrendous. How could anything so half-baked be foisted without warning on to an unsuspecting Spectator readership. I am still in shock from last week and as far as I am concerned, the latest update (above) has done absolutely nothing to remedy things. It is utterly useless to me now as an app. Please reinstate the previous working app whilst you sort out this complete mess of your own making.

Classic dystopian example of "fixing" something that wasn't broken. Offline consumption - a must for me - appears deliberately crippled. Distracting visual gimmicks like callouts and links to unrelated articles. Repetitive article listing, confused and cyclical navigation. These are not technical issues (unlike the crashes), but design choices to "modernise" what was a perfectly usable app. Just give me a single option to keep the old app. Call it "Classic" to save face.

The Spectator has lost the moral highground when it comes to criticising the Government's Covid app. It seems that the new app was released without proper beta testing and crashes so often that it is all but unusable on my android 8 tablet. Please bring back the old version as a "classic" version. Edit: Version 5.0.4 update installed 8th May. No improvement. Crashes in exactly the same place. Restore the old version until you have properly fixed the new one!

2/05/2021 Still crashes. Takes for ever to download the magazine. Noticed app using about 1Gbyte of memory. My phone can't spare that. Uninstalled app, going back to paper for now. App fails to open and on occasions when it does open, and remains open for 30s before crashing, the presentation looks a jumbled mess. Re-instate the old app that was very user friendly.

Just tried using the new Spectator app on my LG phone and it crashes as soon as I start to read an article. Closed app and restarted but then just get a blank (white) screen. Restarted phone which allowed me back into the app – tried scrolling to the right – another blank screen, scroll back and cannot select any articles. Doesn’t look like much testing was done on this. I’ve now uninstalled and will check back in a few weeks to download the (hopefully) fixed version. If you just want to read the headlines then it's fine otherwise quite useless in its current form.

The designers of this app have excelled themselves. The old app was poor but but this this updated version is abysmal. Downloading an issue used to take maybe 15 seconds but now it downloads so slowly that I have given it up. There is now no access to editions prior to the past month. Etc etc etc. It is pretty much unusable. I resent that some of my subscription is paying for this piece of junk! A 1.3* approval rating says a lot and is actually very generous! Update - cancelled my subscription

The old app worked perfectly. The new app DOES NOT PERMIT ME TO SUFFICIENTLY ENLARGE TEXT. Unless I find a way of enlarging the text to the size possible with the old app, there seems no point in my wasting any more money on the Spectator Magazine. What a preposterous situation. The Spectator is, or perhaps, was my haven of common sense. However, looking on the bright side, it might become useful to me IN DIRECT PROPORTION AS IT STOPS BEING COMPLETELY USELESS.

Oh dear. New update is unresponsive, lots of spinning circles while nothing is loaded or refreshed, then the app crashes/ doesn't respond to anything. Hopefully just teething problems but this really should have been tested before releasing. Poor. The new iPad app, on the other hand seems pretty good.

The app is very poor, it is very slow and it sometimes shuts down. I've tried uninstalling and rebooting but to no avail. The old Spectator app, before this new app one was launched last year, was very good. I recommend the Spectator team change the app again. Still a great magazine.

Down there with the poorest apps I've ever used, I'm flattering it by giving one star but it's not possible to mark it as zero and still leave a review. The overriding flaw is that it's impossible to browse by topic. I will be deleting the app and sticking to the website which is far superior. An example of creating an app just to claim to have an app rather than creating one that brings anything to the party.

If you're going to replace your previous app you ought to make sure the new is better than the old. This may be better in looks, but as far as functionality is concerned it's a whole lot worse. It's unstable and closes so that i can't even read the stories I've paid for. If you are going to make mistakes like this you should at least put up the old working version as an alternative and label this the beta version. Update... After nearly a whole year, there has still been no update to this app.

Pathetic app - get your act sorted you AMATUERS. I love this paper but the app is a shambles!! I can't comment on the app stories (one of the best features of my other rags is the reader discussion) and I frequently get old headlines (often 6 months or more) popping up and I think there's some new development. This wouldn't happen in my workplace (but we're significantly bigger and more professional than you lol!!)

The app is unstable and unusable. I've cancelled my digital subn twice in the hope that a renewal might see the problems solved. The developers should be ashamed to release what is not even good enough for a gamma stage! Might just go for good old fashioned paper version but this experience might have put me off doing even this.