The Mercury News
View in App StoreGrow your in-app revenue
while we take care of your subscription management.
Mobile
SDK by Qonversion.
Price Intelligence based on:
213,534
apps aggregated
8,172,290
in-app prices defined
89
main categories
In-App Purchase Price (Subscription or Non-Recurring)
vs. average for the News category, $, by region
Build, analyze, and grow in-app subscriptions
with the most powerful mobile SDK for subscriptions
User Reviews for The Mercury News
Poor replacement for the former app
A few weeks back the mercury news replaced the app they were using with this. After giving some time to get used to the changes, I feel that this is a poor replacement. Everything takes more clicks (taps?) then before. You can no longer just jump to a continuation page with just one click, but must swipe through pages. You can no longer skip to the next section easily.Very disappointing, but not unexpected since the Mercury News has been taking itself down hill for some time. Is it any wonder that the subscriber numbers are declining.
Terrible update to a great app
I am a long-time subscriber, reader, and fan of the Mercury News e-edition and used to look forward to reading it every morning on my iPad. Not any more. The new version is harder to use from a UI perspective, and it also takes away from the "reading my newspaper on my iPad" experience. A few things that I noticed almost immediately since updating it today:The use of screen real-estate is highly inefficient. There are huge white spaces, that take up nearly 50% of the screen, to the left and right of the paper. And, there are now ads that take over the bottom 15% of my screen. This isn't what the old version used to have. Since the entire paper is displayed on your screen all at once, it's hard to read anything easily without zooming in (and this contributes to the white space problem), which is really hard to do. What's harder is zooming out, if I do decide to zoom in. The "look and feel" of the paper is gone, replaced by a generic white space. I can't just swipe from page to page or scroll up and down anymore. In the old version, my paper would automatically download in the morning. Now I have to tell the app to download it. As it stands right now, I find the new version cumbersome and much harder to use. At the very least, I would appreciate it if you could make it so that the older version is available, since I find the new version much harder to read, let alone enjoy.
Really awful update
I’ve waited to write a review because I thought maybe I just need to get used to new interface. Not the case. Navigation in the new app is terrible because clicking on the “continued on page x” text doesn’t do anything, and clicking on the article completely changes the format. Navigating between sections is also more difficult, as is sizing and moving the window. Last but not least, today I’m being shown the Redlands Daily Facts for no apparent reason, and I can’t find a way to get back to the Mercury. I’ve subscribed to the Mercury for 35 years and have become more reliant on the electronic version as the hard copy has been delivered later and later every morning. I’ve even defended the Mercury to friends and neighbors as the newsroom has been gutted and content has shrunk, but that’s a hard case to make these days. This latest update just adds insult to injury.
New App is Awful
I’ve been reading the e-version of the Mercury News for years and while the old app wasn’t perfect, this new one is terrible. It is WAY too small to read, the old version had the paper fill the screen, now the white space around the paper is bigger than the paper itself. One tap to load a full article doesn’t always work, if you don’t want to load the whole thing, there are no longer links to the rest of the article on another page, when you hit next you go to another section, not the next article on the page. If I turn my iPad horizontal to read the comics, it jumps ahead 2 or 3 sections (to the end of the sports section or the business section) instead of staying on the same page. Please fix it soon!
App is worse after update
While the new version of the app looks more modern visually, some major functionality was removed making it a big step backwards There used to be two read modes, and now there is only one- and you kept the worse of the two.- I can no longer choose a mode where clicking “read more” just takes me to the page in newspaper view where the rest of the article is, instead “read more” just opens up a different article view, from the start of the article , meaning I have to find where I was in the article (I usually don’t finish the article)- the view you get from clicking read more is a super weird format- tiny font in massive double space with no white margin in the side (look at NYTimes app for a reasonable iPad reading experience) I much preferred the newspaper view but you made it so much harder to use- the app no longer handles iPad rotation well, it used to keep me on the same page if I flipped to landscape mode, now it takes me to a totally new section which is very annoying I would love to revert to old version of the app if possible. I have read so much less mercury news simply this update and that makes me so sad- I want to read more local news generally
Love this reading experience
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.
This app is a piece of crap!!!!! Don’t Bother!
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.
Good, solid app, but missing a few things
Overall the user experience of the new app, particularly the launch of the app, is more polished than the old app, but it is missing a few options that the previous version had.========= I view the app on an ipad mini. The old app allowed me to expand the content so that the text was bigger and it was much easier to read while being able to quickly go from page to page. While in this zoomed-in state, with the older version, I could scroll down or advance to the next page. I cannot do this on the new app, and the text appears very small now. If I zoom in on the page I have to zoom out so that I can go to the next page. The is very awkward (having to zoom in, and then out on every page), so I just live with the tiny font. This is significant and is the main reason I rated the app so low.=========== Navigating to other section of the paper is harder to do.
New version released May 25, 2022
Giving credit where credit is due, the vastly revised new version released today is a beautiful product. Appearance on my iPad is orders of magnitude better than the old version, and I can get what I need very quickly. Sure, they have made cuts, but this is a still a great paper. To the complaints about the Merc printing articles from the Washington Post and New York Times, I note the same issue, only as a complement. These papers have some of the best reporters, syndicated into papers everywhere. Nothing wrong with that. Thank you San Jose Mercury for this wonderful update. I would ignore reviews based on earlier versions, they are no longer relevant after today’s major update. My favorite columnist is Sal Pizarro. One thing I wish they would do is add automation to the crossword puzzles.
San Jose Mercury News for iPad app review
I greatly enjoy the flexibility the app gives for reading the Mercury News any time and anywhere, but would like to bring to your attention one technical problem I consistently have while using the app:The app works perfectly for, typically, several days, and after that it stops loading the text. The article titles and some graphic still loads, but instead of the articles’ text there remain blank areas. Sometimes it even looks like the text initially loaded for a moment, but it is immediately overwritten by those blank areas.Once that happens, the only remedy I found is to delete the app and load it again - and the problem disappears for the next few days, until it happens again (and I have to delete the app and reload it again…).If not for that problem, I would give 5 stars rating and not the 4 stars I gave.Thank you,Witold
Description
The e-Edition keeps The Mercury News at your fingertips, with every article and picture intact — even comics and puzzles. Our iOS Device version delivers all the content with a faster, simpler interface: * In-depth local coverage from The Mercury News newsroom. * Entertainment content with the latest on movies, music, dining and other great ideas on things to see and do. * An all-star Sports section and much more. * Razor-sharp views of every word, photo and image exactly as it appears in print. * Streamlined navigation for readers on the go: Flip pages, zoom on articles, rotate to landscape mode. * Tap any article to convert to full-screen text. * Includes archive access to every issue published in the past 30 days.
More By This Developer
You May Also Like
POWER SUBSCRIPTION REVENUE GROWTH
