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Comment by jpr | Hacker News Reader

Or if we had a proper browser that still had that possibility... Oh wait, we do have those, but I don't if they are allowed on the iDevices.

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Atomic Web Browser, Mercury Web Browser, iCab Mobile, Terra and Opera Mini are some examples of alternative browsers that have additional features to the standard iPad Safari install. There are many others.

Not that an alternative browser would matter in this case, because The Daily is an app, not a website.

The Daily is actually all images on no text (like quite a few other magazines on the iPad). This is so incredibly stupid and such a horrible step backwards. It balloons the file size (that’s probably one of the major contributing factors to the long wait time), it introduces ugly artifacts (they seem to be using JPG), it doesn’t allow the user to copy or search text and it’s an absolute abomination when it comes to accessibility. iOS has a great built-in screenreader and it just doesn’t work with The Daily. All that for something that’s not even that beautiful.

We desperately need better HTML5 authoring tools, something like InDesign. It would be so nice if The Daily were using Webkit.

"The Daily is actually all images on no text ..."

Well, you wouldn't want to risk customers stealing an article. Or a verb.

Gawd, you can almost hear Murdoch's bones turning to stone.

This is not unique to The Daily. Popular Science and Wired are exactly the same (maybe others, too). (This is not an excuse. They all suck equally in that respect.) I suspect that they all use some sort of InDesign plugin or something similar.

Is this a joke? Text displayed as artifact-y JPGs? What was Apple thinking. (And don't tell me they weren't involved).

edit: If Apple is giving them early access to the subscription API and Apple is using The Daily to show off the power of the subscription API and tout the Apple ecosystem... it just screams of something that Apple would be intimately involved in. If they weren't, it's equally silly. I'm not saying its fair, but Apple has certainly jeopardized the perception of this portion of their platform due to The Daily's shortcomings.

Apple was obviously not involved in the development of this app (except for providing News Corp. with early access to their subscription API). Why would think they were?

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