Scientific American App Reviews

This app keeps losing track of my subscription and my purchased downloads have vanished six months into a years subscription. Now I just to cancel it. Id give it ZERO stars if I could!

This version is a great improvement: resizable text and landscape mode are both supported. What a relief: much more pleasant reading experience. Old version was a relic of the first magazine apps with tiny (7point?) text and no landscape mode.

Im frankly dumbfounded by the reviewers who consider this update an improvement. Gone are all the functionality and interactive elements that made reading SA on the iPad a unique and value-added experience. The old version really took advantage of the iPad as a medium, and actually complemented the print version in many ways. This version is nothing more than a glorified text viewer. Graphics and visual aids are now tiny and illegible, with absolutely no interactivity. What the hell, SA? If this is all you can offer Ill go back to reading the print version exclusively. Truly a major disappointment.

The “new and improved” app deleted all of my old purchases. When I went to restore them, they were no longer available. The app worked fine, and now I can access magazines I already paid for. I think a refund of past purchases is in order

Same as 2, 4, 5, 6 and 7

Im disgusted that after paying for a years subscription to digital SA I can no longer access my purchased issues upon the expiration of my subscription. Once a subscription is bought and paid for the purchaser should have the right to read the purchased issues as many times as they choose. No way will I renew my SA subscription because of this policy. Its time to give a digital Discover subscription a try!

Does what the instructions say it should do.

Awful update, now I discover that I have to pay for April number after receive it in paper! Of course included in my subscription. Beside that, wheres the diagrams? Wheres my previous purchases? Wheres the info about authors? All lost just to add zoom in the text an the ability to read in horizontal?

IPhone support and article saving came with a big price in design and readability. The previous version was a good example of what a magazine on the iPad could be. Now the experience is worse than a simplistic web page. One of the great things about SciAm is the graphics. The previous version did justice to both the graphics and the iPads screen. Now the graphics are low res, small, and there arent as many as in the magazine. I may use this on the iPhone but on iPad Im going back to reading the PDF.

The new version helped tremendously with downloading on less than perfect internet connections. Generally, I like the app, but readability is a problem. There is no ability to zoom or change font size, so on a small screen, its difficult to read the small print.

The previous version had a beautiful layout which made reading SA a pleasure and made me want to subscribe. So I did. Now a couple months later we have this update, which seems like a big step backwards. The layout is totally blah, every article looks like the one before, and the designers couldnt even be bothered to justify the text. Not up to the standards of SAs high-quality content. Please change it back so I will feel like renewing my subscription next year.

SciAms app used to be the best magazine app out there. The interface took a bit to learn, but it did justice to the beautiful print edition. This new version is terrible in comparison. In addition to loosing the true feel of a print edition, it also has far fewer issues Id previously purchased that Im now allowed to read. As if that werent bad enough, the graphics are amazingly bad in this app. I, for one, am going back to reading the PDF edition with iBooks.

It barely does anything. It frequently does not recognize my subscription and tries to charge me for issues. A very disappointing app from a very good magazine.

The negative reviews here make valid points, but for me the new format is a significant improvement over the bloated, inaccessible previous format. Each issue takes a fraction of the storage required before, the text can be copied and pasted, resizable text is a blessing, and landscape support. As pretty as the DPS stuff was, it was not always very functional. Accessibility can be further improved with Speak Screen support (have not tried VoiceOver but that should be there as well), Split View and Slide Over for iPads, and keyboard shortcuts for navigation. Maybe some choice of typeface (Dyslexia font maybe?). The multimedia and embed of web site and sliding panels are gone (at least for now) but they were a little annoying and distracting to me. Its bad that older issues are no longer available in the app. Hopefully it is in the plan to convert those to the new format and restore access to that material over time. A stretch goal would be to include some sort of index to the available issues so you could search, download (if necessary) and open to the reference. Far more do-able with the new format.

Issues now download flawlessly, my biggest gripe with older iterations. As for content, its well written and thought provoking.

The content is always fine. The app is not totally great but suffices.

Although a significant improvement the human factors leave something to be desired. Why can apps follow the apple guidance and obey the settings like the global font setting?

SciAm journals always have interesting content, always something new to learn -- even in topics where 8 have significant expertise.

I recently shifted to iPad Pro, so the font sizes are not as big a deal as before. Now the mini would let me read SCIAM with my 70 year old eyes.

This app doesnt let me stay logged in, wont respond to any password-username combination that I have ever used, and has no provision to recover a password. I dont even see the point of subscribing to the magazine.