Thursday, May 24, 2012

The TechCrunch iPad app is slick and simple

The TechCrunch iPad app is slick and simple:

If you're looking for an app-based TechCrunch experience on your iPad, here it is. The iPad app is a streamlined experience over the site in Safari, presenting a simple list of categories to choose from, and 3 basic feeds: the main river (which can be narrowed using those categories), trending stories and curated tweets. There's a lot more under the hood, however.

Commuters will be pleased to know there's a "Save for later" option when clicking the "Share" icon. You can, of course, also share stories via email or social media, and the app allows you to tie your Facebook account in (TechCrunch uses Facebook comments, primarily). My favorite feature is the easy access to Crunchbase data alongside each article.

While it's easy to click into more info, the app never goes too deep to get you lost. I can't stand when apps just layer interfaces on top, over and over, and you have to "flip" the pages just to get back to the main screen. The TechCrunch app uses a familiar "back" and "next" system, although it is often labelled in context (Saved Articles takes you back to your list but Explore may take you further down the rabbit hole of data). This makes reading articles a breeze, and makes it easy to find out more information without being overhwhelmed.

About the only problem I encountered was with the curated tweets. When jumping to a story on The Next Web, the smallish webview that takes up the lower half of the screen was overwhelmed by a slow cover-up from TNW urging you to register, or something, and it happened to cover the article I was trying to read!

Aside from things beyond the app's control, such as annoying web design habits, it's a great way to read TechCrunch on your iPad. TUAW's imaginary friend, our own iPad app, is very jealous! The app is free, so give it a try yourself.

The TechCrunch iPad app is slick and simple originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 24 May 2012 11:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

 

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(Via TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog)

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