Macworld Daily Reader (free) is a beautiful application that brings all the latest Apple news to your iPad. With a sleek UI and a variety of content, it might end up being your primary source for everything Apple.
The app works well in either portrait or landscape mode, displaying information correctly in either orientation. You start in the “Top Stories” section, but can quickly navigate to any other section with just a couple of taps. The sections include “Mac,” “iOS,” “Business Center,” “iPod and Entertainment, “Digital Photo,” “Create” and “Features.”
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Each section displays all the articles pertaining to that subject. Swiping left or right navigates between sections, not articles. Once you tap on an article, swiping left or right navigates between pages in the article. To get back to the section page, you can tap on the giant back arrow bar on the left side of the screen. Some people have criticized this method of navigating back to the main screen, but it really is a great way of doing it. When I’m holding my iPad and reading articles, my left thumb is right there, next to the back arrow. It’s so quick, and feels so natural to tap that bar on the left to get back to the main page. I wish more apps would incorporate navigation buttons like this.
The section pages also contain small content boxes that enable you to scroll through additional articles of interest. There are also photos for the more popular articles. Also, articles become grayed out to let you know that you’ve already read them.
In each article, you also have some options. You can bookmark articles to save for offline reading. You can also recommend articles, change the font size, and share stories via email, Facebook and Twitter.
The Macworld Daily Reader is absolutely one of the best ways to read about Apple news. The UI is intuitive, and articles are plentiful and interesting to read. There are also reviews of apps, hardware and software, with the famous mouse rating system. Being free, there are some ads, but they’re unobtrusive and easily dismissed. I strongly recommend checking this one out.
