Marquee News is exactly what its name suggests: A news app with stories that scroll as if they were on a marquee. I can see the novelty in that, because it could, in theory, be a clever way to deliver up-to-the-minute news.
But then I remembered what reading a marquee in real life is like. It’s irritating, waiting for the words to scroll by so you can figure out what caused the latest stock market fluctuation, latest accident or even the final score of a basketball game.
Why on Earth anyone would want to recreate this experience on a tiny-screened iPhone is completely beside me. Marquee News scrolls through the latest AP wire stories, headline by headline. If you click a headline, a story slowly opens up inside the app, so you can actually read beyond the headline.
You’re also able to customize the scrolling ticker, or at least you can customize the font on the ticker. You can resize it, change the typeface, and even make it scroll faster. What you can’t do is choose what headlines you want to see, either by category or date. You also can’t scroll more than one headline at a time, or make the app give you the news you’re interested in any more quickly than the time it takes to read a headline, word by word, as It scrolls through your iPhone.
If, for some reason, you love marquees, Marquee News’ lack of customization could very well erode any goodwill that scrolling news tickers provide. If you did not care for marquees, this app will not change your mind. As admirable as attempting to provide a new visual take on news delivery might be, this attempt is dead on arrival.
