I’ll echo what I said on Twitter: The problem with the times reader is that they’re still trying to make print design look like web design. They’re different mediums. Don’t try to shove the one into another!

The new Times Reader 2.0 is a DISASTER. On a Windows machine, have you ever done a juxtaposed comparison of the old and new Reader?

The new Reader isn’t remotely as legible. WPF beats ADOBE Air hollow. Since you’re in the news business, this surely shouldn’t be news to you.
The new Reader takes more time for news updates.
The new Reader takes far more memory. ADOBE Air applications are always bloated.
The new Reader has less reading space.
The new Reader bombards me with extremely annoying internal ads. and ads. by Google. When I’m paying you, I’m expecting you to remove the noise factor. You were…until now.
There’s no doubt in my mind that TR 2.0 is a regressive step. The only good thing about the new Reader is that it supports video.

I know these are desperate times for newspapers, but is the New York Times this desperate? It’s understandable that NYTimes is looking to broaden its reader base by making Times Reader more platform agnostic. However, as far as Windows readers are concerned, the new Reader is undeniably a raw deal. Maybe you could keep the old version available for Windows readers.

What worries me the most is the poor legibility of the new Reader. Even the browser makes for easier reading. Frankly speaking, I’ve made up my mind to unsubscribe when my current subscription expires next year. Using FeedDemon to subscribe to the free RSS feeds makes better sense. Wouldn’t you agree?

Regards,
Deepanjan Nag

Good to hear that some of the ads are more relevant. I’ll admit I only spent a short while using the app, but the ads I saw were irrelevant. Maybe it was just the articles or something, but it’s still inexcusable to have any ads that are as irrelevant as the ones above.

Also, totally in agreement about the crossword.

I agree with most of your points here. It’s a pretty pointless app. Maybe I’m not in their target market for this, because I do prefer reading news on my mobile — less distractions, less clutter, portable and delivered in easy-to-digest chunks. I guess other people may not like that and still prefer reading it on a bigger screen with column layouts.

The sad thing is that the NYT DOES understand multimedia, perhaps more than any other news outlet in existence right now. They’re just not getting the other things about online news reading that makes this project a failure. Separate places for video and pics? Boo. And what about their other amazing interactive media projects? Guess you have to go back to the site for those.

The reader is also just too oversimplified. What if I want to “save” or clip an article to my hard drive? Can’t do it in Reader, but you can do it on the Web. Just click “Save as.”

I will correct one point of yours — Yes, they do target their ads. I just read a story on credit card debt and conveniently saw a banner ad for a credit card. But that infuriates me much more to the point where I’d prefer irrelevant advertising.

This whole venture was not a way to make it more convenient for readers, though it tries to market itself as that. It’s all about moolah. Of course, they’re trying to sell subscriptions to this “new” newspaper format (which may or may not sell, who knows), but more importantly, the Reader is a way to make online display ads behave more like print ads, and therefore cost the same as print ads. News orgs have been battling this online ad scarcity issue since the birth of the Internet, and as someone who would like to see the news industry sustain itself, I am kind of excited that someone is trying to bring back some scarcity to online advertising. (http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/01/why-its-so-hard-to-move-revenue-from-print-to-online/)

The problem is, they’re trying it with a close-to-useless product.

Some people will buy into it, I’m sure. I’m just not one of them.

…though I will say the crossword feature is wicked cool.
That’s about it.