Houston Chronicle App Reviews

Too busy, should read like a newspaper not a tabloid. What happened to the previous editions selection? Looks like another lost subscription.

So this is how newspapers die. With the 2.0.3 update, this app is now just barely usable. Its at least mostly responsive, and frequently opens the article youre trying to read within a few seconds. At least half the times I open the app it doesnt lock up. The "In todays paper" section seems to actually have todays news and only todays news. Its still not like a newspaper since you get only a shortened headline until you click the link...but its an improvement. And many of the features still dont show up there, like the comics or the editorial cartoons. You can get to the editorial cartoon by clicking on the letters to the editor, unfortunately it shows yesterdays cartoon. Thats an improvement from before, when it didnt update for days. **update: be advised that while the "In todays paper" section seems to actually be todays news (mostly), the sidebar that activates when you are reading a story from there does NOT have all of the headlines from "In todays news." No easy navigation for you! Also, Im seeing news from yesterday show up there now. The regular portions of the app still have the "latest news," or stories from the Internet, sprinkled throughout the sections with no way to turn it off or discern what was in the paper vs. Internet stories. Articles from several days ago are still sprinkled in, again with no way to turn them off or tell when they might have been included. Navigation is still a train wreck. So, its barely usable. Im keeping with it because I like to support the local paper, I want local news, and I like getting the comics. I cancelled my NYT trial (wow, *thats* a newspaper app!) because of the improvements, but without more improvements very, very soon Ill still be leaving for the NYT. I expect better from an app that was developed for three large newspaper markets (Houston, San Antonio and San Francisco).

90% of the content on the app is carried over from previous days. Comics are only a small portion of what is in print.

Ditto the other negative comments and now even the crosswords dont work right.

Loved the old app. During my frequent travels I depended on it and got the look and feel of reading the paper. The new app is terrible. It really deserves no stars. This seems to be change for change sake, and clearly this change is a total disaster. Please keep the old app.

The new app is a terrible mess and looks nothing like a newspaper. The Chronicle spends lots of effort on layout of their hard copy. They used to have an app that successfully ported that layout to an online version. The new version has no lay-out and nothing that attracts you to a story. The opening page is a jumble of a few new and lots of old articles.

...it did. I dont have the time to list all of the issues. The developers are clearly so clueless that it would be a waste of time anyway. I tried zero stars and was forced to do one.

Total train wreck is an understatement! If it isnt fixed soon, I will be canceling my subscription.

I agree with all of the negative reviews. I liked the old app much better I wish I knew how to bring it back. Im sorry I updated to the new app.

I gave up my paper subscription a couple of years ago but really hated the old app. I know developers tried to make it look like the real paper, but it was bulky, crashed a lot and was hard to navigate. I LOVE the new app because you fixed everything that bothered me, plus I like mixing up the section headlines. Im reading more of the Chron in total than I used to. Good work!

Apparently the Houston Chronicle doesnt care how bad this new APP is. With nothing but horrible reviews you would think they would address the issues or even acknowledge the problems. The new app is as poorly designed as it can get. Bring back the old app or fix the problems!

This app is poorly organized and results in too much time spent finding articles. Articles are all over on page. Articles are repeated from section to section. Articles from previous versions are repeated. Suggest going back to previous version and fixing problems. This new version may push me back to paper version or drop Houston Chronicle.

The new HC app has quit being a newspaper and has become an Internet blog. What was so great about the original HC app was that it emulated the daily Chronicle newspaper. I could sit at my breakfast table and flip through the pages like a newspaper. I could flip easily to what sections I wanted and ignore the others. Since each day was a new edition - yeah, just like the daily Chronicle - the stories were new. Now I cant flip through the pages, I have to scroll down and down and down and can mainly only see headlines. Sometimes headlines are not enough to grab my attention, but reading the beginning of an article was enough to to get me to continue reading. And you cannot tell which is a current article or one I read many days ago. No such thing as a daily edition any longer! Hopefully the Chronicle Powers will see the error of their ways and revert back to the original - what really made the HC app great!

Please bring the old one back. Its so bad, I might request print copy delivery once again.

Wow! What is the matter with these folks? They work a year to finally get the app working then put out this junk app that takes forever to load and looks like the mess-of-a-Huffington-post website.

The first application looked and felt like a digital newspaper. The updated application does not have the same look and feel. The new application is confusing, not laid out like a newspaper in sections, its more like your average website. The Houston Chronicle needs to listen to its customers and allow customers to go back to the original format.

This new app is needs to go!!!

Search function: gone. Offline syncing: gone. Analog of print version: gone. Ive never been so angry about having auto-update enabled. I might as well cancel my subscription and just read all of their free content on Facebook.

The Houston Chronicle app is slow and unreliable. It crashes at least once while reading the paper. Quite often it crashes more than once. When it restarts it asks whether you want to send a report and I say yes all the time. Not sure that the developers do anything to fix the problems. The app is also very slow when you go from one article to the next one or even to the next page of the same article. I also read other magazines and papers on my iPad like Business Week, Time, Fortune, USAToday. They are all significantly better meaning faster and crash resistant. I dont understand why the Chronicle has all these problems and why they cannot learn from other apps. I am almost ready to cancel my subscription because the app performance is so poor.

First time to EVER write a review, thats how bad this app performs. The update has made it worse. So disappointing. I hope someone from HC reads these reviews and works to fix the problems. I mean, come on, we are Houston! Now, I need to find an app I like and write a nice review.