Sadly, the worlds most valuable opinion journal has the worst app

I have been a print and/or digital subscriber to The Nation for decades. I cherish it. This review is intended to be constructive.

Im also a very tech savvy person. This app is an embarrassment. It can be usable for a while but from time to time the account system goes nuts, and I am no longer able to access new content.

Emails with tech support etc have at least on one occasion led to a restoration of my ability to log in. But here I sit, once again, unable to sign in to my account.

It appears the problem is more with the server than with the app.

While were at it, here are other complaints I have about this app:

- No variable text size. The pages are preformatted and I have no control. Every other civilized news or magazine app I have used (e.g. Harpers, The New Yorker, The Economist, The New York Times) has this feature.

- No landscape view!!!! Ive never seen this problem on any reading app. An "icon" appears ordering me to rotate my iPad or iPhone! This is a flagrant violation of modern human interface and mobile app design principles.

- No dictionary support. Apparently The Nation app uses nonstandard text display, so Im unable to select a word for dictionary lookup.

- No scrolling view. The text is formatted into "pages" and one must skip from one to the next. Some other apps, notably The NY Times, do have this same flaw.

Overall it appears to me that the job of developing this app was relegated to the graphics department, as the overall philosophy appears to be trying to force a mobile device to behave like a print magazine. This theory is also supported by the fact that whoever is in charge is not current on mobile app technology and has produced an inferior and unreliable accounts system.

Thanks for listening, The Nation.

FlamFlim about The Nation Magazine