IEEE Spectrum Magazine App Reviews

This app simply looks awful and outdated.

This is definitely the way to read IEEE Spectrum. I used to download the PDFs and read them in a viewer, or sync them to my iPad, but this app provides a great way of seeing all past issues you might have missed, downloading the ones you want, and start reading. About the only way it could be improved is with a way to read the text in one column with adjustable font sizes.

This app is just a glorified PDF viewer, and not even a good one. Fonts and images cannot be scaled, so you have to choose between blurry text or tiny text. You are better off just downloading the PDF to iBooks, where it will look great.

Version 3.2 is crashing on my ipad2. Previous version was working with low quality in zooming as others mentioned.

Good start. Would be nice if the program is updated to take advantage of Apples newsstand feature so it appears with the rest of my iPad magazines. Also it would be nice if viewing the magazine for it to show Page X of Y so I know how many total pages there are.

This app could be made much better to enjoy reading the magazine on the ipad. Remove margins from pages, faster rendering of pages, autozoom on single columns, etc.

All was working fine until now. It crashes. Does not login. Disaster.

Latest version crashes immediately when trying to log in.

1) Almost impossible to download a magazine on wifi or 3G due to network issues 2) magazines text and images are blurry for about 1-2 seconds after a page turn making it hard to browse 3) Crashes frequently

Could be improved...

The Megazine contents are good…but the app is not the best..can be improved!

It seems like the server was swamped the first day or two, but downloading works now. I like this app a lot - I hope lots of other magazines adopt this approach. I read the latest issue today. Minor complaints/feature requests: Id like the app to - pick up from where it last left off (perhaps this just needs iOS 4.2) - download in the background (4.2?) - be able to do a text search - follow hyperlinks and be able to click on an item in the table of contents to take you to the article - turn pages like in iBooks. Otherwise, nice job!

After logging in, I tried downloading the latest issue over wi-fi. The app tells me its downloading, but very little happens -- the status bar shows less than half the issue downloaded after twenty (!) minutes. Very disappointing, given the success of Spectrum e-delivery over the web, where downloads happen quickly. Im surprised IEEE would release this app in its current state. Update: Ive revised my rating based on the fact that my initial problem appears to have been server-related. Tried at 5 AM EST and it downloaded in about two minutes. Still slow, but at least it completed the download. Its only three stars, though, because what you get are page images of the printed version. This is not a true iPad app, in the sense of having the articles presented in a way thats easy to read. Rather, you have to zoom in on a page and move around the page in order to read an article.

I have read more of Spectrum in the last week than I have in months because the app is far better than trying to read the huge PDF files that were sent out before. But why does it still come out monthly?! I understand it when physically printing something but why cant the ipad version update just like the IEEE website? I would have expected IEEE to be more up-to-date, not stuck in print-model thinking.

This would be a really nice app, except for the glaring incompatibility with the vision of anyone over 30 years of age. When you zoom in on text, you get fuzzy scaled bitmaps, not nice sharp text. This problem was solved sometime in the 1980s, I think. Is the whole magazine in image form, not some scalable format?

1. Blurry 2. No single page view in landscape mode.

This app has a hard time connecting to ieee and downloading new mags often does not work. The app has absolutely NO multimedia, it just hosts a bunch of PDFs. Funny how backwards this thing is for this "engineering community"

I have a digital subscription to Spectrum via my IEEE membership but this app is attempting to us my Apple ID which is NOT my IEEE ID and there is no obvious way to get this corrected.

The reviews are awful and cannot even try it or I will loose my print edition. IEEE, I know you can do better!!

As an IT and computer professional as well as IEEE member, this brutal attempt at an online publication is embarrassing. Do not cancel your print pub just yet.