"10 seconds is about the limit for keeping the user's attention focused on the dialogue. For longer delays, users will want to perform other tasks while waiting for the computer to finish, so they should be given feedback indicating when the computer expects to be done. Feedback during the delay is especially important if the response time is likely to be highly variable, since users will then not know what to expect."
Read on crystal clear explanation of why this is and how to build around if load time is a must:
The most important things are often very banal. Most people don't like to be banal, they like to be fancy. So they end up ignoring the most important things (both in business and their private life).
Maybe this is why Jakob Nielsen is so hated: he allows himself to be banal, he allows his web-design to be banal, he allows his conclusions and suggestions to be banal.
I'm a huge, huge news junkie. I read the NYT and WSJ daily. (NYT online, WSJ in the APP). I also read several magazine via Zinio, and get the new Yorker, economist, and wired apps on my iPad.
There is no easy way to say this - the first revision of "The Daily" is an embarrassment. When I pick up the WSJ - it's about 10 seconds after I launch that I start reading that days paper. The Daily not only takes so long to start, that I've _already_ lost interest in trying to read it, the total download time is so excessive that I never bother to let the entire thing download. WSJ is quick, snappy.
I realize a lot of this is because of the massive video / photo content - but they need to do something about this App quickly or their going to lose 80% of their potential audience before they even _try_ reading the darn thing.
To be fair, when the WSJ app first launched on the iPad it took at least a minute to download each issue. They had no 'staged' loading so you had to sit there and watch a progress bar before you could read a single article.
I noticed that Amazon has (relatively) recently changed their results pages so that it preloads the first 4 results of the next page. When you click next, the next 4 results show immediately, and then the rest of the results start loading. I wonder how many hundreds of thousands of dollars that small change is earning them...
I sense you might be making a joke, but just in case: I'm pretty sure he means that three issues of The Daily have come out in the three days since the app's debut.
Imagine a paper newspaper that was wrapped in an envelope, and the envelope was so difficult to open that it took over a minute before you could see the front page of the issue. Who would buy that newspaper? No one, that’s who.
It takes me longer than a minute twenty to walk to the curb and back to pick up the wall street journal. Perhaps Gruber has figured out the reason that no one has ever read newspapers?
I think the important difference is that you are actively doing something while getting the paper. You go outside, and have something to look at while you are waiting. Perhaps if he opened it a bit before he knew he would need it, and did something in the meantime it would be easier to wait.
"It takes you several minutes to go and buy a physical newspaper" - this is not an argument. The dynamics of a mobile app is so different than real life's. Imagine you play one of Zynga's games and wait 2 physical years for the animal to grow up. There's no doubt any mobile app showing you instant and hot content should start blazing fast, so that it serves your impulses. We are reading news out of our impulse; although we may alocate specific times of the day for it, it's not a programed action like reading a thousand pages fanatsy novel; therefore if a news app fails to satisfy that impulse (quickly, efficiently, in critical time and dimensions) then you may say the app is not serving you well enough.
In my opinion, it doesn't matter the name of the author, he's got a point.
I think what this really points to is the need for a background content-fetching API in iOS. Battery life spent loading is battery life spent loading whether the user is there or not; the key is to integrate it into the push framework so that battery life isn't wasted on polling.
Exactly the opposite. The content should be fetch as-needed. Background fetching would get all the content whether or not it's ever read. If all the apps I've grown tired of are still fetching data in the background, that IS more battery life. Or if I only read one section of the Daily when it's downloaded it all. Having background fetching available would just let the Daily off the hook for designing the app the way it should!
Other news apps have solved the problem. Safari can retrieve the entire internet without background fetching. Surely the Daily's problem is easier than Safari's.
Seems pretty unlikely, though would be awesome. One of the major problems Jobs has insisted on abstracting away from the consumer is battery management. Time spent loading is time spent loading, but Jobs wont stand for customers being confused between their battery being broken and just having a lot of background content downloading without them noticing.
The problem with background content loading is that you never know if it's content the user is ever going to look at. It would be pretty easy to install a few apps to try out that you never wind up looking at again, and then your device spends a lot of time and battery loading the content overnight, and you wonder why your battery is dying even though you're not using it much.
He's dead wrong that it doesn't download in the background. Most reviewers commented on the sluggish cover flow without realizing it's still downloading for quite some time once you get the first pages.
Watch the spinner in upper left. Most of the issue downloads AFTER you can interact.
> He's dead wrong that it doesn't download in the background.
You're reading this wrong. What you're describing isn't what he was talking about. He's talking about letting it download in the background, as in, iPad is sleeping, and it automatically downloads over night, without having the app open.
He does mention background downloading how you describe it. He does, however, mention that waiting a minute twenty to even get to that stage is annoying. Basically, he says that it should open up within 10 seconds, and download in the background as needed. Not a minute twenty.
The good news is that this is software, so they can definitely fix the issues with the app itself. What remains to be seen is how high the quality of the writing will be and if they can sustain it.
Personally, I would like to see an app like Instapaper combined with a licensed AP news feed. I don't really need images or fancy graphics or movies; I just want to read the news.
Doesn’t look like it is. I can’t download it in the German App Store.
(This is so stupid. I certainly don’t want to buy The Daily but it’s not the only offender in this regard. I would assume that making The Daily available in every App Store in existence is a matter of clicking a checkbox or something like that. What’s stopping them? Are there legal issues?)
And when, at some point in the future, iOS gains the ability to do downloads while the phone is in your pocket, Gruber will salute this as yet another crushing evidence of Apple's innovative spirit, forgetting that Android has been able to do this since 1.0.
[+] [-] aresant|15 years ago|reply
"10 seconds is about the limit for keeping the user's attention focused on the dialogue. For longer delays, users will want to perform other tasks while waiting for the computer to finish, so they should be given feedback indicating when the computer expects to be done. Feedback during the delay is especially important if the response time is likely to be highly variable, since users will then not know what to expect."
Read on crystal clear explanation of why this is and how to build around if load time is a must:
http://www.useit.com/papers/responsetime.html
[+] [-] silvestrov|15 years ago|reply
Maybe this is why Jakob Nielsen is so hated: he allows himself to be banal, he allows his web-design to be banal, he allows his conclusions and suggestions to be banal.
[+] [-] ghshephard|15 years ago|reply
There is no easy way to say this - the first revision of "The Daily" is an embarrassment. When I pick up the WSJ - it's about 10 seconds after I launch that I start reading that days paper. The Daily not only takes so long to start, that I've _already_ lost interest in trying to read it, the total download time is so excessive that I never bother to let the entire thing download. WSJ is quick, snappy.
I realize a lot of this is because of the massive video / photo content - but they need to do something about this App quickly or their going to lose 80% of their potential audience before they even _try_ reading the darn thing.
[+] [-] djbriane|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Qz|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zachallaun|15 years ago|reply
Anyone else left wondering what the other two issues were?
[edit] Well, this is embarrassing...
[+] [-] conesus|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kmfrk|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scottjackson|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cwp|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beej71|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] b_emery|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lotusleaf1987|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trotsky|15 years ago|reply
It takes me longer than a minute twenty to walk to the curb and back to pick up the wall street journal. Perhaps Gruber has figured out the reason that no one has ever read newspapers?
[+] [-] BCM43|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tantalor|15 years ago|reply
No wait, full articles, with video. Plus it works in any web browser, not just the iPad.
[+] [-] UtestMe|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zb|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] losvedir|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mortenjorck|15 years ago|reply
I'm really hoping this is part of iOS 5.
[+] [-] brianpan|15 years ago|reply
Other news apps have solved the problem. Safari can retrieve the entire internet without background fetching. Surely the Daily's problem is easier than Safari's.
[+] [-] wdewind|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lambda|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Terretta|15 years ago|reply
He's dead wrong that it doesn't download in the background. Most reviewers commented on the sluggish cover flow without realizing it's still downloading for quite some time once you get the first pages.
Watch the spinner in upper left. Most of the issue downloads AFTER you can interact.
[+] [-] jasonlotito|15 years ago|reply
You're reading this wrong. What you're describing isn't what he was talking about. He's talking about letting it download in the background, as in, iPad is sleeping, and it automatically downloads over night, without having the app open.
He does mention background downloading how you describe it. He does, however, mention that waiting a minute twenty to even get to that stage is annoying. Basically, he says that it should open up within 10 seconds, and download in the background as needed. Not a minute twenty.
[+] [-] pangram|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quinndupont|15 years ago|reply
Between the 1 minute wait and the requirement that you launch it daily it misses all the good stuff about the old dead-tree version.
[+] [-] alexknight|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sixtofour|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jpr|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adolph|15 years ago|reply
http://www.thedaily.com/page/2011/02/03/020411-news-boxes-br...
[+] [-] cobralibre|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AbnormalGun|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mwg66|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ugh|15 years ago|reply
(This is so stupid. I certainly don’t want to buy The Daily but it’s not the only offender in this regard. I would assume that making The Daily available in every App Store in existence is a matter of clicking a checkbox or something like that. What’s stopping them? Are there legal issues?)
[+] [-] billmcneale|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] collypops|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ugh|15 years ago|reply