I wouldn't mind watching video from CNN live on my iPad tonight,
while the election returns come in. I installed the CNN election app.
I was prepared for it to be a bit bumpy. After all, it's not easy to
debug an election-night application in advance, when there is no
election. Still I'm pissed by how this app behaved.
The puff-wording for this app merely implied that anyone could watch CNN
live. And when I opened the app, a popup box said I should simply tap
“CNN live” to see the video. Just one problem: the words “CNN
Live” were nowhere on the screen.
It turns out that in order to see those words, I had to make the
main screen slide to the right, exposing a column of options
including those fateful words. And how did I make the main screen
slide to the right? By fortuitiously sliding my finger DOWN the
screen.
When I tapped “CNN live”, I got the “which is your video
provider?” screen. Okay, so CNN's promise was a little less
universal than they suggested. Fortunately, I have an approved
provider: Verizon. Next, the CNN app asked me to log in to Verizon by
providing my ID and password. Fine; other apps have done this to me
before.
CNN provided an impossibly tiny pair of lines that I had to
select, in order to type my data. By mistake I tapped “cancel”
when I tried to tap “password”, and the app returned to the main
screen.
I started over, eventually exposing the same ID/password screen. I
had realized what I had done wrong; I had not used the universal iPad
gesture to expand this screen so that I could reliably tap on it. I
put two fingers on the screen and spread them.
The CNN screen acted like a tight rubber band. It refused to stay
expanded so that I could tap it. But finally I entered my ID and
tapped password. The app then crashed.
I started over, but now the app said that it could not reach its
server. I deleted the app from memory and started the whole business
again. But the app crashed, again, when I tried to see the
ID/password screen.
CNN, the heck with you. I have downloaded the New York Times app.
