How's your iPad handling the NY Times?

November 9, 2020 4:27 PM

The NY Times is one of my primary news sources, but has become nigh impossible to read on my 2nd Generation iPad mini lately. Pages, especially the front page, take forever to load, and scrolling is hit-or-miss. How well do your various iPad-like objects work with the Times?
posted by schrodycat to Technology (8 answers total)

Are you having trouble with the website or the NYTimes app? If having trouble with one, try the other, although I would hope the app would be better behaved.
posted by ShooBoo at 5:30 PM on November 9, 2020

Response by poster: OP here with more info that I should have included to begin with:. The NYTimes app seems worse than either Safari or Chrome, but none are very snappy. The iPad has been recently updated to iOS 12.4.9.

I'm mainly curious how well more recent iPads handle the site. This may be an excuse to lobby my family for a newer device.
posted by schrodycat at 5:34 PM on November 9, 2020

Anecdotal answer: I have a 10.5" iPad Pro from a couple years ago, which has more than enough horsepower to run a news app. Over the past, let's say, two weeks or so, the NYT app has become almost unusable. I don't know whether it's the realtime election data they've been serving on the front page, or that it seems like there are at least three large video ads that have to d/l every time the front page refreshes. Either way, it seems to be the app is just trying to load too much gunk all at once and it chokes the experience for a solid minute after I open it.

So, I don't think a newer device is your answer, but maybe an email to the support team of the app telling them about your experience (I sent one yesterday).
posted by angry.polymath at 5:46 PM on November 9, 2020

I have a month-old iPad Pro. I just brought up the NY Times main page and everything seemed very snappy, had no issues. Clicked a few front-page links with very quick responses before I hit the paywall and gave up.

Using default Safari app, also tried Chrome app with similar ~1 sec response time; we have half gig ISP speed. Seemed fine to me - impressive in fact, compared to the abysmal response times I've been seeing from CNN, even from a gaming class desktop and hard-wired ethernet, during the election cycle.
posted by SquidLips at 6:38 PM on November 9, 2020

I have the current generation iPad mini and haven’t experienced any issues with any of the NYT apps, other than the spelling bee game occasionally not bringing up the current day puzzle.
posted by sm1tten at 6:53 PM on November 9, 2020

I haven’t noticed any recent performance changes using my 10.5 iPad Pro, accessing the website via Safari. That being said, I always have several ad blockers running so I never see those video ads and what not. Page loads can be cut in half or more with judicious use of blocking ads and tracking scripts... (It has gotten much worse since that was written.)
posted by rambling wanderlust at 4:33 AM on November 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

I have a 2019 10.5 inch ipad (with some ad/script blocking configured). It's not the fastest loading website, but it is manageable. (As a rough estimate... It probably takes less than 10 seconds to load the front page).
posted by oceano at 8:53 PM on November 10, 2020

Response by poster: Update: I finally broke down and bought a new iPad Air. It’s soooo much nicer to use than my old gen 2 mini. The NYT page loads in a jiffy.

Still, it’s unfortunate that a newspaper front page requires the latest tech just to be read comfortably.
posted by schrodycat at 5:22 AM on December 14, 2020