The Wall Street Journal.
Reviews and Complaints

The last two iterations of this software have tended to crash, inexplicably, every five minutes or so. It still crashes. The app also responds strangely to some swipes another touch gestures. WSJ should really test drive it's new versions for a week before it releases them. The crashing and swipe inconsistencies have driven me to the main web site of WSJ where I had to enter my credentials several times before I could read the,paper. That site is not touch friendly, and I didn't expect it to be.

Another big complaint I have with WSJ is that they have so confused their product that I don't know what the hell I'm reading. For example:

Is the WSJ iPad edition the same as the printed version? No. Is it the same as the non-mobile site? No. Then, what is to be expected from the "latest edition" on the iPad app? Is the iPad version more up to date than the non-mobile edition? In other words, when they simply printed the paper on a dead tree, we knew what we were getting...it was the WSJ. Now, with so damned many versions of the same product out there, which one is the dead tree equivalent? If I read he latest version, now, the latest version usually includes tomorrow's editorials and other content which further confuses the issue. If I read tomorrows stuff, today, in the latest version, the same stuff is sometimes all I can find when tomorrow actually comes. In other words (again), if I read tomorrows stuff by peeking at the latest version, it reduces the available content to read when tomorrow comes. Eventually, all I remember is that there is a lot of repetitive content among all the versions and the whole WSJ experience is diminished.

So, the app is an issue because it crashes a lot but the approach is more of a big picture problem. What is the product? What should I be reading? Which version is all inclusive?

So here are just a few of the problems companies like WSJ face when trying to be relevant and indispensable in an electronic world. Clearly WSJ needs to give more thought to how it presents it's product online. Right now, it's confusing... Too many versions, none exactly the same and a latest edition on the IPad which ruins reading for the next day or so.

An evolution..

I am evaluating the new Ipad app. After a couple of weeks, I have come to the conclusion that it's really good, just very different. The reason, I am use to getting newspapers on a site called press display that gives you the full look of the paper, with pictures and all.
The Wall Street Journal app basically gives you the same stuff as the newspaper but more, many of the stories are hooked up to video and slide shows making this better than the newspaper. Again, it takes some getting use to but I like it.

Now for the bad news. Wall Street Journal is learning from it's new owner Mr. Murdock on how not to be upfront with customers. What I mean, of course this app was free and there is a free trail period but frankly nobody knows how long that free trail period is for subscribers. As far as I can tell, it's going to cost me $17.29 a month for the Ipad app, a total of $207 dollars. So the blood suckers of the Wall Street Journal think that I am going to pay them $350 a year for the print edition and another $79 for the online subscription and then tack on another $207 for this they are crazy.
Again these folks just don't get it do they. What I am going to do, once I get the bill for the Ipad application I will cancel my $350 a year subscription and $79 online subscription and just live with the Ipad app.
Again, if the bright folks would only see that this could change there business and add to it. First I think that the Ipad app should be free to those that already subscribe to both the paper and the online portion. At best I would pay $5 a month extra but I am not going to pay these folks the same price as someone without a subscription.

I also don't like these folks that give me something for "free", take my credit card and start billing me a month later without me knowing. That is what is going to happen here, because Wall Street Journal has not mention anything about a cost of this, saying it's free for a limited time.

Again the app is good and worth learning and using but I refuse to pay top dollar on a product that I am paying top dollar for now. So if they want to lost my $429 a year account because they want to gouge me for another $207, they will find themselves losing about $220 a year when I just get the Ipad app only.

17 August : I don't like the new version's terrible feature of defaulting to the main page when the app goes to sleep, or when you have to quit it, when you have an article or section opened. And often losing it forever if you had used the disappearing Apple Notifications. It's a feature and function that I don't like. But it's a pretty slick as far as eye-candy goes. I'll reevaluate it once iOS 11 comes out.
27 September : Beware the #Jabberwock my child! Since I installed iOS 10, I can't access the external (and even internal) hyperlinks in the app! As in the links for #Taranto's "Best of the Web" column. Not to mention being even more buggy! Needs Serious Work Now!
3/19: Besides my comments below, which are STILL relevant today, I have found that the video links (internal & external) are "spotty" in their performance as are the loading of the WSJ graphics. And the suggestion on the videos to restart my iPhone so they will start to play, is disingenuous at best! Don't I know how to clear my RAM?!?

Furthermore, if I was going to, I would scrap the entire app and start from the bottom up! Besides my previous criticism, I would also include the ability to search the archives of the prior editions, as well as being able to switch between the various WSJ/Dow Jones affiliated apps! This is a " #GoldenConvergence " Fail! A topic I should know something about since I was the person who created the term and idea! Sad to say, but even Apple (AAPL.O) can't seem to parse exactly what was said in plain English & not "geek" or even Digerati speak! Remember, I was writing for the average investor and reader!

The two star rating remains, but it will almost certainly go lower because of its unrealized potential!

Dow Jones, "Do it Right!"

The WSJ & Related Apps are "pretty," BUT I Expect More from Dow Jones! Even "simple stuff," like sending a letter to the Editor about a story, OpEd item, etc. WHAT? No one THERE EVEN thought of that?

And what about Interactivity? No one, NOT one, even thought about ANY of this? Especially since "The Digerati" are saving it so much in both Fixed & Variable Overhead Costs.

Even the "Old" Recon For Investors & Apple Recon (ca. 1995) had more interactivity than this!

YOU Can Do "So Much Better!" I know you can!

Social distancing to country homes since early March has resulted in the interruption of more than 50 years of reading daily print editions of the WSJ. I am now, at least while away from my primary residence, reading and enjoying the WSJ on line. It is very well done, easy to navigate and remains the last nationally distributed print news journal featuring in-depth articles and editorials generally free of agenda driven political correctness. Until a few years ago I also subscribed to and read the NYT daily but finally could not take the bias in what should have been articles delivering the facts. How sad to see this demise but a genuine opportunity for the WSJ. One suggestion for the WSJ online is for an indexed storehouse of important prior WSJ articles as well as those of other media on topics of the day as well as timeless ones, each accessed by pressing on the title. In science the debate over man made vs natural global warming including graphs of temperatures and sea levels over time labeled for the matching climate periods; advancement in storing electricity; implementing 5G and what it will mean; satellite system growth and what it will mean; status of development of Covid 19 vaccines; graphs of Covid 19 tests and test results, hospitalizations and deaths; other areas where the current orthodoxy and hard science are in dispute to name a few. In front page news, the origins of BLM and ANTIFA, their financial backers and their stated goals; China’s goals, tactics and corporate facilitators and US dependence on them for certain products; our changed universities from the standpoint of what is taught and not taught and by whom and what is permitted and not permitted; key stories that contain the known facts that are being investigated by US Attorney Durham as background for when his investigation begins to be revealed; education in our inner cities, charter schools and the teachers’ unions ; some good jokes about current events; and some uplifting stories to name a few. To avoid making this note too long I have not listed so many other areas that are equal to or more important than those listed. I am suggesting that the WSJ online have a search engine feature for serious information and let Amazon and Google harvest and sell user information, shoes and TVs.

I've been subscribed to the Journal for about 10 years now and I made the switch from print to digital about three years ago. First I would like to say that going from WSJ print to WSJ digital on the iPad completely blew my mind. I expected the transition would take some getting used to but was pleasantly surprised to find that was not the case. Using the iPad, you really feel as though you're interacting with the Journal, much as you would with the print version- a tactile experience as opposed to clicking articles with your mouse in the browser.

A few things that stood out to me-

It downloads automatically so it is there right when I wake up and it is stored right on the device for offline viewing (no more paying those absurd in-flight Gogo fees), a terrific layout, videos and interactive graphs and all sorts of things that enhanced the experience, and many more features that I won't take the time to list here.

I would highly recommend this app to both digital and print subscribers, however there are a few issues and over the last 6 months or so it has seemed as though they have been constantly changing the layout and commands of the app which I find irritating. I've also noticed that this latest version seems to have even less access than the previous versions. Some of my other annoyances are: no access to My Portfolio, no access to market information (apart from the tickers in the articles), my saved articles keep getting deleted with new updates, the app tries to refresh too often, and I don't like the new gesture controls- now there is more tapping and less swiping.

I haven't personally experienced any issues with the WSJ app causing other app downloads/updates to stall, although many reviewers claim to have experienced problems. Apple insists that the Journal stays in the Newsstand so be sure to have an icon on your home page for the app- you used to have to do this on your own but the feature may be built in now. They seem to have fixed a lot of the crashes and I no longer have issues with the articles being locked despite being logged in.

Three stars- would have been four (possibly five) if they had not changed the interface and if it had all the same functionality that is available in the browser version. You pay for it, may as well have access.

August 19
Update: no change
WSJ asks us to rate app
Doesn’t fix problems!
Why?

April update
Can’t forward articles consistently. Usually app denies 8 or 9 out of 10 attempts.
This hurts me and my associates
More, it hurts the Wall Street Journals reputation as it’s publications can’t be forwarded and debated / discussed / cited as a reliable news source.
Sad that an app is detrimental to an otherwise great news source...

March : still don’t have it right folks. When I try forwarding something, the forwarding app disappears. Try again? Gonzo. I had to blow up the app, download again, and keep trying to forward a simple article. Why can’t we get this right?

If only the tech side of the Wall Street Journal could get it as right as the editorial and content side...
I've been a subscriber for over 30 years, and I love my WSJ. However, two years back when I went "green" I ditched the printed edition of the WSJ, Barron's, the Ecoknomist, the NY Times, and so forth. Only the WSJ app gives me blank pages and poor functionality.

The service is terrible, and I'm incredibly disappointed, feeling let down by this institution.

10/3
New chapter:
When the issue is supposed to update itself, screen goes blank. Have to blow up app, restart the entire process by re-downloading the app.
Just awful.
No follow up from the WSJ
No help
They don't care

12/3 interning
I continue to get questions regarding the app and rating it, but the WSJ cannot and will not repair the bugs that continue to cause the problems!
Specifically:
On multiple occasions, when I try to get the current days paper, the screen goes blank. I have to blow up and delete the old app; go to the App Store; download another WSJ app for IPad, and start all over.
Convenient?
HELL NO
rating would be lower if I could.,
Mike Nolan

12/6
Much improved!
However, loading still tedious and slow.
Also, clogs memory.
Keep trying!

5/18 wish you could get it right. If it even senses that a new issue is ready, it Stalls and sits in recirculating mode for minutes

January for most of 2018 the app was behaving, but over the past couple of weeks, back to this old antics. Good luck; I’m so sick of this. Once downloaded (takes minutes not seconds as it should) and while I’m on the train, I have to shut down, engage telecom connection, and attempt to keep reading. So sad.

Kept getting prompted to review so app performance and content finally encouraged me to write a review. Of the 5 publications I read on my iPad the two from Dow Jones, The Journal and Barron's, are the worst performing and designed apps. Both revert you back to the first page of an article after returning to the respective app from reading an email for example. Navigation in the respective apps was clearly designed by someone who expected the reader to behave similar to a print reader. There is no ability to search, too see related content to the companies mentioned in the article you are reading, see Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Resizing the article should use the standard zoom in and two finger pinch, see the economist app. These are but a few examples but the app developers can do further comparison research themselves.
Now to content. The Journal had provided outstanding reporting from the perspective of the business owner and executive. I say had because the content has slowly shifted perspectives to the politics of an issue or subject with the reporter clearly expressing a viewpoint in their reporting. The Journal of old made significant effort to restrict opinions to their editorial page. Now one cannot distinguish between news and commentary in this paper. Also the perspective of the reporting has shifted to effects on the ultra wealthy of the country rather then that of business whether small, mid or large. Not all readers with interest in business subjects are extremely wealthy. I assume the Journal is attempting to move to this target market with the thought it will be the most lucrative financially for the paper. Whether this is successful for the publication is dependent upon whether the loss of their historic reader will be compensated for with the readership gains from their new targeted reader.
App crashes after recent update, reverts back to page 1 when returning to app to name a few issues. Tech support offered solution is to uninstall and reinstall app. This is always their solution for issues and it seldom resolves the problem.
Still does not conform to tablet standards. Rather than being able to two finger pinch to resize must use predefined text sizes. If I change from portrait to landscape view or vice versa I am taken back to the beginning of an article. This does not occur with other publications I read on my tablet. Only
Dow Jones apps. This needs to be fixed. Based upon my experience with your tablet apps and website you either have substandard programmers or contract with the low cost bidder. For what you charge I expect better.

Great app content but usability issues make experience some what frustrating:
-- Some articles or graphics require reading in browser and that requires authentication... every time should ch a link is clicked, even is same reading session
-- Sections that contain several independent articles, such as U.S. Watch, are labeled in the drop down list by the title of the first article (today was "Storm hits camp..."), no industrial action that there are additional topics being covered
-- Lately some animated ads appearing alongside content make it hard to focus on reading and no way to shift the page to hide the distracting ad
-- Video preroll ads cannot be skipped, as one can when viewing in regular web browser (the latest Adobe Marketing ad with the James Bond type character was fun to watch the first few times, now it is just infuriating each time I have to sit through, I am sure not the intended effect for the Adobe or WSJ brands)
-- About a dozen clicks workaround needed to print an article, by having to search online for the article, logging in, printing from there... and don't get me started on the search interface that takes me from one site to another and having to input the search there again (pro tip: don't search by article title unless you want to waste time, search by author)
-- Some main section pages in the apps have confusing layout cues; start with large teaser on the left and then two columns of smaller teasers -- at the top there is text and image that suggests left right reading across the two columns, but then the other four remaining teasers actually are ordered vertically (where the actual order is seen in the drop down list). This is important for user to get correctly as they need to find their place when shifting from that main section page and to the additional articles that are not listed but in the drop down menu.
-- Speaking of relatively hidden content, why don't the main sections make it more clear there are additional articles that only can be seen from the drop down menu? Why not scroll down to see more teasers for the rest of the articles? And the left column on the front page, on the brown background, could make it more clear (besides the slight fadeout) that the column is scrollable)

Love the content. Granted, some of the frustrations are fed because I know a thing or two about UI/UX and I have high expectations of the WSJ brand... and the same subscription price is significant.

Offering feedback in hope these will be fixed, should not be hard to fix! (WSJ, if you would like any details on the above, you can reach me from the contact form at komotion.com)

Continuing trouble with slow downloading of issue, occasional unavailability of Latest News or Today’s Issue. Very haphazard.

Latest complaint: scrolling through the Latest News sections in at least two, sometimes three or more of these landing pages have an ugly overlap of type in headlines on the right side of the page. I complained about this earlier, including a screen shot of this glitch. The person who responded to my complaint clearly didn’t understand the issue, and in onscreen dialogue with her, it became apparent that she had a very limited command of English. In the end, the glitch was not corrected, and it persists to this day. I’ve also had bad experience with Customer Service in that they always tell me that they can’t find my account. I HAVE SUBSCRIBED THROUGH iTUNES FOR A GOOD 10 YEARS and I have to prove it anew every time.

If it weren’t for the excellent WSJ content, I’d long be outta here!

Added on 5-5-018: that problem I described above, which occurs when viewing Latest News in landscape format, has not been fixed. Thus I’m going to subtract two more stars in my rating.

Newest problem is extremely slow downloading of Latest News and Daily editions.

July 1: WSJ told me that the slow downloading was the fault of my internet connection...

...then fixed it. Also, the overlapping text has been fixed. So now, everything is working OK. Cross fingers, hope this lasts. But may I request: please keep track of users who subscribe via iTunes, so that every time I have a problem, I don’t have to prove anew that I’m a subscriber? Thanks...

Same comments as last time.

June 5. About a month after WJS radically changed the format of Latest News:

I realize the need to change, but not all change is progress. The new item-by-item format is modern, but it abandons the “newspaper look” that many of us cherish from years of reading the WSJ. Maybe I’m just being an old creature of habit, but I wish you would revert to the “newspaper look” for this running, up-to-date coverage. At the very least please do not adopt the new format for your daily editions. Thanks for considering these opinions and wishes...Ron Wakefield

November 27: Fewer glitches now, but I still find the ‘new’ format of Latest News unsatisfying. Too much like an app, too little like a newspaper. Traditionalist? Guilty as charged...Ron Wakefield

April 15: I’ve adjusted to the un-newspaper-like Latest News format...reluctantly. Aside from that gripe, WSJ remains a beacon of clear thought, in-depth reporting and non-PC analysis. I wouldn’t want to live without it, especially in this period of lockdown and in-home confinement. Thank you, WSJ – may you ever thrive.

MAY 3: no change from April 15 comments.

I subscribe to the New York Times and the Journal. But I might as well just read the former for all the difference I get on the news side. Like many of my friends, I’m considering canceling.

The examples are many. Here are a few:

Whether Biden tilted US policies to help his family or himself (which is the never mentioned important issue) is not clear. The evidence, however, proves that he lied about meeting with Ukrainian operatives on behalf of his family’s business ventures. Further, he lied about Giuliani manufactured Hunter’s computer. Additionally, we all know that the only reason his family got deals with China, Ukraine, and Russia was for access to Biden. Obviously, there should have been a journalistic if not official investigation into whether Biden was hands-off China, encouraged the “Russian reset,” or continued sending fifty million dollars a year to Ukraine’s corrupt energy sector because of family ties. Journalists should actually look into these issues and offer context in reporting. The journal, at best, would say that republicans claim something, but there’s no evidence. Frankly, as an attorney, I don’t think your journalists know what evidence is (witness testimony, affidavits, videos, emails, factual inconsistencies). The fact that Ukraine claims to have investigated is obviously meaningless.

Likewise, the biggest unreported story now concerns the election irregularities. Yes, most likely republicans will not be able to show enough specific fraud to prove the 2020 presidential election was stolen. However, there is evidence of “widespread” fraud and manipulation in certain key states. Whether the evidence is credible or would convince a judge or jury is a separate issue (as with any criminal case). Just the issue of not being allowed to watch (close enough to see the ballots) the counting of hundreds of thousands of votes should be investigated. I assume some of you have been watching the hearings in the swing states. And if you don’t see significant problems, I can’t help you. Ultimately, however, there exists a great deal of evidence of wrongdoing. This at least warrants journalistic investigation and reporting. With the Journal, unfortunately, I don’t even see curiosity. If the shoe were on the other foot, there would not only be headlines but massive rioting.

The list goes on and on with a wide variety of issues, political and otherwise. I get the feeling that many of your reporters are young, unschooled, biased, and just lacking in the knowledge base and critical examination skills to succinctly convey the important parts of a story in context. The bottom line is that the Journal is failing to paint an accurate picture of what is, which to me is the ultimate goal of journalism.

March 8:

Regrettably, this review, while for another app upgrade, is more of the same.

Step 1: go to Newsstand
Step 2: tap Wally J app icon
Step 3: watch Wally J app open, promisingly.
Step 4: tap one, ANY, article
Step 5: watch the screen freeze - LITERALLY BRICKING MY IPAD - EVERYTIME!
Step 6: wait 17-44 mins as my iPad recovers.
Step 7: regret that, as a loyal subscriber, who has subscribed to the Wally J, NON-STOP since I was 14 years old - now actually regrets ever subscribing.
Shame on you App Dev's.

May 31, it now bricks my iPad 100% of the time I use it. I quit!

@#$%^&*(+_)(*&^%$@!

February 11 update (which relates to the app's Feb.5 update) - finally has fixed the crash issue! Unlike what many of the other reviewers here are reporting, I can report the exact opposite – namely my app HAD become so SLUGGISH and 'bricky'/unresponsive
that using it became a form of masochism (not my thing ;) hence my earlier reviews. Yet, after the February 5 update, I have been able to use it as expected; FINALLY. Well done.

December 14 update!
See Aug. 20th Update! It still bricks my latest, high end, high spec, iPad. While I continue to be impressed with the UI (very fine imagining of what a daily news 'paper' can be, using the app itself is 100% - consistently sluggish (in app) and frequently bricks my ENTIRE iPad 3X per week (with ALL OTHER APPS CLOSED) - not cool DOW JONES/News Corp - NOT cool!

Aug. 20th Update!

DEAR GOD DOW JONES...EVERY TIME you update your Wally J app, it literally 'bricks' my iPad for the first 3-6 days - EVERY TIME i use it. Insert all sorts of swearwords here. It literally renders, not only the app (annoying enough when one is trying to use the app for its intended purpose - namely, staying up-to-date) but the ENTIRE iPad - it becomes so unresponsive (270 seconds and counting - ON AVERAGE :((((() that NOTHING else can be done on the iPad until the Wally J app finally settles.

Holy JEEZUS - FIX THIS PLEASE.

OLDER POST...
This, in my opinion, is not only a great news app, but THE VERY BEST news app - bar none. I have nearly every major news app, and the Wally J so thoroughly succeeded in thinking from the ground up what a 21st century newspaper 'can' be'. They've gone a long way towards fixing many nettlesome bugs.

However, since the most recent upgrade, it feels like the most bloated App I have because nine out of 10 times it literally brings my entire iPad to a crawl (As in -- slow, unresponsive, won't switch screens, won't take any screen tap input of any kind) and occasionally even crashes the entire iPad just by launching the Wall Street Journal App. EPIC fail!

There are a few additional features that would make this indispensable, like a search feature, like the NYTimes has, but all in good time, i'm sure.

Used to be a great, no nonsense, just the facts, news source; Now 60% leftist assumptions and spin and 40% facts. Bloomberg News, same deal. Have no idea where you go anymore for “just the facts”. When I quit the WSJ and Bloomberg News that will be the end of my interest in and my time spent pursuing the media news.
Summary:
WSJ content loaded with grammatical and sentence structure errors and 60% half truths, but the best news source left standing. No other media source today comes close to it but it is still a sad commentary on where the U.S. public news reporting stands today.
02/22 UPDATE:
There is a big difference between the printed version of WSJ and the app version. Both versions, for me, contain content you’ll find nowhere else. It is a very expensive prospect to sign up for both WSJ versions, but there is not a week that goes by that I don’t find something in the print version that is not a valuable source of information. Both versions are more left than I would like them to be and both versions have to be filtered for lack of factual basis.
This is a review of the WSJ mobile app and from a mobile app perspective it is outstanding. I have never found anything that I could not accomplish in the mobile app that was required for subscription management or article archiving and it is outstanding from a user-friendly aspect in this respect. Interestingly, it is not very easy sometimes to track something from the print version and find it with the mobile app so that you can archive it’s digital version.
From the computer science perspective, the mobile app is outstanding.
Mobile App is in excellence ascendancy - a great App that keeps getting better.
It is a shame that current administration may not have a chance straightening out China or Europe while western media, WSJ included, continues to undermine the administration’s position with poorly analyzed disinformation.
09/04 UPDATE:
20 second Vent and then Will rate App: My past opinion was that WSJ had drifted WAY Left. Recently some journalistic indications they may be UNLEFTING and way more sticking to the facts. YAY.
APP Review:
Remains excellent and constantly upgrading. Manage your subscriptions, quickly peruse what’s happening in the world news and markets, very quick and intuitive to use. I think too expensive but can’t find alternative.
HERE WE GO AGAIN:
Still a great App that’s continuing to improve itself; In my opinion WSJ Journalism takes a lot of LEFT turns from the facts and it is driving me crazy.
03/06 UPDATE:
Great App for perusing news; great news coverage; great subscription management; So far, can’t tear myself away from this incredible news source. As expensive as it is, couldn’t run my high-tech business without it and with the App, the latest news is always right there at your fingertips. The financial news highlights are a must for running a leading edge business entity.
05/27 UPDATE:
A great app that keeps getting better.

I just canceled my subscription! I've had it! I emailed WSJ right after Christmas complaining that my app stopped updating itself. A few days later I got an email saying they forwarded it to the technical department. Today is Jan 28th and the most recent WSJ on my app is from December 26th! Yes, I'm still paying for it of course! :(

I've had issues with this app from the get-go and I leave those comments right below. In a nutshell this app is very inconvenient as in order to get the latest newspaper you have to turn your iPad on, select the WSJ app and leave it running for 20-30 minutes or more so it can update itself. I've tried the multitasking feature where you go to other app and let the WSJ run in the background - it stops updating! Doesn't matter if it's wi-fi or 3G signal, it takes for ever. I'm always on the run and it'd be nice to be able to turn the dang thing on and have the latest paper but I always forget to let it update itself.

What infuriates me the most is the price. It's cheaper to buy the paper version of the paper - is that even logical?

The abysmal customer service has finally gotten me convinced that it's time to let it go. I've waited for several weeks for someone to contact me about my app not updating itself but I guess they have more important things to do.

Oh well, I'm out of here... :(

Previous review:
My WSJ for iPad stopped updating itself, the last news were from December 26th and it won't update no matter what I try (log out and log in again, etc). While I am at it, the app should keep updating itself anytime there's internet/wifi connection. It's silly to have to click on the app for the updating to occur, it updates 7 days back so it takes FOR EVER and I have to keep remembering that before I leave the house. If the wifi is on just update, there must be a way to make it automatic.

Previous review:
I've been a subscriber for a month now. It's a fairly good app and I enjoy the newspaper, always have. However I'm thinking about going back to the paper version.

For one the incredible amount of advertisement is nauseating, I mean every third page or so there's a %#&@$! ad!?

Also, it's very expensive, I mean it's pretty ridiculous to pay more than for the paper itself and it's not even exactly the same paper (see below).

The biggest reason for me possibly going back to the paper version is that the electronic option NEVER looks like the actual newspaper. I'm not talking about the NOW version, I'd expect it to differ from the paper edition. Also, I expect to see some differences as this is an electronic version. However the TODAY version of the WSJ app should be just like the real Today WSJ newspaper, I want the same articles, in the same order, etc. That's not the case!

It's so annoying when discussing an article and someone tells me about a specific article which is supposedly on the front page. Well, in the real paper that is. In the WSJ app it could be anywhere - or not there at all. :(

It shouldn't be like that, I want an IDENTICAL version of the actual newspaper with some enhancements thanks to video, etc.

Everything in the previous comment below still applies for the ipad app, which is ok but could be better. Unfortunately, it's become time for me to ditch my ipad for commuting and rely on my iphone and employer-issued surface tablet.

The glaring problem with the iphone app is it doesn't offer a "today's paper" view like the ipad. Some of us are still approach the journal as a daily process: You work through the sections of interest, maybe get important updates during the day, and you've learned what you need to know until tomorrow's paper. Not so with the iphone and win 10 apps. You get a mish-mash of articles from the last few days, labeled with the day they were posted (rather than the day the print edition included them), and a lot of the stuff from the print edition doesn't seem to even make it into the iphone app. What does make it into the app is organized into sections that don't correspond to the paper edition. And there's a lot that I can only find by searching, so I've concluded its not accessible from the menu sections, such as most of the saturday review section. With the ipad version, I can refresh the app and then go through the COMPLETE paper at my convenience, kind of like sticking the paper edition in my briefcase on the way out the door. No such luck with the iphone app, you just dip into the "stream-of-conciousness' and get whatever happens to be at the top of the heap at the moment you are reading. If I want stream-of-consciousness, I can use my RSS feeds, but the curated daily edition is what makes (or should make) the journal different.

Pretty much the same story with the win 10 app, although I haven't used it as much. I've pretty much reconciled myself to ignoring the app and simply using the browser to read "today's paper."

The other big problem is, except for the iphone (and even there, see the comment below) the journal seems to be moving away from the bulk download/cache model into downloading individual articles when read. Today's iPhones have sufficient memory that the space occupied by one or two days' worth of articles is insignificant. As noted in the previous comment below, not all of us have consistent or convenient connectivity on commutes. Seems to me you are leaving readers with three options - shift our spending from content providers (e.g., WSJ) to bandwidth providers, rely on often dodgy public wifi options, or move to services like pocket where we collect articles from a variety of sources to read when bandwidth isn't available. Sorry, but I don't see how any of these help the journal maintain readership, but that is your problem and not mine.

Previous comment: Great content, but two ongoing annoyances. First, navigation between days is awkward, requiring many clicks (maybe entries in the pull down article list for "previous day" and "next day"?). Second is the increasing trend toward (unmarked) articles that require an internet connection to read. Some of us download the morning paper before leaving for work, then expect to read it on the commute without an internet connection. Not cool to click on an interesting headline only to get an "internet required" message when the train is going through a dead zone.

2012 UPDATE
We now use this App with a WSJ print subscription gifted to us. I like the App, but am still alarmed at the unreasonable pricing. Online news executives still price their products thinking their news is exclusive (it usually isn't) and that their publication is the only publishing product a typical family needs, when none really fulfill this purpose in the modern world. At best, the WSJ's online access is worth about .99 cents per week. Unfortunately, it costs much more.

The thoughtfully-designed multimedia App does offer articles, photography, videos and the daily radio report, as well as opinion, market information and daily stock and market quotes. The immediacy and timeliness of the App makes it much better than the obsolete print edition. As always, most stories are well-conceived, smartly written and thoroughly edited. About the only element missing from the Journal's online Apps is a reader commenting system, which is a big hole.

Sadly, this no longer is the more even-handed Wall Street Journal of the 1970s, 80s and 90s. Since its acquisition by Rupert Murdoch, Journal stories all too often, take on a transparent, conservative political view that skews the guarded world of greedy and wealthy capitalists in ways that can seem disturbing, and decidedly exclusionary, to common folks of lesser means. Sometimes the politics of today's "Journal" journalism is merely amusing, but at other times, it's outrageous. And today's Journal sometimes has allowed market manipulating information to creep into the news report as well. In early 2013, an untrue rumor about Apple manufacturing, timed to drive down the stock price, was successfully planted and published in all editions, but quietly removed from the posted story a day later. Sad. The old Journal was more adept at producing balanced, trustworthy journalism.

That aside, the Journal's technology news is particularly good. Rumors that it may part ways with the "All Things D" franchise it helped create are damaging. I hope the company retains a contract with this team of reporters and editors.

I am disappointed that iPhone readers can't click to enlarge still photos or that rotated horizontal stills don't auto-enlarge. Dear WSJ (word) editors: it's a multimedia world now and this only is a 3.5-inch screen! Fill it! You wouldn't think of offering videos without allowing rotation to landscape mode and filling the screen (and indeed the WSJ App does rotate the screen for videos). What makes you think it's acceptable to deliver undersized still photographs that often cannot be "read" due to their tiny dimensions?

The Wall Street Journal App is full featured, informative and entertaining. It's too bad it isn't politically balanced, as fair as it should be, and more affordably priced.

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2010 REVIEW (Original App)
In our household, we have two iPhones, two iPads, two MacBook Pro's (and two old MacBook Pros for backups), a Mac Pro and soon, an AppleTV or Mac mini connected to a 57-inch display in the den. We are NOT going to pay over $200 per year for an online, single iPad-only subscription to any publication. The Journal is a great newspaper, but the greedy Rupert Murdoch and Journal editors must be nuts. We have been a WSJ print subscriber in the past, but print is dead as far as we are concerned so that is no longer an option. Consequently, we'll wait for Rupert to come to his senses — and for the price to be lowered to about .99 cents per week. Mr. Murdoch: Customers now provide and pay for your delivery technology. Pass your production savings along!

As a WSJ reader for decades and an iPad user since the day they were released I feel qualified to offer this constructive criticism. As a preface it should be noted that this is NOT referencing the content of the publication which is indisputably, consistently excellent. This is about the app.

Others in this forum have noted how each release seems to be fraught with problems and reductions in functionality. Allow me to be specific:

• Past versions have automatically directed the user to the latest (i.e., "today's") version of the paper. Not this one. It stays where you are even if another issue has been published. Unhelpful and a nuisance. People want TODAY'S news, not yesterday's paper when they open the app.

• When reading an article past versions have highlighted that article in the sidebar list so that you know where you are and what article you are reading (if you think this isn't a problem try reading a multi-page article and you want to see the title of it - it is nowhere to be found). That has disappeared in the latest version. Another nuisance.

• In the past one could highlight a word and access its definition of via the iPad's dictionary. Another very helpful feature removed. More than a nuisance, a real step backwards.

• When switching sections the app first goes (quickly, but annoyingly) to the page showing all of the available issues and then snaps to the new section. What for? This is a distraction, useless in function and a waste of time. This is another downgrade from prior versions.

• Saved articles no longer disappear from the list after being un-saved. One must tap on something else and then return to the Saved Articles list to see the refreshed list.

• Why is there no date on the article byline? Sometimes people save articles and read them days later but with no date in the byline it's impossible to tell when it was published. That's just bad journalism.

• Why is there no title on the middle pages of the article so that you know what you're reading when you come back to the app after switching to something else? This runs counter to the print edition which always shows the headline of an article when it is continued on an inner page.

• There is no way to link to comments or email to the author. Really - you allow comments on the web-based version but you can't read them or make one from the iPad version? That's a shame as more people would participate and a more vibrant community of readers would exist as a result.

• Sending an article's URL via the iOS share menu in an email or SMS puts the user behind the paywall. That's short-sighted. If the WSJ wants to promote its content and get more readers then you should be allowed to send at least a few articles a day to other people without them having to login through the paywall. (Besides, doesn't everyone know the workaround of Googling the exact title and when the link appears you can access the article without the paywall? That's silly - either do it both ways or neither way if you are so concerned about protecting your content.)

• Would it be so hard to put the number of pages at the bottom instead of those useless and nearly invisible dots? How about the middle pages containing "Page 2 of 6" instead of the dots or something like that.

• How about an arrow on the right and left to advance or go back a page in the article instead of having to swipe across the screen?

• Why is it that when you save an article and read it you have to scroll down but when you read an article in the current version you have to scroll sideways? That's inconsistent and a terrible UI violation.

There are more petty annoyances but I hope that someone at WSJ is reading. I'm sure that my comments reflect those of others and that my feelings about the content being consistently excellent and superior to other "news" publications (I say that in quotes because most others aren't really news) is emblematic of the way most readers feel.

The WSJ has and should always stand for top quality in every regard. Having an app so lacking in consistency, user interface design and simple niceties runs contrary to their reputation and aspirations.

Disclaimer:

For the benefit of those who consider consumer demographics in judging an online product review: I came into my iPad via a Apple-hating relative who won a contest, so I might not have the same motivations as you do. Search Wikipedia for a summary of the "Problems of Other Minds" if it isn't already a factor in your heuristics.

Review:

My library of iPad apps is fairly spartan. The WSJ app is the only app I currently pay for, and I plan on buying several $1 - $3 apps after Jailbreaking my iPad in the future (this is entirely due to Apple's neutered browser, Safari). I already have made my peace with paying an extreme price for the online, print, and iPad subscriptions, although my student budget will at least have its burden slightly lightened by dumping the online version.

I'll be honest, I think you should be able to access the same format "digital newspaper" that the iPad presents on your PC. I hate, HATE going to almost any other news site to read more than a single article linked in some correspondence. Until the major newspapers realize that they should stop trying to reinvent the wheel and just structure all their digital content in the format of their physical papers, I think they will continue to slide in popularity relative to their cable-based counterparts. I feel that they are disregarding the key aspect of pleasure and utility in reading news via newspaper format compared to, say, the "Yahoo" format. The "Yahoo" format is unconsciously selective, generally placing the most arresting headlines on an ugly Flash merry-go-round at the top of the page, and then having functional equivalent of a "Top 3" stories for the various departments of news below that. I suggest reading a few days' worth of news on one of those sites, you'll find to be an oddly unpleasant endeavor. I believe (and this is just a guess), that "Yahoo"-sites probably get a greater majority [than WSJ] of their traffic from people arriving via link to a specific article, rather than people directly visiting the front- or homepage.

In sharp contrast, the newspaper format is actually useful if one is sitting down to consume news as a dedicated activity, rather than as an auxiliary part of work or some other activity. I don't believe that print journalism is dead, but I believe the implication behind many of its leaders abandoning their old format in favor of the flashier "Yahoo" kind is that they do (or did). I think the industry overshot when it was panicking about becoming an online presence at the beginning of the 2000s, Wall Street Journal included.

In discussing this with others, I've heard two additional common complaints. The first concerns the "unconscious selection" I mentioned "Yahoo" sites employing earlier. I'm sure there is some rudimentary editorial evaluation done by them concerning what should make the front page and how it should be structured, but it takes just a few days of reading all the articles they post there to realize that it's insignificant compared to the thought that the WSJ (and, to an slightly lesser extent, the New York Times) invests in its online layout. I value their implicit judgement on the important events of the day. This is balanced in the WSJ by their left-side index of current articles, which provides for the visitor/reader with a specific focus (featured in both the print & iPad version).

The last complaint is simple: the WSJ still is stuck in the 20th-century world of citations. I wish they would step up to the next level of transparency, already practiced by the other kind of "journal," and reinvigorated by Wikipedia. I want to see links people! I think the WSJ could be revolutionary in providing a new kind of newspaper. Their implementation of multimedia is already pretty top-notch.

All of this is my background opinion. I would say that despite its absurdly high price, it is the by far the best newspaper app you can subscribe to, and I think the only one that could actually replace a print newspaper. If you are going to spend your money on a newspaper, I would say to consider this app instead. It has never been buggy for me (I've seen this in two others). It is what I think the common man would expect to be the standard for its class (though some real competition would make the price more appropriate).

As for other considerations, I'm not going to review the Wall Street Journal's substance. If you're reading this, chances are that you understand and can accept their slant on things. A wise man gets his perspective from multiple sources anyways.

I hope this review helps you, and kudos on considering your knowledge of current events important enough to merit reading this long. Best wishes from California!

Updated for v3.9.5 on 3rd Gen "Retina" iPad

The application badly needs an update. The text is nigh unreadable on the new iPad with Retina display. This is now rated 1-star down from a previous 4-stars. I will re-review after it gets an update.

I will also note that the NYT application was Retina-updated almost immediately, and looks fantastic. It also has duplicated some of the excellent UI/touch shortcuts, but still doesn't give you the full issue of the NYT (which is a crying shame).

Updated for v3.6 (on iPad 2)

After having spent another month with both the WSJ and NYT iPad apps, I can say without question that the WSJ app is much better and more reliable. (Whether you prefer its news is another story.) The main reasons are:

1. Full print-version of the paper available on the WSJ.
2. Inter-article navigation is actually very good on the WSJ app once you learn the app's special gestures.
3. Ability to save old issues for offline viewing.
4. Speedy download of the entire WSJ issue with a progress bar.
5. No performance hiccoughs, fast app switching works.

The only reason I don't give this app 5 stars is because it lacks these features:

1. Automatic archiving of all issues downloaded for future reference. (I shouldn't have to say "save", I subscribed so I should always have them.)
2. Way too many ads. Between every article and section is a full page ad, and they're always the same 7 ads, and I don't care about them (or I'm already a customer of what's being advertised in some of the case). Really, I am paying to subscribe, get rid of the crappy time wasting ads.

Cheers!

(Old v3.5 review...) This is a review and comparison of both the WSJ and NYT iPad apps.

First, the WSJ app is fantastic in one way: It downloads the entire actual print issue to the iPad for offline reading, and keeps the old issues as well (how long I can’t say). This means I read the exact paper that Rebecca reads (in print), which I really, really like. In addition, it has an “Up to date” version of the newspaper which looks a lot like a regular issue (from the UI perspective) but which they keep updated throughout the day.

There are several things I don’t like about the WSJ app, though. Navigation between articles is very inconvenient. There’s no easy way to go back to the overview/front page, and when you do, it has lost your place. This is especially annoying if you were reading an article low down on what in the print paper would be the left sidebar on the front page – it will have scrolled back to the top. It’s hard to jump between sections, and hard to see the full list of articles. What they really need is a second version of the UI which just gives a hierarchical list of all the articles without all the “fancy UI” crap that actually makes it vastly harder to read (or enjoy reading).

Now, the NYT app is only (as far as I can tell or have used) for the latest news. It has a much simpler UI than the WSJ, but in this case simplicity seems to be working in its favor. There’s a button to switch to any section you want, and each section looks like a grid of articles – some of which take more grid space depending on their import. You can tap the article and view it, and the application makes it clear (by changing the headline color) which articles you have and haven’t read. It’s much more convenient to use than the WSJ.

Unfortunately for the NYT, this app also suffers several usability problems. The first it shares with the WSJ: it just doesn’t handle going back to the article list well. If I’m reading an article on the 3rd index page of the Opinion section, then hit “back,” I’m looking at the first page of the Opinion section again. I can’t get a simple article list either, although it does have a “nav bar” at the bottom of the screen which shows you the previous and next article title. (That’s not enough to usefully decide if you want to read it, which is why I read the first paragraph on the index page.) The NYT also has no way to see which articles appeared in print, and which issue/section/page, so I can tell someone who is a print reader. I’d love to be able to download the NY Metro NYT dated X/Y/Z and read the paper exactly as published, just as the WSJ does.

Finally, both apps have annoying in-your-face animated/moving/fading ads, that at almost all times take up about a third of the screen space, and even worse, they have occasional full-page ads which require you to wait a few moments before clicking a button to make them go away. If anything will drive people away from paying for an iPad subscription, it is this. On the weekends, I vastly prefer reading the print NYT than reading the iPad version, despite the fact that article navigation (i.e., actually turning the broadsheets) is much worse.

In conclusion, I would say both of these apps will get you the current and most up-to-date news with a little pain. Neither is a paragon of usability; they both have serious navigational shortcomings (although the NYT is better). Both inundate paying (subscribing!) customers with annoying, colorful and moving ads that completely distract the reader. I can’t really recommend purchasing these subscriptions to anyone until the ads are gone, but since I get “free” access with my “real” (print) subscriptions, I’ll live with it for now.

The NYT app on the iPhone is much better than the app on the iPad; that sort of interface (as an option) on the iPhone for both newspapers would greatly increase my happiness.

LATEST UPDATE (3/26)
Don't you love it when the app update notes say, "crash fixes?" I think this means, "now with more frequent crashes!" Yeah, that's the first thing that happened when I tried to read an article this morning. Not only did it crash the WSJ app, it also crashed the springboard. Now that's a first. Someone please tell me why I keep hoping that the developers at WSJ will ever get this right again?

UPDATE (2/3)
Just when I was getting ready to raise my rating, BAM! The app starts freezing constantly, often causing me to have to reboot the iPad. My father has the same issue on his iPad so I know it's not just me. Back to one star. Someone tell me why I continue to put up with WSJ's steaming pile of fail!

UPDATE (12/24, v6.1)
Nice to see that article previews are now available, so I've gone from 1 star to 2 stars. Otherwise, the app still needs work on the most basic areas. Specifically:

Faster, Smaller, More Reliable Downloads - I get the WSJ on my iPad because I travel non-stop and prefer to read the newspaper on the go. Yesterday, I opened the app while I was getting ready, and left it open for at least a half hour to allow it time to download yesterday's issue. When I got on the plane and started reading, I found that less than half the content of the issue was available to me. By the way, what was the app churning on all that time anyway? Good thing I wasn't on my mobile hotspot when I tried to download that issue, or once again WSJ would have chewed through my data cap just so that I could read half a newspaper. Shameful! Give us a progress bar and/or some way to tell the app to download (and delete) complete issues, and make it far less data hungry. Every other Newsstand app has this functionality, why not WSJ?

Basic UI Functionality - It takes too many taps to get back to Page One. In the old version, all you had to do was pinch while reading an article, and you'd go back from whence you came. Now, it takes 2-3 taps each time, and even then the app has lost the reader's place in What's News and reset to the top of the column. Oh, and heaven forbid you tap too far to the right intending to go to the next page (the same spot you tap in every other reading app on the iPad - iBooks, Kindle, Zinio, etc.), because you'll get a column of other stories to read, thereby interrupting your reading. Please bring back the old functionality.

Make it Act Like a Newspaper - Speaking of the awful columnar summary of section stories, the old version gave the appearance of turning pages in a real newspaper. Now we get the Column of Pain. The old way wasn't skeuomorphism with no purpose, it was the way people want to read news! If we wanted to browse articles in a column, we'd use an RSS Reader. Instead, we pay for the WSJ. Come on, WSJ, you're a newspaper! Time to look like one again.

Photography - WSJ used to provide multiple photos per story to give some depth and perspective. What happened? We live in a visual age, and choose to read the paper on Retina-screened devices, and WSJ gets cheap on photos? Are all those extra colored pixels too expensive or something?

UPDATE (12/1 v6.0.5)
I patiently awaited this update, but have once again been let down by the WSJ app development team. User interface and readability remain awful. And whenever the app is open and in the foreground, it churns away over my network for no reason whatsoever. I have to quit the app before pairing with my iPhone hotspot or it will chew through my data cap before I know it. Shame on you, WSJ, for not listening to your loyal subscribers.

UPDATE (10/30):
Going from bad to worse. App is a huge data hog, constantly downloading content as long as it is open. Today, I couldn't read Personal Journal because the app kept taking me to Money & Investing instead. And now it's crashing all the time too.

And I totally agree with another commenter who suggested that the app should give us the option to delete back issues as we see fit, in order to save space. Like most other newsstand apps do.

I am so tempted to cancel my subscription until WSJ comes to their senses!

NEWEST UPDATE: At least app downloading has been fixed after being acknowledged by WSJ (kudos to them for their honesty). Otherwise, this is still a huge step backwards. Less content, reduced ease of use, slow downloads, etc. as a little long time paid subscriber who no longer gets the print version, I feel cheated. I'm hoping that WSJ reads these reviews and will fix this downgrade soon.

UPDATE: With the WSJ app installed, I was unable to update any of my apps. Once I removed it, app updating began again. This has been documented on numerous online forums. Come on, WSJ, fix this problem! I can't believe I am paying for this!

ORIGINAL REVIEW: The latest update to the WSJ app is simply beautiful, but my accolades end there. The user interface constantly gets in the way of itself, rather than allowing the reader to interact with the app as they might a real paper.

Consider, for instance, tapping on a story from the What's News section. Once you've finished reading the story, it takes 2-3 taps to get back to Page One, and even then the app has lost the reader's place in What's News, and reset to the top of the column. Please bring back the old functionality.

I would also like to see the return of article previews throughout each section. This new way of simply listing articles diminishes the value and the readability of the WSJ. This is a premium subscription, so please give your readers and subscribers the full experience they've come to expect.

I've been a loyal subscriber to the wsj since I was in college. And I grew up with the paper read by my father everyday of my childhood. I've been a subscriber to the digital edition since it was first released for browsers. In my opinion every single year the apps, the content, the stories have all deteriorated. Meanwhile the price relentlessly increases. This App is by far and away the most expensive app / subscription I pay for. Almost as expensive as all my other media subscriptions combined. ( I'm a cord cutter so I only have this, Amazon prime, Netflix, Hulu and HBO). Although this is supposed to be my singular source of news, I find that nowadays I actually get more in depth news on my equities, free from Google alerts, and from Seeking Alpha and cnbc free app. Specific gripes : 1) Horrible search capabilities; I get completely different results on wsj website than I do in the app. 2) completely broken integration of user ids and passwords, account settings, across web, app and subscriber channels. ( I lost many years of saved stories when I switched payment methods from Apple App Store to wsj.com. ) 3) no technical support whatsoever. 4) no alerts feature such as what is available through Google. 4) lousy integration with iOS. (Links to wsj don't launch the app from other apps. ) 5) no social community features (on wsj.com I can write commentary but in the app no such feature. ) 6) content on the app is incomplete from the wsj.com edition. So I cannot rely 100% on the app.) 7) lousy video; errors on live feeds with an absurd, erudite message "500 error ambitiously" , adds galore, and less video content than I get for free from Cnbc. All together, I would say really pathetic experience. It devastates a true wsj believer like me. Someday soon I will consummate a permanent divorce.!

I’m a WSJ subscriber; so I get access to all the content. I use the app on my iPhone.
Every version of WSJ app has the same core problem. Thought it’s a “newsstand” app it doesn’t function as one. I live in NYC and commute daily by subway; a short 20/25 minute ride. Clearly the app developers don’t themselves live in the city or use the app as it’s very poor in this basic use case because it performs really poorly.

I have to remember to launch the app before I leave the house in order to make sure content is available for me to read when I get into the station. And even when I do, every time there is a signal available (frequently for me as I use a line that has service in many of the stations, it will try to load more/new content, but in doing so blocks me from reading or selecting the content that I already have. 50% of the time I end up with a white screen on each section with no content to read at all.

The app needs to be completely re-done. It should operate properly as a newsstand app which means content should be automatically loaded when the phone is plugged in and on wi-fi (which is every night for me). If when using the app, it wants to check for new content it should do so in the background and only refresh when I’m browsing sections, not when I’ve got an article loaded. I would rather launch the app and find yesterday’s content because I didn’t give it a chance to load the night before, and be able to read that, then have it aggressively try to load new content and end up with no content at all.

I also have the NYTimes app loaded on my iPhone (I’m not a nytimes subscriber) and it works 100 times better; it works as described above and I’m always able to read content no matter what (up to the 10 article limit in a month). Clearly the NYTimes app developers have built the app properly as a newsstand app.

I used to love the navigation in the app but recently that has changed (bugs?). I prefer to read through the app as if it’s an actual newspaper, front to back. WSJ has shifted recently to enhancing articles with more info, graphics, etc. This can be great. However, when you click on the article to read and it goes into the enhanced version of the article, rather than being able to click “Next Article” when done reading, you have to click “Done” and then navigate to the new article through the menu.

Even more recently, even with standard articles, when I read it and go to “Next Article,” and perhaps proceed to even others, when I leave the app to do something else on the ipad and then go back in, it’s back at the original starting article I read as the starting point. Once again I have to navigate to find the article I was reading. This may be by design as many WSJ readers prefer to choose the articles to read in each section. But it isn’t helpful for how I read and seems to defeat the purpose of the Next Article/Previous article concept.

Lastly, the auto-refresh no longer seems to work. The app used to prompt daily that a new issue was ready to be read. It no longer does that now: I have to click on Menu and then Issues to manually get the new issue. Moreover, I’d say 7 times out of 10, the newest issue isn’t even displayed. I have to leave the app, swipe up from the bottom of the screen to close it, and then go back in to be able to see the newest issue.

These would all be mostly a nuisance, as the paper is really all about the content, which I love. But I thought I would share this feedback by clicking on App Support. It took me to WSJ customer care and I sent an email. The response was from someone who clearly didn’t know what I was talking about, even that it was tied to the app functionality. Hence my 1-star rating.

The WSJ app already had a checkered history (remember when, about 18 months ago, it abandoned the look and feel of the paper version to enforce an artificial view that most readers did not want? Thankfully the retreat from that folly was swift).
This latest update is, I regret to say, quite consistent with that unfortunate, misguided tradition. Consider the following:

- when opening it in the morning, three times out of four it does not automatically ask if the reader wants the day,s new issue: the best solution is, of course, to automatically default to a new issue if one is available, but, if we cannot dispense with a dialog box, at least it should pop up consistently every time to ask the inane question.

- the app is quite buggy and malfunctions frequently, though here too the bugs are many but they intervene in a totally unpredictable way. Would that the app actually had the decency of crashing in an obvious, evident way! Instead it just stops and becomes unresponsive to any reader gesture, like swiping to move forward one page. In these cases, I found, it’s typically not enough to exit the app by clicking the home button (I’m using an iPad): I actually have to turn the iPad completely off and restart with a cold boot: no other app ever forces me to do that.

- The ads, always pesky, have, in this iteration, become especially intrusive. Those interspersing the text in long articles are especially annoying because they are very slow to respond to a finger swipe: sometimes they just stay put, but most often they move left about a half screen only to pop back in place.

I could go on but I think you get the picture. A famous politician (French, if I’m not mistaken), once said that war is too. Serious a matter to leave it to the generals: in my view, the app is too important to leave it to the programmers, it’s time to enlist real readers for advice.

You have to go through hoops and hurdles to cancel your subscription. The automated customer chat on their website asks you if you’d like to cancel your subscription. If you choose to cancel, it then says it can’t help you with that at the moment and directs you to call the customer support number. I then called and it takes several minutes to get to the point where you choose to manage you account information. It asked me to enter either my phone number or the 12-digit account number given by WSJ. I chose to enter my phone number, and then I was told they did not have my phone number on record. I then proceeded to say the 12-digit code that I read directly off their website for my account number, and it claimed to not get it because it cut off the last two digits. I then typed out the 12-digit code, and it repeated the code correctly to me and said they were sorry, but they don’t have that account number associated within their system. Again, this is the account number that is given to me on their own website, which they claim is incorrect. It’s sad that they are targeting their own customers to siphon a couple extra dollars off them in the hopes that some will get frustrated enough with this maliciously designed system that they will put off cancelling their membership further and then hopefully forget about cancelling. I’ve used my mobile device, tablet, and laptop, and still haven’t been able to cancel, so the medium shouldn’t be the issue. I should try to cancel on my Xbox, maybe that will work. I took a break from trying to cancel to write this. Immoral practices from the WSJ. As far as the app itself goes, the opinion pieces are the worst part of the app. Most come off as lazy hit pieces. The business articles good and fairly straightforward, however. A good place to get financial news information. This is my first review ever. Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Shame on WSJ.

Update from 05/01: Full screen ads freeze the app and there is no way to continue reading an article other than manually close and restart the app.

Export to Evernote still doesn't work and instead of saving a downloaded article WSJ app goes on-line and slowly downloads and save an article with all advertisements and banners.

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Update from 03/06: Now Evernote export doesn't work.

Advertisements wre fixed and though annoying, not yhey do not freeze the app. However, the export to Evernote feature disappeared and instead of saving to Evernote a local article without any images, the app now goes on-line and tries to download full article and save it to Evernote. If you read news during your commute to work and perhaps have weak connection, you just can't save anything to Evernote because it takes a lot of time! Why would you go on-line to download an article that was already downloaded locally for reading off-line?

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The update from Feb 8, 2018 (app version 11.3) has some bug with multi-page full-screen advertisements getting stuck (not disappearing after being swiped) and thus preventing from continuing reading articles. Restarting the app doesn't help as the moment you hit a full screen ad again, the app gets stuck on it and swiping this ad away doesn't work. This happens with new kind of multi-page advertisements that require you to swipe them several times. The application is completely useful now as there are many of those bugged ads.

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New "improved" interface is a complete disaster. The quick list of articles/section table of content was removed and now you are forced to flip over pages with a lot of irrelevant information, mostly photos. I'm utterly disappointed that for money I pay now I'm unable to easily navigate and skim the newspaper quickly, focusing only on relevant information. I hope the idiot who came up with these "improvements" will be fired soon.

I've used this app for years now; it's one of the first I downloaded on the first generation iPad. Every couple of months I get a message from WSJ asking me if I'd like to review the app. I've resisted until now because I could not say good things about it and kept hoping they would eventually fix it. But it's not getting better (4 years later?) and may be getting worse!

This review is for the app, as opposed to the content of the WSJ. The latter is very good, which is the only reason I put up with the pathetic lack of stability of the app. If I didn't travel so much, I'd go back to the paper edition in a heartbeat. This app constantly freezes or crashes. Hardly a glitch-free day goes by for this app. Did they just do an update? Today it crashes every time I open it, within a minute of relaunching and starting to re-read where I left off. This problem alone is enough to give the app zero stars if the App Store would let me.

It is also the biggest data storage hog of all of my iPad apps. I got through to WSJ support once over a year ago and the agent sympathized with me, but told me the only way I could remove huge amounts of outdated issues/data which I never read anymore is to delete the app then reinstall it. C'mon, WSJ (with Apple's help?), by now you've got to have a better solution than that!

I spend more on this app/subscription than any other on my iPad. For that, and from a company like WSJ, this is absolutely unacceptable. Suggestion to WSJ, completely rewrite your app and hire some good QA techs so that you thoroughly test each new release before you waste so much of our time. The current state of your app is an indication that you have little respect for your customers.

By the way, I also use the New York Times app daily. It loads each issue faster, doesn't sap up nearly the amount of storage capacity, and I can't remember the last time it crashed on me. Check it out and take some notes.

I am giving the app and user experience 1 star. The content of the newspaper, I’ll give 4-5 stars.

I signed up for a 12-month, $5 a month subscription for 12 months that began in spring 2021. When that time period ended, I expected a notice to say that my subscription price would be increased and would I like to continue?

I did not receive a notice of the price increase. WSJ began billing me about $42/month. I did not receive any monthly notices or bills via email about the price increase. The app just started billing me the new amount.

I had gotten busy and so I did not audit my checking account for a few months. When I did audit and balance it, I saw these fees. OK, my fault, I should have balanced my checking account monthly.

However, trying to UNSUBSCRIBE was a nightmare. You cannot go to your account and simply push a button and unsubscribe. OH NO! WSJ did NOT make it simple, easy, or convenient.

I had to CALL THEM and talk to a person during their supposedly “convenient” business hours, which happen to coincide when I am at work and/or am at my busiest in the evenings.

Overall, the process of unsubscribing took 45 minutes in total. First, about 30 minutes on a Friday night, only to realize I have to talk to a person. Then, I have to make it a TASK on my list of to-dos. Then I have to wait until they are open, and call and tell a person to cancel it. This is a bunch of nonesense.

The lady at the call center even went into a sell spiel even after I told her I wanted to unsubscribe. I had to cut her off and tell her not to waste my time and to do what I asked.

WSJ, I expect you to send me a monthly email if you are going to charge me $42/month for a subscription. I also expect you to provide a way for me to unsubscribe online at my convenience, without having to talk to a person during your limited hours of availability. You can do better than this in your app and user design. I am the customer. I should not be waiting on YOU.

Recent releases of WSJ have introduced increasingly annoying bugs and “features”.

While scrolling through headlines, rendering glitches, re-loading content and late-loading ads cause content to change size… which causes the scrolling to leap forward, sometimes several screens at a time. Scanning all the headlines is an exercise in slowly inching forward, then gingerly working backward far enough to see what you were forced to skip without re-triggering the same thing that forced you past it. Infuriatingly, a few times per week I accidentally click on an ad because it magically appears under my finger as I try to select a story.

Much of the most interesting content now loads in a captive web browser within the app, rather than in the app itself. This means that it loses all app preferences (eg dark mode, so you can read in a dark room without hurting your eyes) and behavior (hold your finger on a word to highlight, then tap “define” to get a dictionary lookup). It also loses any preferences you might have set up in your normal browser, so no recourse there.

Ad spacing is tighter than before. It’s increasingly difficult to arrange it so you’re seeing a screenful of text without also seeing some distracting, brightly colored, moving image.

Worst of all, ads are regressing to the worst kind of web-based behaviors: movies that play, with sound enabled, automatically as a story loads. This has been happening irregularly but today it is the final straw for me— laying in bed next to my sleeping spouse, the WSJ App jolted us both fully awake with a particularly obnoxious ad playing at full volume…. Before it even appeared on my screen visually.

I’ve tried to be patient but I find the app unusable at this point. I’m going to experiment with viewing WSJ through a full web browser on my phone, complete with an ad blocker and other features that will likely defeat the publishers’ intent with these app changes. If that doesn’t work, I’ll be cancelling my subscription.

This is my second review:
WSJ continues to change versions each few months - each gets worse!
Video heavy ads only slow down their weak servers ( I have a 300Mbit connection, so I know the problem is not me)
I am close to canceling my subscription.

First review:
The original version worked much faster and more reliably - 4 star.
However, for those of us with original iPads, running iOS5, the move to "newsstand" was annoying, and the prompt allowing us to replace the app icon is insulting, since it does not run on IOS5.

There have been many app upgrades, but each comes without warning, forcing the user to IMMEDIATELY upgrade, or no Journal is available - this is a problem for those on the go using 3G, since installing the new app on 3G usually is a problem.

Also, each upgrade seems to run significantly slower, particularly establishing a connection and starting (this user has a 50 Megabit cable and 300 Megabit WiFi). The developers (and the WSJ) seem to have little concern for the user, other than collecting the monthly fee!
Perhaps the focus is fancy graphics and video. However for those of us who are long-time WSJ readers, it never was about those items - simply direct, current, and reasonably objective coverage in print.

I fully expect the day will come when the app will not run on IOS5, leaving the choice of buying a new iPad, or Adios! WSJ. The latter will be the outcome.

Thus, a 2 star rating; likely to move to 1 star...

Now it is officially a 1 star with the latest app update in October . My iPad 1 (Original running 5.1.1) nows crashes a minimum of 5 times when I try to read the daily WSJ. My suspicion is again that too many fancy graphics and videos are hogging too much memory and making data downloads very slow. I bought this subscription too read the daily WSJ in a convenient format, not to watch TV...other networks do a better job of that.
I am seriously questioning why I have a subscription, and it is frustrating that the WSJ does not care...

Update: These people still can't seem to let the darn app download in the background when connected to a wifi network. What is the bloody problem? Do I really have to go to the app everyday before I leave the house, bring the app to the foreground and WAIT for it to download? Hire a 10th grader, they'll fix the problem.

Update: new version, same problem. While it appears they have fixed the instability problem, they seem incapable of dealing with the download problem. It's really simple: if I'm connected to a wifi network (especially overnight) the paper should download in the background. Period. The end.

This is not a complex concept. Instead, I have to remember to download the paper every morning, and the download can take forever with this data hog. To make matters worse, if I miss an issue or two, the order of the downloads is unclear, but it looks like first it does some current news update, then old issues, then today's paper. Crazy! Background, background, background!

Prior version review:

This app just keeps getting worse and worse. It's so slow that I sometimes think I could have monks pen the entire paper faster than I can download an issue. It is also very unstable, constantly taking me back to the tablet's main screen instead of downloading. It was bad enough when the biggest problems were no pinch or spread function and no downloading in the background, but now the latest "improvement" is really a joke. Navigation keeps getting harder and harder. It CONSTANTLY tells me that it can't use the cellular connection -- yes you idiots, you're such a data hog that I had to turn cellular off for this app. Shoving reminders in my face won't change your pathetic design problems. Also, the app used to download new issues when connected to WiFi, but not cellular. Now it only downloads new issues when you open the app. In what twisted world is that an improvement? The WSJ was out early with the iPad, but it got lazy and lost its lead. Great paper. It deserves a much better app.

I'm a longtime follower of the Wall Street journal and this review is on the quality of the app, not the quality of the articles (which is not as good as it was 15-20 years ago before Murdoch took it over, but still excellent).
The app itself is fairly rough and buggy. Problems run the gamut from broken links (select an article and it instead sends you to an unrelated section of articles), inappropriate password prompts (you're already logged into the app, but some articles link to a webpage viewer within the app, which then prompt you to log in before you can read the article), to missing sections (I LOVE the daily book review section and I can't find it anywhere in this app). Load times are also unacceptably long. When first opening the app, the previous list of articles (from the last time you opened it) displays for nearly 10 seconds on average before the current edition loads. That's a long time! There is also an annoying feature that constantly inserts new articles or reorganizes the "top stories" and "most popular" sections that make it hard to know whether you've read all the articles in a section. I've even had a couple instances where I went to open an article, but then new content got shoved under my finger just in time for me to open the wrong article. I don't think WSJ, which is not exactly known as the most late breaking news in the world, is constantly generating that much new material. It just keeps reshuffling everything to make it appear that way.
I would love it if there was an option that would organize content to more closely mirror the paper itself. Call me a creature of habit, but there is something just right about the clever mix of top stories and off-beat news on the paper version's front page. This format has been carefully designed and preserved for decades for good reason. Like a good mixtape, all the seemingly random selections actually gel together nicely as they are very intentionally curated. It would be nice if an optional view gave a reader that kind of organization.

Now (August 2022) it's even more buggy. App freezes, requiring a reboot. The long annoying login error saying you have to contact customer service has been around for ages. Dismissing both gets you to the issues.

Since they keep pushing these annoying notices to rate the software...none of the problems I mentioned in my August review have been addressed. Still absurdly slow to load, fails to load the entire paper, and fails to orient itself from time to time. August update: the slowness to load remains, but the app has developed a weird and unique inability to orient the screen. The paper opens sideways or upside down half the time, and does not respond to rotating the device. Maybe I have the Australian edition. The paper is insanely slow to refresh/download. Somehow the NY Times, Economist, and other data rich publications do not have this issue. It seems unlikely Fox has a server problem, since they are a giant news/media company. It must be this software, which has never been very good, although it has improved over many iterations. The Android software is better. This is not the forum for editorial comment, but I agree; the Journal has become greatly dumbed down from what it was before Murdoch. It's a new world, I suppose. The Economist used to be much more geeky and had many technical articles. However, in its case, the overall publication has not been degraded. August update: They have pestered me with yet another "Do you like our app?"popup, so here goes: No. It is still slow to load, and still ignores screen rotation ( only sometimes, less than before.). And, to repeat: People, this is not a place to discuss the paper itself. This is a place to review the *software*. (9-19 still pestering me with do you like our app questions) Still slow, still gets confused about rotation. July slightly faster to load, but almost always exports an undefined “error” upon opening. This usually happens twice. Then I can read the paper. Still pestering with mewling “ do you like me?” pop up. Still

Sure yes great information, great articles, great reports. Awesome. But what happens when you just through a period of time whereas you’re too busy to find enough value in $22 a month? Let me tell you about it.

I actually like WSJ but I just moved states, changed jobs and currently took on a few personal projects. I simply do not have as much time as I did just months ago so I no longer am reading as much WSJ as I used to.

Ideally, I was going to just pause my subscription then resume it once I get all settled in and everything. Let me read you first thing that comes up when you google “how to cancel Wall Street journal”

”To change or cancel your subscription, please contact customer service at 1-800-JOURNAL”

Okay whatever, I’d rather just cancel it straight through the app by clicking a button. You know like how you cancel literally any other subscription but okay, whatever I’ll call no biggie.

*tries to call on a Sunday night

“Sorry, please call back during normal business hours Monday through Friday from 8am to 5pm”

Okay awesome. Now I have to call the Wall Street Journal on my lunch break to cancel a stupid subscription. Whatever, no biggie.

I finally find time to call during the week during business hours and guess what I hear

“Due to higher than normal call volume, expected wait times are higher than normal. The projected wait time is 30 minutes.”

I’m writing this review while waiting on hold and an currently 34 minutes in, on hold without speaking to a human, without even having the capability of canceling my membership.

This company is literally making it impossible for their customers to cancel their membership and this is totally unfair. Buyer beware, this greedy company does not let you out once they lure you in.

Apple, I’m not sure if you can do anything about this but I would consider looking into this. If you google what I’m talking about, you’ll see that there’s no fabrication on my end.

ITS NOT OVER AN HOUR IVE BEEN ON HOLD. LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO CANCEL MEMBERSHIP. BUYER BEWARE, WALL STREET FRAUDS

Once again, I find what you are doing to your subscribers intolerable. I pay about $33 per month for my digital subscription. I understand that advertising is an important source of revenue in addition to subscriptions. You allow "made you look" advertisements that continually flash and change and are so distracting subscribers can't read the article. You put video advertisements before the beginning of most news videos (therefore, I almost never play them). I guess advertisers have figured out their advertisements are being ignored, so now you allow subscribers to be assaulted with audio advertisements that pop out of the blue with no warning and no apparent link to normal copy. The past two issues have an advertisement that begins "if I were to advise..." I am trying to read a newspaper and I may be in any number of environments which make this sudden audio embarrassing, in addition to just plain annoying. Yesterday, I was in a doctor's waiting room when it happened. I don't can't imagine what you people are thinking of when you approve these things.

In addition to the advertisements, your own people are embedding pictures and videos in articles which are similar to the "made you look" advertisements. Showing the same thing over and over and over is just as distracting as the ads. Why do it? What does it prove, other than that some programmer can? It reminds of the early days of the Internet when websites contained junk like that simply because web designers could.

I commented right after you came out with the latest version of the iPad app that I hated the way it is organized and the fact that it won't stay in the last article I was reading, but switches to the latest news. Every time I reopen the app, I have to figure out where I left off. It's like reading a book without a bookmark. I want to read the paper the way I want to read it, not the way someone has decided I should read it.

You need to consider your paying customers- without them you won't be able to sell any of the advertising you so clearly have fallen in love with.

Very expensive. Held off buying it for several years due to price. Finally gave in, and it is a very poor app. There are so many glaring problems and room for improvement in the interface.

The biggest problem is that the app is constantly locking me out of the content and trying to force me to sign up with a WSJ account. It does this by locking me out of my subscription each time I open the app, both on my iPhone and iPad. Therefore, by default, I am unable to access the content for which I'm paying an exorbitant price. The workaround is tedious and poorly suited for what is supposed to be the quick and on the go nature of digital content on smart phones and tablets. I have to click on the article, be told that I have to buy a subscription (despite having done so), then be lauded to open a WSJ account (requiring me to give personal information to the same company that brought us the News of the World hacking and spying scandal - umm, NO THANKS!). Keep in mind, I've paid for the content already via Apple - why does WSJ keep trying to force me to open an account with them too? Probably because they want to squeeze more money out of selling or analyzing my personal date, beyond the absurdly high price of the subscription I'm already paying the,

Instead, I select the tiny print hyperlink, tucked away at the bottom of the screen "you're locked out screen" to "restore my iTunes subscription on this device." I then have to enter my Apple ID. By default, I must repeat the whole process EVERY TIME I want to read an article, often several times before it takes--all simply to read an article I've paid for and should be able to access without any this rigmarole.

In conclusion, after one month of this service, it simply is not worth the price or the hassle. I will not renew. I have about a dozen digital subscriptions through iTunes, and the WSJ app, by far, is the most expensive and least useable of them all. That's not a good combination. It's a terrible one. I'll just use the Internet for free when I want financial news. You should, too, in my opinion.

[I have removed two stars from my review below, as I revised my opinion after a few days of use. I now realize that the main pages only show a few stories for each section, making it significantly harder to browse all the stories for the day. Also screen gestures on the iPad version seem to have been removed. This sped up navigation in the past. Finally WSJ staff informed me the "bug" in the Japanese version is by design. For some reason they are intentionally showing English news on past editions and hiding the past Japanese editions. Who came up with that feature? It's [censored]ic.]

While waiting for the edition to load, I read some of the reviews here and was very sympathetic with the 1 and 2 star reviews. The problems everybody described sounded awful.

But when I actually used the app (iPad 2, IOS8) it felt like I was using a different version than many people described here. The navigation is largely unchanged since the previous version. In fact it’s slightly improved; the popup menu allows jumping between sections and articles (I think previously there were two separate popup menus for this). I still get the newspaper-like layout with the first few sentences of each story. The design looks a bit more spiffy. Performance (speed-wise) seems a bit better than before, actually. I am not having any stability problems. The edition I am reading seems to fully load from the Internet when I first open it, same as it did in the past.

I am a bit displeased with removal of one feature. CIO Journal is gone, though WSJ staff warned about this in an online posting. The removal of stock charts does not particularly bother me (because I use other tools for that), but I wonder why they removed it.

I am also displeased that progress bars showing the download status seem to be gone.

Finally there is a bug in the Japanese language version; for past issues it seems to be erroneously cross-linked to the English language Asia edition of the WSJ.

I feel lucky… all the problems described by those 1 and 2 star reviewers would really irritate me, only they’re not actually happening on my iPad!

Fifth review: Still a problem with loading ads if you’re connected to WiFi— PRE-LOAD them! Added a new frustration — not all the articles are available if you’re off-line. They are in the printed paper, but if you’re not connected, they don’t always downloaded them. WT…? Isn’t the whole idea of reading through an app is that you can read the news when you’re not connected? As long as they mess with what I can read offline, I’ll make them deliver a physical paper so that I can read *allof it offline!

Fourth review: still takes too long to figure out if there's a new issues to download. also still has the problem of going back to the beginning of an article if you flip iPad from portrait to landscape. All the stuff from 3rd review still true. 2015-June-27.

Third time reviewing. New issue download is working much better, and there are a lot fewer crashes. However, two things still need fixing: (1) Serving ads as you turn the page freezes up the process. This is especially frustrating as WSJ has a habit of splitting words across pages -- both digitally and in print. (2) Constantly updating the content while it is being read leads to the page disappearing for a few seconds only to re-appear unchanged -- unless the market is open and a publicly traded company is mentioned on the page. In that case, the current trading price is updated -- who cares?!?! If I want the current trading price, I can go get it -- 99% of the time, it is irrelevant to the article. Now three stars. *** Still a work-in-progress. Crashes a lot, freezes a lot, has challenges working properly while downloading the latest issue, doesn't always download the new issue -- even when options are properly set. Considering this app is for a newspaper that I read six days a week, it's incredibly frustrating to use. Two stars ***
Original review: Not as good as the old stand-alone version. It crashes or locks up more frequently. It also doesn't always load the new version of the paper. If the last one loaded was Wednesday and it's now Saturday, I have to reboot my iPad for it to recognize at the date has changed. Changing between editions or from the "now" version to the "today" version doesn't do it ... only a reboot One star