When I was growing up I was always an avid reader “ of books, of magazines and newspapers, and just about anything with printed text that crossed my path. I always had one very clear favorite thing to read though. It arrived every Thursday in our mailbox, boasted superb photography and writing, and kept me up to speed with all the week ‘s biggest sports stories. Sports Illustrated magazine made Thursdays a great day for years “ even before I discovered the joys of the Swimsuit Edition. 🙂
So I think I ‘m probably as happy as anyone to see the new Sports Illustrated SI.com app hit the iPhone App Store. I stopped subscribing to the magazine years ago, but I ‘ll still pick it up quite often when I spot it in a store, and I very much enjoy reading a lot of the SI.com online columnists as well.
I spent a good while with this new app this morning, and mostly liked what I saw. The first thing I noted is that the content is strong, and that ‘s great to see as it ‘s something I always associate with SI.
The app is divided into four main sections, which are: Home, Scores, SI Writers, and Sports.
Home is where you ‘ll find the current top stories in the world of sport. It ‘s nice to see that the list of stories is getting updated often as well.
Individual stories are well presented
The Home area also has two sub-sections: Truth & Rumors and SI Photos. I ‘ve found the SI Photos section a little disappointing so far. The photos are good shots as I ‘d expect, but the way you can interact them falls short of what I expect from a solid iPhone app. For instance, you can only zoom in one level. There are no options to see an image full screen or save an image.
The Scores section wouldn ‘t really work for me at all today. It constantly said it was ‘updating data ‘ while displaying a standard SI background “ and failed to update and show anything meaningful for a full 5 minutes. It also at times made the rest of the app unresponsive while trying to update that page.
This is a little surprising to see from such a big name, even in a 1.0 version. Having said that, I really don ‘t care too much about this flakiness in this area of the app “ as up-to-the-minute scores has never been what I look to SI for. I come to SI for quality analysis and writing, great photos, and an in-depth look at the world of sport. There are plenty of other apps that do scores quite well.
The SI Writers section is where I ‘ll be spending a lot of quality time when using this app, and where you ‘ll find many of your favorite SI writers.
Peter King and his MMQB musings
Jon Heyman on baseball
Stewart Mandel on college football
The Sports section (as if the whole app isn ‘t one great big sports section) lets you browse by individual sport and drill down for current stories on each. As you ‘d expect, the range of sports covered is fairly broad (although fairly US-centric as well).
You can share a story you like via email or Twitter easily
The app does not offer a huge amount of bells and whistles “ but it really doesn ‘t need to. For me, all it needs to do is what it says on the box “ give me Sports Illustrated on my iPhone. In this respect, it delivers quite well. The content mix seems good and is getting refreshed well, and it ‘s serving up lots of favorite SI writers. A definite keeper for me.
You can find Sports Illustrated SI.com in the App Store now, and it ‘s a free app.
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TAGS: iphone apps
