AOPA Mags for Pc

Well, it's the paper version plus a few videos. It's alright, it saves paper. The video links do work for me. But it would be really nice if the app actually would remember where I left off in a downloaded issue. In fact it is amazing that such comments have been ignored for so long. -2104 2017- the above got done!! However the catalogue (splash screen) takes an eternity to load, and it seems to want to do that every day even if I'm still reading the same issue. Annoying ...

If you have patience, a fast network connection, a fast device, and not much ambition, this app may meet your expectations. Otherwise, not so much. The start-up Catalog and Issues page can take a few minutes to load, even on a 250Mb/s network connection, and you can't do anything while it's loading, even if you're only interested in looking at one magazine. If you're on a mobile network with a data cap, watch out - it'll burn a lot of megabytes loading stuff. If you have a slower device, you'll always see a blurry, unreadable version of every page which will eventually clear up after significant delay. Even on fast devices, it's 'blur first', just more quickly replaced by a crisper version - which gets fuzzy again if you zoom in on it (and won't clear up then.) Although the app is all about looking at text and pictures, they cannot be selected - no text or image copy is possible, so forget about sending that interesting paragraph or photo in email to your friends. To keep life interesting, the app will occasionally crash or refuse to run when iOS gets updated, or sometimes randomly when it isn't. In short - this is not a web browser, a PDF previewer, or anything like that - it's a slow, poorly-implemented picture gallery view of the magazines. Yes, it's an improvement over dead trees...

The app is awesome when it decides to download the magazines and deserves a five star rating for content alone, but there are some glaring faults that are major detractors causing the app to be average at best. Too often (every time I try) I will download a magazine and then try to update a back issue and when I do, all magazines, past and present cease working. So, I log off and back on and settle forwarding whatever was previously downloaded. In a world where there are hundreds (thousands?) of magazines and they mostly work flawlessly, I don't see what the issue is. Perhaps the app isn't willing to put the money into an app that represents the same quality and precision that is required of the pilots they represent; or, perhaps the developers of the app are pulling the wool over their eyes and simply need to be replaced.

It is a much needed improvement. It's amazing how something as simple as bookmarking your place automatically can be such a great change. I gave four stars because it takes a long time to load the app as it cycles between loading the catalog and loading book a few times. This is a minor thing.