OK, so after a one month love affair, here is my top ten list of things about FlipBoard that aren't great yet. 1. No cross service sharing. I tend to confine my tweeting to my working world, and my Facebook to my social friends, but there is cross-over, and sometimes I want to post something that I've read on Twitter. 2. Limit of 9 panels. Really? Like a scroll bar or down arrow would mess up the whole experience? I resent having to jetison The Onion in favor of The Economist and vice versa. 3. Duplicate Articles. This should be #1. I wonder why I keep seeing the same story on multiple pages. 4. No list of my past reads or favorites. Flipboard is my de facto news browser, it should be profiling me and supplementing my memory. I've worked around it by mailing articles to myself and using gmail filters, and I've tried instapaper, but this is really a needed version 2.0 feature. 5. Low res pics. I have to click through to be able to zoom in. This is especially frustrating with Datavis, since visual candy is the whole point. 6. Sparse pages. Both FB and Twitter pages sometimes end up with only one or two posts in the middle of the page. 7. The edit button. Why do I need it? I'm on an iPad. I know how to touch and hold to activate icon edit mode on the desktop, why not just do that here? If you need the Edit button for those who aren't as used to it (or just to be able to explain it to newbies), make the gesture do the right thing as well. 8. Some visual variety. All of the channels use the same font, colors and background. It gets boring. 9. Too many clicks for full articles. I find that I either browse - where I need a headline and a paragraph or two, or I want to read the whole thing. Flipboard makes me go through three levels, and then back out twice to read a full article and go back to browsing. 10. A what's new section. For a news reader, Flipboard doesn't do a great job of making news out of new capabilities and content. This should be an upfront feature of the app, not a content channel. So, of course, I am a totally convicted user, and a huge fan, and there's nothing above that seems like a real gotcha in a 1.0 release.
Commentaires