Quick Look: "The Daily" iPad App

1. What Is The Daily?

The Daily! The Daily! Read all about it! Is it worth the $40 per year? Where would you use this app? We get the scoop, without getting ink on your hands.

The Daily is a new iPad newspaper made by Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorps. Murdoch himself put $30 million and 100 journalists behind the project.

Is it really doomed before it even starts? Well, no. Not exactly. There’s a lot of criticism about the project: it tries to cover too much, it’s too slow to get out the news, and there are better alternatives out there. But, on the other hand, the iPad is an exploding platform for news-consumption apps, and the technology of The Daily isn’t too shabby (even if you don’t like Fox News).

So, why would you pay for something like this, when there are free apps out there?

It’s polished. The Daily feels more like a magazine app than a newspaper with its rich pictures, video and social elements. The app is split into sections: News, Gossip, Opinion, Arts & Life, Apps & Games, and Sports – and there’s a “table of contents” for easy navigation.

For 99 cents a week, you get 100 pages of content per day. That’s far cheaper than most daily newspapers on the market today and the $39.99 a year price (after a free two-week trial) is equally pleasing to the pocketbook. And because it is paid as a subscription, you can get it and forget about it.