The Onion Launches Microfiche iPhone App
By Simon Sage on Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 at 2:55 PM PST In Applications, iPhone
There was a time when people wrote news online before The Onion, but it was an era of darkness where blogging consisted primarily of would-be authors rolling their faces around on a keyboard and hitting the “Publish” button. The Onion has surely ushered in a golden era of electronic journalism since then, and for that we owe them an eternal debt of gratitude.
There’s now a cutting-edge Microfiche Reader for iPhone that lets you share Onion articles via Facebook, Twitter, or e-mail, browse recent and random stories, as well as view video and listen to audio content. Some of my personal favourites include the debate over robots, the Mac Wheel, and the BlackBerry service shutdown infographic. Grab your Microfiche reader from the iPhone App Store for $0.99.
I don’t get it. Months ago there was an Onion app in the store for free that was exactly the same as this. I dont remember the name but it had the same headline layout as this. People panned it. They HATED the idea of headlines only. I had downloaded it and tried it and hated it as well. Headlines are fine, funny, but I wanted the whole article. There were NO links to go to the article at all either. I deleted it from the Touch AND from my computer.
Now, they rebrand the same app as a Microfiche reader, charge for it, and suddenly people love it? WTF? Really?
People don’t like this app. There was a slow news day for techies, so one site wrote about this app, and soon everyone else wrote about it. Why not be original and write about a truly loved news app like “News Feed”?