I have a feeling the app is by the provider they use, and simply gets a picture and title supplied by Kalmbach put in. The IOS (and I assume the Android one is almost identical) app would be 1000% improved if you could just jump to the year you want. For example, the thread on issue of the week - to get to 1958 is over TWO HUNDRED swipes up the list. A little silly - whoever developed that app didn't think about what happens when you have 80+ years of a magazine to serve. 10 years - it might be fine.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
MauriceSteve are there any plans to add a search function to the Android app?
As Randy (above) guessed, we didn't write the app software in-house or have it custom-written for us. We purchased an off-the-shelf solution from an outside company. We're aware of the app's limitations, but we don't know when the developer plans to address these issues. In the meantime, we recommend doing your book club reading on the website, where the "Browse Issues" link at the bottom of the screen makes jumping to the year you want a breeze.
--Steven Otte, Model Railroader senior associate editorsotte@kalmbach.com
I believe it says somewhere in the app who the developer is, we might make more progress reporting directly to them, since this same issue would affect all of their clients, not just Kalmbach, although maybe not to the same degree - like I said, if the entire history of the magazine is only 5-10 years, it's not a huge deal to scroll through. But 80+ like Kalmbach - now we have a problem.
While the web app is much better at locating the issue I want to read, the default landscape orientation on my desktop monitors makes it not a great reading experience, at least compared to downloading issues to my iPad. Plus I can easily carry my iPad anywhere and continue to read offline, not so much with a pair of 24" displays and a full tower desktop. It DOES prove that their database certain can access by jumping directly to a given year, so one would expect the same functionality can be included in the mobile app. It really does seem like just a UI design mistake, in which the developer figured on at most dozens of things to scroll through, rather than 1000 - I must say I've made the same types of mistakes in programs I've written, using the wrong type of control for a specific data input which worked great with a limited test set of data, but once all the data was there, it was no longer as easy to use.
Can I still purchase this access? Can you provide a link to it? I'm getting ready to move and need to condense my magazine ad I subscribe to about 10 differnt magazines a month which includes historical societies and othe publications such as Cowctacher and the NMRA. As usual, Kalmbach was no help.