AOPA Mags

Every time I enter this app, it spins. I have to kill the app and restart it. Every single time. It NEVER knows where I stopped reading. NEVER. It seems reasonable that it should know where I left off and work when I return to it. Amazingly, however, it does provide the content. How AOPA can continue to allow this grossly substandard app is beyond me.

Good luck if you want to read this on your phone. You can zoom in, but only on the middle of the page. No scrolling or moving it around to read the writing on the sides of the page.

It says I’m offline when not. Want open mags when offline. What’s the point of downloading it?

After downloading the “Read” button is ghosted but you can delete it but when you go back to home page all buttons are ghosted. R Terry

Unfortunately this app is so bad that it makes me want to switch back to paper. It freezes up, takes forever to download a magazine, and is not intuitive to navigate. I have had major issues scrolling / moving around a page. The app will freeze up when I try to zoom in on a page. It’s difficult to get back out of a magazine to view other issues. I am using this app on the newest iOS software. Does not work well at all. Would not recommend.

I paid the extra for the digital version of the mags so I could download copies to read anytime anywhere. At one time I could do that but not any more. It almost works when I am at home or somewhere with access to a fast WiFi. Even though I have several mags downloaded...it will not let me get to them without WiFi. Don’t waste your money on the digital subscriptions.

Update - 2/18/21: I either get an error every time I try to read or download the latest issue, or just a blank screen. When zoomed in enough where you can actually read the text, it winds up being too blurry. Even zoomed halfway in, it’s still too blurry. Zoom all the way out, and it’s too small.

I’ve suffered through the clunky app, random crashes, and login/logout issues for a few months. Not it won’t display any of my past issues at all. Completely useless. Time to call & switch back to the paper magazine (can’t AOPA even allow us to make that change via their website rather than requiring a phone call?!).

6th generation iPad. App is not functional even after deleting and reloading.

Updated review: Nothing has improved about this app since my last review. It’s still terrible. —— This app is generally frustrating. The gestures are non standard, it’s slow on the latest iPad, and it’s unintuitive. If you are deciding to go digital... don’t. Unfortunately, though it wastes money that could be used for advocacy, the printed edition is still significantly superior to what this app provides. Sadly this does not have to be. There are numerous magazine apps out there (Apple News+, Amazon, specific publication apps) that have useful magazine apps. The app is also useless on an iPhone. You cannot zoom in on text close to the edges of a page, so you cannot read many articles (iPhone 11 pro max). Also, the app does not work with the built in voiceover accessibility features of iOS. If someone has poor vision, are they assumed to be uninterested in aviation and supporting advocacy for GA? I won’t add a shame on you here... but think about it. I have been on occasion (less and less so) checking for useful updates only to find that the app continues to be pretty terrible on an iPad and useless on an iPhone... so, generally speaking, I do not read what I’m assuming are great articles and I get a little less value out of my membership. This leads me to having a less tangible sense of value in terms of what I’m paying for. Please revise this app to behave like a normal Apple iOS application. Download a copy of the official Apple HIG. It’s free and it’ll give you clear guidelines on how an iOS app should work. This app’s behavior compared to the HIG is like a pilot who’s never bothered to read the AIM.