Those of you who read this blog know how big a fan I am of Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show. For years, I have longed for a way to get content from The Daily Show onto my iPhone/iPad (without having to pay $2 per episode on iTunes). The Daily Show’s website is, unfortunately, laden with flash, making it inaccessible to my iDevices.
With the recent release of The Daily Show iPad/iPhone app ($1.99), I thought that this dream might be within reach. But while the app does give you access to clips from recent episodes, the app’s complete lack of organization make it useful for only the casual fan or passerby.
Here are some random observations about the Daily Show app:
– The tag cloud (pictured above) of Topics is a neat feature in concept. You can pinch-to-zoom and when you choose a topic, it gives you a bunch of segments relating to it. The problem is that there is no option to choose the topics that are the most recent (kind of an important option for a show called The DAILY Show). Plus, this screen takes forever to load.
– Whenever I go to The Daily Show’s website, I’m primarily looking to do one of two things (maybe three): 1) Watch last night’s episode in its entirety, and 2) Watch complete segments from last night’s episode [or 3) Go digging through the archives for some happy memories]. This app doesn’t allow me to do any of those things, instead opting for a “Quotes” section that gives you random, unorganized segments. There is no option to sort by date/chronology here either.
– On the positive side, the app looks great, and there’s a neet little “Tweets” window that lets you see recent Daily Show-related tweets, as well as tweets from the various correspondents. And the “Quotes” section of the app, for all its randomness, is elegant and colorful.
The Daily Show website is a pretty amazing creation. It contains a searchable, tagged, back catalog of pretty much every episode and segment ever created during Jon Stewart’s stint. I was hoping for something that might make SOME of that easily accessible, but this app did not fulfill that need, opting instead for a random grab-bag approach.
If you are jonesing for a fix of Daily Show and don’t have access to a computer, then The Daily Show app will meet your needs. But don’t expect anything close to what you’d normally get just by visiting thedailyshow.com.