CNN released its first official app for the iPad earlier today, and it’s a solid first iteration on the tablet. It’s available now for free in the App Store.
The CNN app is meant to let you enjoy the full CNN experience with stories, insights and videos directly on your iPad. Being the iPad both a personal and communal device, the developers over at CNN thought it would be appropriate to build sharing features and a commenting system right into the app. You can share stories on Facebook and Twitter, send them via email, save a story for offline viewing (as you can guess, very useful on iPad WiFi devices).
The app lets you switch between the U.S. edition of CNN and international news at any time. You can also choose from 3 different views – I particularly enjoy the “thumbnail” and list views which let me quickly scan the headlines as a list or check on a more rich visualization of news. The homepage also contains three tabs to open the “Top Stories”, “Featured” items and “Videos”. The app is constantly up-to-date and, yeah, there are some ads here and there, too. I was surprised typography isn’t that bad. The overall layout could use some more refinements and less clutter, but it’s the CNN we’re talking about. With all that news, I don’t know how it’d be possible to achieve a less cluttered layout.
I think CNN for iPad is a very good first attempt. With videos, breaking news and nice sharing features available, it provides a rich and, sometimes, fun way to check on the “usual” CNN material. Give it a try, it’s free.
