When I bought the first-gen iPad back in April 2010, it changed the way I consumed my news every morning. To be able to hold the device in my hand and quickly browse through numerous sources as I sipped on my coffee with the other hand was nothing short of extraordinary back then. Sure, I could still do this with my iPhone 3GS, but looking at a glorious 9.7″ screen and scrolling through the article text felt… yes, magical. One of my favorite apps on the iPad was The Early Edition by Glasshouse apps. It was a beautiful app that let you choose your favorite news sources and presented the content from these site into a newspaper-like format. Like iBooks, it had a page-turn effect and feel that added to the whole experience. The Early Edition was one of the first apps I accessed every morning back then. But after I got my iPhone 4 and its stunning Retina screen, my usage of the iPad fell drastically.
Cut to March 19th — just over a week ago. Thanks to a great buddy of mine from sunny Philly, I managed to lay my hands on the new iPad. I never upgraded to the iPad 2 for many reasons, so this was a pretty big update for me. Glasshouse Apps had already released ‘The Early Edition 2’ by now, but as it turns out, we never got a chance to write about it here.
The Early Edition 2 is a separate app released onto the App Store, completely rewritten from the ground up and brings along a plethora of new features. It still maintains the core principle of being your daily early-morning newspaper for your favorite feeds, but comes in a package that is incredibly beautiful and a total joy to use.
The app lets you choose between two modes — you can either choose your own sources spread over multiple categories or you can sync with your Google Reader account (one of the most requested feature for v1). I’d recommend you go with the former, as TEE2 is not supposed to be a replacement for your RSS reader app. It features a dynamic column layout, and your stories are neatly laid out on the screen. It’s very easy to glance through the headlines at one go.
Tapping on a story brings up the article, free of any clutter from the source website. There’s also full Readability integration, so you can still enjoy your story at a later time. You can also tap on the images in an article to bring up a “images only” view — sort of a gallery that you can flick through. This is a fantastic way to browse Dribbble’s Popular feed. The Early Edition caches your stories for offline reading as well.
The app also gives you a way to search and filter through your stories based on frequently used terms. Super helpful at times. You’ll find your typical sharing options in here, so you can share your articles just as easily. The Early Edition 2 sells for just $4.99 on the App Store and has already been updated for the Retina Display of the new iPad — it comes highly recommended from me.
