The full-content version of the New York Times is now available on the iPad, and it's free.
Previously, get the full Times experience, iPad owners had to go to the website. The Times has an iPhone app which already has the same extended functionality the iPad is getting, but the layout is completely different on the tablet, maxmized for the larger screen. It has a similar look-and-feel to the Times Reader, the Adobe Air-powered desktop client that is available only to paying subscribers of the print edition.
The Times Editor's Choice iPad app had offered a limited subset of the full day's news, but did it with a very pretty and intuitive interface. V2.0, renamed NYTimes for iPad, keeps the fancy, newspaper-like layout but lets you read everything. And that's not all that's new.
To get the whole shebang, you'll need to sign up, otherwise you can only browse content from a few sections: Top News, Most E-Mailed, Business Day and Video. If you have ever logged in to New York Times site, you can use your existing ID. If not, you can sign up, for free, from the app itself. Once in, you can browse sections with a popover menu and, once in a section, you just swipe to move between pages and tap on a headline and summary to read the full article. In article view, you can navigate directly to other articles with a scrolling strip across the bottom of the screen.
In addition to the full content of the newspaper, you can also read "a selection of blogs" and view slideshows within the articles themselves. The app can also deliver breaking news alerts via push notification. I have this switched on, but I doubt I'll see any alerts until New York wakes up in a couple hours.
Finally, the navigation has been improved, with all controls along the bottom of the screen in both horizontal and vertical orientations, making them easy to reach with a thumb. Only the sharing option (Facebook, Twitter, email and copy link) and the text-size adjustment are up top.
Why is it free? Well, free until 2011, at least. Because it's ad-supported, with occasional full-screen ads that you can watch or dismiss, and other ads inserted into the pages, just like they would be in the print version. They're pretty unobtrusive.
If you have an iPad, go grab this app now. It shows exactly how a newspaper should be done on a tablet.
NYTimes for iPad [iTunes]
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