The Genii Forum

I have 45mps internet and WiFi,but the APP is SLOOOOW, couldn't we download a PDF instead,and transfer it to our devices from our computers, if pages fail to transfer, you are dreaming to expect a video download...when you are looking for IGENII, it would be nice to know that Amazon has it as "Genii for Magicians"...just saying...

Which app are you discussing? We have new versions of both the Apple and Android apps which should be available now if not in a week or so.

The apps are not slow for me.

The only thing you will find if you search for "Genii" are one or two games and our magazine. I haven't had any complaints that it was difficult to find.

Our system doesn't work on downloading simple pdfs. We produce a robust digital version of Genii with embedded audio and video, all of which should be easily viewable on your device.

Just had the app download a full issue under very poor conditions. Crappy hotel WiFi with about 3m download. Took about 2.5 minutes. I generally use the option for downloading full issues so I can read them offline. Of course that's just the pages, the video streams fine when I'm online.

Not directly related to slow downloads (I haven't experienced that problem), but under the general heading of "digial issues":

I recently subscribed to the digital version of Genii and have some questions about the Android version of the app (the most recent by Tecnavia) on both my phone (Samsung Galaxy S3, Android 4.3.1) and tablet (Asus MemoPad 7, Android 4.2.2):

(1) On both the phone and the tablet, when the app is first installed it asks if it should store issues on my internal memory or SD card, but it shows the same amount of free space for each (corresponding to actual free internal memory). When I tell it to use the SD card, the app fails to go further (gets stuck at "loading...") and I have to uninstall/reinstall. Using internal memory works, but I'd much prefer to use the SD cards as they have more free space. Any ideas on how to get that to work? Again, this is on two different devices / Android versions.

(2) When I tap on a page on my phone, the app switches to the text-only view which lets me scroll up/down for much easier reading. Great feature. However, on the tablet when I do the same thing it switches to a split screen mode -- only half of the available space is given to the scrollable text, the rest is a smaller version of the page images. This leaves the text-only area not much larger than on my phone, pretty much defeating the purpose of using the tablet. Is there a way for the text-only mode to use all (or at least most) of the tablet's screen?

The text-only function is working as it is designed to on both your tablet and cellphone. It works differently on each because of the size of the device. Personally, I don't use it. I just pinch/zoom the actual magazine page in order to read. If you do that and turn your phone sideways, you'll see that when a single column of text is zoomed to the width of the screen of your phone, it is quite easy to read.

I don't believe the app will allow you to store issues on your SD card (even if it says so), only on the device itself. This is by design. I don't want the issues leaving your device. But you can download up to 10 issues on your device for offline reading. All issues are available (all 77 years) at all times when you want to swap out what's stored on your device.

We have a new version of the Android app in testing and hopefully it will be upgraded very soon.

Thanks for the quick reply. Probably too late to make it into the latest update, but if storing to the SD card isn't intended, I'd suggest removing that as an option.

As for the text mode, please see the pictures below. I'd much rather have a full screen text page on my tablet, as it would easily cut the number of times I'd need to scroll the page by half. The interface is still a bit sluggish and glitchy and sometimes the text jumps back to where I was. To me, as seen below, more than half my tablet screen is wasted in this mode. Again, likely too late for the next release, but I'd really like to see it available in the future.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/51rufotxivsds ... Tablet.jpg

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pfkucpdrynlc7 ... Tablet.jpg

Sorry, but there are no images attached.

Sorry... forums don't seem to like "https" from dropbox in IMG tags.... they're now URLs....

The whole point of offering the text only mode on a device larger than a phone is so that you can read the text only on half of the screen and also see the graphics on the other half at the same time. That's not going to change: it's part of the company's basic app design.

That's unfortunate, and if that's the developers' design, I respectfully submit that the design is flawed. App developers should be providing features and capabilities their users want, not dictating to them what they feel the users should want or can have. If I wanted that experience I'd have an iPhone not an Android.

What's frustrating is it's already there and implemented on my phone - I can't imagine it would be that difficult to include a tablet/phone mode setting in the app.

Oh well....

All that said, if this is how you personally want your magazine displayed (e.g. to preserve the artistic integrity of the layouts), that's a different matter entirely.

Thanks again for your reply and consideration.

Yes, that's how I want it displayed: both plain text (big enough and easy to read) and the original pages with graphics visible at the same time.