MLB has ruined their smartphone app - Bleed Cubbie Blue

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I know, I know. It’s traditional for anyone and everyone to hate change on the internet. I do it, you do it. Yes, admit it: You know you do it.

That’s why writing an article about any changes to a website or app comes fraught with peril, because grumbling about change has become a thing people just do. Many times, it just takes a bit of time to get used to the changes and then things work all right.

This is not so with MLB’s complete redesign of their app for smartphones this year. Thus I declare the complaint department WIDE open, and herewith my complaints about the app. NOTE: I have an Android phone, thus all the screenshots and information in this article are from the Android app. If you have an iPhone your app likely looks and acts somewhat differently.

You are forced to open the app on your favorite team’s page

I don’t want to do this. I want to open the app to the scoreboard page. This used to be possible via the settings menu, but there is no longer any such option:

Fix this, MLB. I don’t want to be forced to switch to the scoreboard page every time I use the app.

The team schedule page layout is awful

Prior to 2022 — and I wish I could find a screenshot but can’t, and I didn’t save one — if you went to the schedule for your team, you’d get a calendar-style page where you could scroll from month to month. If you tapped on a date on the calendar it would bring you to a ticketing page for that game, which is fine.

Here’s what the Cubs team page looked like Thursday afternoon, before the game started. The arrow points to what looks like a calendar page for the schedule:

But when you tap on that, here’s what you get:

That’s not a calendar, it’s just a list. There are two calendar-type icons in the upper right, as you can see. The one on the right adds these games to your personal calendar. You’d think the one on the left would give you a calendar format, but all it gives you is... a longer list.

This is not optimal, especially if you are trying to see which games are home and which are away; there’s no way to differentiate between them other than the small “@” or “vs.” before the opponent’s logo.

Fix this, MLB. It’s awful.

You can’t get to the live MLB.TV broadcasts from the scoreboard page

This should be intuitive; if you are on the scoreboard page it should be easy to get to the live broadcast of a game. Instead, you have to go to the bottom of the app (on any page, this one’s from the Cubs page):

That’s okay, I guess, but again, it’s not really intuitive.

Lastly, I should note that the MLB Ballpark app, which is where all your mobile tickets are stored, works just fine. No complaints there. And MLB didn’t change anything on that app this season; it works the same as it did last year.

To circle back to what I noted at the beginning of this article: Complaining about change on the internet has become a sport of sorts. In the end, most things can be adapted to. A couple of the changes MLB has made to the app, though, made the app markedly worse: Forcing the user to start on a specific page with no choice, and the schedule page not being in convenient calendar form. Further, I tried the app reversing the colors — white text on a black background instead of the reverse — didn’t seem any better to me.

These should be easy fixes, as all I’m noting here are things that used to work, but no longer do. Fix ‘em, MLB.

Poll

MLB’s Android and iPhone apps are...

• 3%

  ... better in 2022 than before

  (6 votes)

• 16%

  ... the same in 2022 as before

  (30 votes)

• 64%

  ... worse in 2022 than before

  (119 votes)

• 15%

  ... I don’t have a smartphone/I don’t use the app

  (29 votes)

184 votes total Vote Now

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MLB has ruined their smartphone app - Bleed Cubbie Blue
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