There are many great things about this app, I have no idea why there are low ratings. From my experience, I am able to enjoy all of the TED talks - the featured and the ones I've watched before the app existed, plus many more. All of my viewing, or at least most of my TED viewing experiences, comes from this app. You have the ability to save talks for offline viewing, you can bookmark talks you want to watch again or watch someday, you can simply choose to listen to the audio with their audio only feature. I do wish the app offered the length of time each video is. It tells you when the talk occurred and gives you a summary of the video but I'd love to see how long a video is. And I don't want to have to press play to see how long a video is within the video player. You don't have the ability to read or post comments via the app, but that's fine with me. You are able to email video links, which is nice for sharing. Overall, the video and sound quality is great. It works with Apple TV. I'm a happy and frequent user and would recommend to others. I do find the viewing experience more pleasurable via my iPad. I used to be able to watch from my iPhone, but not anymore as I do not have the latest iOS, which prevents the app from opening beyond the splash page.

The good stuff: the talks and videos themselves. Everyone, and I mean everyone, should watch these to learn, hear a different perspective, or just have an excuse to say, "Wow, what an age we live in," and "How cool is this octopus? REALLY COOL." The "Inspire Me" button is fantastic, building you a playlist of videos to watch. Not necessary but would be nice: add a custom playlist feature or "watch later" because we don't always have the Internet speed to download a HQ video in order to keep track of what we want to watch. The bad stuff: The UI in this app is very basic and a little claustrophobic once you see the limitations. It barely has enough controls to be workable at all. The tag system is one-sided and seems arbitrary at times. The sound cut out in the middle of one of the talks and I had to use my laptop to get it to work. The "saved talk" feature is a great idea, but feels more like an act of faith than a download. There is a progress bar, but I have done two downloads and it has yet to give me any information about my progress. Also, where is a refresh button? Because exiting the app doesn't do it. I had watched a video all the way through and wanted to review the middle again, but the app wouldn't let me replay. Replay button please!

I want to like this app because TED is great. The app is also aesthetically really nice. There is lots of open space, the videos are easy to run and the information about them is helpful. The navigation is crazy making though. The filtering functionality is obscure and the categories within it don't seem to relate to the tag sets well and they compete with all of the other approaches to categorizing and organizing content.The app makes it hard to create a simple understanding for how things are organized. It couldn't be harder to search or use tags - the building blocks of getting around. Related tags are included next to videos but they can't be used. They are dead. When you try to use "search" it would be great if tags were there to help you. Offering tags as facets is helpful and common because, well, they are helpful. If you want to find a list of tags because maybe you're intrigued by what you saw related to your video, you are going to have to dig around. You shouldn't have to dig around for something so nice. It would be simple to make a link to them at the top level of the navigation. Instead the app tries to be clever with a range of lists and filters.

The poor rating is for the new app, that forces me to answer filtering questions and queues up videos to auto start after I finish a video. I have used the TED app since it came out on my first iPhone, years ago. What I most appreciated was the chaotic combination of topics that were always showing up, with no theme holding them together other than combining Technology, Entertainment, and Design. What I valued most was the juxtaposition of wildly differing topics — I don’t want filtering and categorization and I don’t want a TED account, I just want the flood of wildly different topics that characterized the experience in the past. Please provide a way to bypass the filter questions and categorized presentations and just go back to the timeline presentation of topics as they are added to the flow. On top of sticking questions I don’t want to answer in the flow of using the app, at a recent update it lost the results and made me answer them again. Bad programming producing a poor user experience. I was about to give two stars, since that is all the app should get, but it is hard to ignore the fact that the content is still very high quality.

Recently I have had a minor addiction to video games during covid because of the scarce amount of activity in my life. This addiction was starting to grow, with accumulating many games on my mobile device, and a gaming console. When I wanted to accumulate another mobile device game, I found a section of apps, with TED within this group of applications. Therefore, I downloaded TED. Although I had a minor video game addiction, i still read books, and watched documentaries. However, while I downloaded TED I broke this minor addiction before it grew and spent more time to invest in education and learning rather than a video game that contributes only entertainment to my life. I love TED because with great quality in learning, there is not much quantity of time consumed! Therefore I could watch many more “mini documentaries” as so I say, than other documentaries. Thank you for your time, and last note. If you are wanting to learn more, I definitely 1,000% recommend this application.

I downloaded the app because I’ve been entertained and informed by Ted Talk speakers on topics of general interest. I’m a Christian and so decided to conduct a search for speakers on Biblical topics. To my disappointment there were no talks listed by many brilliant contemporary theologians such as RC Sproul, John MacArthur, David Jeremiah, Ravi Zacharias and Oxford mathematician John Lennox. Rick Warren did come up regarding the purpose driven life, but that was it.On the most important questions regarding life after death and answers to the Origin, Purpose, Morality and Destiny of humanity, there are no theologians to impart insight. Inconceivable!Expressions I used in my search were as follows: Bible, Christianity, Theology, Creation, Life after death and Oxford mathematicians. If I’ve overlooked a topic that might bring up an authority speaking on the importance of theology, and how it answers the most important question that faces every human being… please let me know. The app works fine as far as I explored it, and I will rate “Ted” with 3 stars for entertainment and secular information, but absent such an important topic I would not rate higher..