Apple News hits 125M monthly active users
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
What’s even worse is that the Apple News app could allow adding RSS feeds from sites, but it doesn’t recognize RSS officially but will use it internally for sites in Apple’s whitelist. If it allowed adding any random feed, it could potentially be my go to app for news.
Contrast that to Google News — which is predicated on collecting information and showing ads (edit: Google News doesn’t insert ads into news sources, as pointed by gundmc in a reply) — that’s widely available. In Google News, you can get a link of the original article to share with others (and with perhaps an additional step in some cases, avoid tracking of where from and how the link came). In Apple News, sharing a link gives you a cryptic Apple News domain link, which tracks all clicks. I trust Apple more on privacy than I trust Google, but this is one of those annoying things.
I’m sure Apple isn’t trying to beat Google on this front. Apple is just hoping to get paying subscribers while retaining a huge cut of the revenues.
Google News doesn't show ads.
Yes and they are still burning money into it. Apple Music, nearly 5 years after its launch and despite its home advantage is still lacking behind Spotify. Thinking of the same to Apple TV+. And likely the same to Apple Arcade.
Apple Music has been making some inroads after Iovine is out. But Streaming business wasn't ever going to make much money anyway.
Oh and I forgot, Apple Cash, Apple Wallet... and lots of other things Apple seemingly has forgotten about.
The numbers are what counts, not what you’re ‘thinking’ is ‘likely’.
And to be clear, I’m just talking about free news content, no subscriptions, nothing you couldn’t get easily by going to the actual website, so any paid licensing geo restrictions shouldn’t really be relevant.
At least with Apple Music, I could turn the features off. With News+, I can't.
I replaced it with Reuters and a RSS reader for other news websites. I get way more relevant 'breaking news' notifications from Reuters now than I did with News, so it's been a win on that front.
I started to read articles from tabloids without realizing that they are tabloids. Because on the internet, nobody knows that you’re a dog. You have to actually investigate them, to find out that they are a gossipy tabloid.
Fortunately the app allows you to unsubscribe from it. But this makes it even harder, because now, you’re actively exposed to their sensational reporting and fake news.
> Apple News is only available in the U.S., UK, Canada, and Australia
https://www.imore.com/how-get-apple-news-uk-australia-canada...
Is it a language issue? Do they offer it for french language media in Canada?
In Connect this doesn't map 1:1 to users (it shows active devices and is gated by the user's analytics privacy settings) but close enough.
(You can tell that the algorithm generating the feed will always leave at least one spot for a News+ article though, which means it has to dig deeper and deeper into weird recommendations since I keep blocking every News+ channel. I’ve seen golf digest, good housekeeping, and a bunch of obscure ones come up before I block them.)
It’s a real shame, too. I watched the keynote where they announced News+ and I got really excited about it. I thought it was a really good deal and I was happy to pay money to get real journalism from reputable sources.
But alas, they shoved it in my face from day one. You couldn’t browse regular Apple news without giant News+-pushing article previews shoved in your face, entire sections of the UI dedicated to getting you to accidentally click an article you don’t have access to, etc.
A personal policy of mine is to not engage with a platform if I feel I’m being “engineered into it” (with things like UI dark patterns and constant nagging reminders to sign up for a free trial, etc), so ultimately I never signed up for News+. It’s a real shame.
Same with AppleTV+: Apple used their market position as the company that makes my AppleTV to try and shove TV+ and Apple Arcade in my face at every possible turn, so I won’t be signing up for them (again, a shame, because there were shows I actually wanted to watch on there and I literally have a free year of it. Sorry Apple, not if you’re forcing it down my throat.)
Honestly a great value for me.
It's too bad so many people are anti paying for quality content, there's quite a lot packed into a single News+ sub. The best stuff is the paid stuff, but, I can't justify subbing to so many individual services.
I'd like it if this happened more often. I don't like the advertising-only business model. But there has to be some practical middle ground. I'll never subscribe to Forbes directly. It's really too packed full of click bait and inflammatory content to justify it. But this article was an interesting interview and I'm glad I got to read it without resorting to sleazy tactics of undermining a copyright holder's legitimate control of their content.
The UX of Apple News has plenty of room for improvement, but, the idea of an Apple Music/Spotify for quality periodical-type content is appealing to me.
Journalism began to die with the repeal of the fairness doctrine.
Or in other cases it's amazing photography and in depth looks at things nobody else has access to with experts able to explain or describe things, etc.
I think this kind of thing is valuable and in a capitalist society the people who take the time to make it deserve to be paid.
Orwell said omission is the most powerful form lying.
However the push for News+ and interspersing paid articles sort of makes me mad. I get that they want to advertise but I wish they would just put in ads, not weave unreadable articles throughout the readable ones.