
In iOS 7, the final straw for Newsstand - jamesmoss
http://markokarppinen.com/post/64104789298/in-ios-7-the-final-straw-for-newsstand
======
devx
> The folder-like design in iOS 5 and iOS 6 has been replaced with an opaque
> app icon. The end result is so horrible that it’s hard to avoid thinking it
> was done maliciously: if someone was tasked with hiding away a set of
> unwanted apps, they would be likely to come back with a design that was
> something very much like the iOS 7 Newsstand.

I doubt it was done maliciously, but I stand by my previous belief: Jon Ive is
just really, _really_ bad at overseeing software design. He's much worse at
software design than Scott Forestall.

Maybe Scott's UI wasn't "up to date", but he seemed to be great at _UX
design_. Jon Ive doesn't seem to understand UX at all (did you see the font he
chose for iOS7 at WWDC, which fortunately got changed because of backlash? You
could barely see it), and he just copied some UI designs from 3rd party apps
or other mobile operating systems (webOS, Android, WP8, etc), and made the
colors lighter - all of it implemented in a not very cohesive way. And let's
not even bring up the animations, translucency or parallax effect anymore,
which again are things only a UI/UX newbie would add.

~~~
iambateman
Wait, so what you're saying is that expertise at industrial design !=
expertise at software design???

;)

~~~
raganwald
You're joking, but if we take the statement seriously... Perhaps the mechanism
works like this: The further we move away from skeuomorphism, the less
correlation we'll see between industrial design talent and UX design talent.

~~~
iambateman
Hah! I'm imagining Jony trying to model the calendar app in styrofoam on his
workbench.

------
Samuel_Michon
As a user, I like Newsstand a lot. No longer is my personal information being
sold by publishers to marketing firms. No longer do I need to trust publishers
to be careful with my credit card information. Payments happen automatically,
as part of my regular iTunes bills. New issues are downloaded automatically,
so I always have something to read when I’m traveling. And on top of that,
iPad issues are much cheaper than physical copies.

I do think that publishers need to step up and make better apps, but that’s
not a Newsstand issue. They should learn from The Magazine[1], which uses the
medium perfectly: issues load in seconds, articles aren’t too long and are
accompanied by great retina photos, and the cover icons are legible, even on
iPhone.

[1] [http://the-magazine.org/](http://the-magazine.org/)

~~~
mikeash
None of that requires Newsstand. The article isn't discussing "reading
magazines on your iPad" but rather "creating apps that fit into Apple's
'Newsstand' category" which is nearly a completely different thing. The whole
point of this article is that you don't need to use Newsstand to get the
things you describe, and in fact you're better off not doing so.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
The article is very developer centric. I shared what I’m looking for as a
consumer. As a consumer, I don’t really care whether developing for Newsstand
is inconvenient for some small shops. I have quit paying for digital magazines
that didn’t switch to Newsstand.

I do have to say that people like indies like Glenn Fleischman and Dave Eggers
use Newsstand brilliantly, so it’s by no means only an option for the likes of
Condé Nast.

~~~
mikeash
As a consumer, you shouldn't care about whether they use Newsstand, you should
care about whether they provide the functionality you want. All of the
functionality you want can be provided without Newsstand, so why do you insist
on Newsstand?

~~~
enraged_camel
>>As a consumer, you shouldn't care about whether they use Newsstand, you
should care about whether they provide the functionality you want.

Or perhaps you shouldn't tell him what he should care about and what he
shouldn't. Just a thought.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
Nah, that’s fine. I used my own experiences to show how consumers in general
might actually prefer Newsstand magazines over magazines placed elsewhere in
the App Store. Of course that opens up a discussion and that was the point. If
I didn’t want input, I should’ve just kept it to myself.

------
iambateman
Have you ever met someone who actually used Newsstand? Every conversation I've
ever had about it was: "I can't believe I can't put this in a folder."

I tried to use it once and was so underwhelmed I think it lasted 2 minutes.

It totally makes sense to push people away from the service...it's not ever
going to get widespread adoption without some major changes.

~~~
csmattryder
I used to jailbreak my iOS devices just to remove it, now redundant in iOS 7
(thankfully).

It makes no real sense why Apple would segregate these apps, yet also allow a
directory hierarchy for you to organize non-NS apps.

If Newsstand solves a genuine real-world problem, why do I not have Gamestand?
I have a folder for all my games, surely a Newsstand-like UI would be a pivot
on the original idea?

If it isn't scrapped in iOS 8, I don't know what's going on. The idea around
the newspapers live-updating/downloading/streaming is great, carry it on
without shoving it away on the back page!

~~~
iambateman
Yeah, I can't help but wonder if it was built to appease (or appeal to) big
media companies.

The idea of "a good old newsstand full of newspapers" is something only
journalists still hold.

~~~
untog
Big media companies forced into a folder that hides their app from users
aren't very keen on Newsstand either.

------
scott_s
I hate Newsstand. Mine has one app in it: The NY Times. I use it frequently -
any time I'm eating a diner breakfast, or taking the train into the city on
the weekend. I don't want Newsstand, I just want the NY Times app in an easy
place to get to.

~~~
k-mcgrady
That's the only one in mine too. The problem with Newsstand isn't the folder.
It's that there are no good publications for it. Publishers just export their
PDF into the app. If they designed an experience like the NYT or The Magazine
I'd be using Newsstand a lot more. I wouldn't mind Apple forcing them to do it
either (i.e. new 'guideline' preventing apps which only sell PDF's).

~~~
eli
If you think Newsstand is bad, you should definitely avoid the Kindle version.

~~~
AsymetricCom
A quick skimming of the reviews of NYTimes 4 Kindle show mostly positive
associations with the Kindle-specific features.

~~~
eli
There are kindle specific features?

I think most people like the fact that even the Sunday edition is only $1
(that's why I buy it). It's _very_ bare bones. Pretty much just text and
sometimes a single image. Charts or images with text are usually unreadable.

------
technosmurf
In 2012, it seemed that Newsstand was a lucrative option for some publishers.
Future PLC (which makes PC Gamer, Computer Arts and Computer Music magazines)
earned $8 million USD in one year. They were really happy with the number of
people who signed up for marketing messages (5 million out of 12 million
downloads), which was an early stumbling block for publishers because Apple
doesn't share the customer contact info by default (traditional publishers
always had access to this).

Have other publishers seen a serious drop in users or revenue since then for
the article to recommend not putting magazines inside Newsstand anymore?

[http://paidcontent.org/2012/09/27/future-has-
made-5-million-...](http://paidcontent.org/2012/09/27/future-has-
made-5-million-from-ipad-magazines-in-a-year/)

------
gwu78
I'd like to see Music and Videos go the same way. These apps are useless.
Opening them up, one is greeted with "Store". But I don't want to purchase
anything, I just want a place to store my files. And I know for fact I am not
the only one.

Most people I know use other, free apps to transfer files to/from the device
and to listen/watch audio/video.

For those who lived through the PC era, these tactics by Apple are perhaps
reminiscent of Microsoft/OEM "crapware" that came installed on every PC (and
no doubt still does). Even though the PC was "new", it was unclean. The first
thing one had to do after purchase was to remove all the crapware.

In its ongoing homage to human intelligence, Apple has made sure one cannot
remove these garbage items without having to jailbreak. Brilliant.

~~~
mitchty
So do what I do, move them into a junk folder.

The Music and Videos apps however, are actually useful unlike Newsstand. And
these tactics by Apple are nothing like the OEM crapware from the late 90's, I
grew up in that era, there is no real comparison here to be honest. They are
perfectly serviceable music/video players. If most people use "other, free
apps" what pray tell are these apps called so the rest of us could gain from
this heretofore hidden knowledge. What benefit do I get from them?

I can already tell you using vlc is... not fun on ios when you get to wanting
to stream video or audio. Simpler just to use the music app.

~~~
gwu78
In your case (if I'm guessing correctly), it's probably better to keep using
the provided Music and Video apps. This is because (if I'm guessing
correctly), you get your music from something resembling the iTunes store or a
subscription. If that's not the case, read on.

My case, and that of others I know, is where one has music that was purchased
in the heydays of vinyl and later CD's, long before the "iTunes Store" was
even a glimmer in Jobs' beady eye. And that music has been converted to
digtital if necessary and is stored as files on HDD's or external media. How
do you play these files on the iPhone/iPad? Can you do it with the Music app?

Moreover, how do you play video files that you have had since before iOS
existed, or that you acquire outside of the iTunes store?

The solutions I refer to are not "hidden knowledge" as you suggest. But they
assume familiarity with basic networking and networking protocols.

First, you will need to connect another computer not running iOS to your local
network (e.g., plug it into you home router). Being HN, it is assumed you know
how to configure and run "servers" (programs that serve files to a network)
and that you use an OS that lets you do so, easily. Several such OS's are
freely available.

Then, if you simply "serve" the audio and video files from the non-iOS HDD or
external media drive to the iOS device via your local network, you can use a
free app from the "App Store" (or you can just use Safari) that can behave as
a client on the iOS device. Using the right apps, you can either 1. download
files to the iPhone/iPad then play them, or 2. play them directly from the
non-iOS HDD/media drive ("streaming"?).

I have used HTTP, FTP, SFTP, WebDav clients successfully. But there are
probably others that could work.

Some apps also give you server capabilities, so you can download files from
the iPhone/iPad to your non-iOS computers.

Any serious work with audio or video (e.g. transcoding) can be done on the
non-iOS computer _before_ serving it to the iOS devices. For example, do
conversion to MP4 (the format Safari likes) on the non-iOS computer.

Here's a few apps you might use (assuming you understand the protocols above):

AirDrive Documents OPlayerLite

If you have some specific issues you cannot solve, I'd be happy to try to help
you. But you'll need to give details of what you're trying to do. If you just
say "VLC on iOS is a PITA", then I'm afraid there's not much I can do except
to say "I agree." Whereas if you say, "How do I ________?", then maybe I can
suggest a possible solution.

Regarding these apps, you asked "What benefit do I get from them?"

It depends.

If you "rent" your audio and video from Apple, then they offer little to no
benefit.

But if you _own_ audio and video files, e.g., from the pre-iOS era, and you
want to play them on iOS devices, then the answer is "They let you transfer
and play files." Quite useful, indeed.

~~~
mitchty
First up, thanks for the response!

So for myself only, and that is all my post will explain, I've ripped every cd
i ever had (never had vinyl so not an issue) into ALAC and FLAC files (did
both cause why not).

Then I just let itunes deal with keeping them up to date. I also generally
purchase music from itunes or amazon and just dump it into itunes in general
for syncing. Itunes radio is also passable for discovering new songs so
streaming works ok.

For video, to be honest I have 2 that I have on my phone right now. One is the
original star trek remake movie as I wanted to see what an itunes movie was
like. The rest are just a bunch of ripped via handbrake dvd files on my nas
server.

As to vlc being a pita to setup for streaming, my annoyance with it is in
regards to setting up ftp, or http to get it to stream video files that I
honestly can't be bothered to convert just so that I can play them on my
iphone. I managed to get things working but the amount of effort was quite
ludicrous to the point that i'd rather just use ffmpeg and convert the file
manually then dump it into itunes to sync it. VLC on ios is not very useful.

My main issue with vlc is that it can't mount the existing afp (or nfs for
that matter) share that my fileserver has for all my video files. And setting
up transcoding to mp4 just made me realize that there are better uses of my
time than dealing with such piddly issues. I'd rather be learning rust for
example than dealing with streaming/transcoding issues to my phone.

I'll look at the three apps you mentioned, but overall the music app in
particular works for my use cases. The video app is also, ok enough for me not
to hate it. But I generally just download some videos and then dump them onto
my phone for playback when in a line and then immediately delete them. I'm a
pretty basic user in that regard.

~~~
gwu78
I forgot to mention a point that's probably significant. I cannot use iTunes.
The OS's I've used do not support it. (I do have a Mac desktop but I never
used it for connecting to the internet and never ran iTunes on it.)

My exploration of iTunes alternatives started back when it first appeared with
the iPod. I used some Windows and UNIX programs that could work with the
iTunes database for a while but of course Apple kept changing the database
format; and the idea of "renting" music started to catch on with the unwashed
masses: iTunes became accepted as a way to manage one's music collection. I
just gave up on the idea of iTunes syncing.

I simply do not need it. I forget it even exists. I use HTTP and FTP to access
my collection and it works well enough.

If I had been using iTunes all these years, and was satisfied with how it
works, I doubt I would switch away. I know most people must fall into that
category. I have just forgotten how I have avoided iTunes all these years. I
have never used it, even once!

As for VLC, I agree with your approach. I too tried to get VLC working; and I
think it's great they are trying to get it to run on iOS, but it's just easier
to use ffmpeg. VLC uses the ffmpeg libraries, but not vice versa. Go figure.

I've never really understood the appeal of "streaming" (progressive download
seems a better solution if one lacks the storage space) and I'm more an
MPlayer guy than a VLC guy anyway.

The Documents app has both SFTP and FTP clients so you should be able to
access and sync with your fileserver if you run the sftp subsystem or an ftpd
on it. It has WebDav too. You can use a web browser to transfer
upload/download files if all else fails.

Good luck with Rust.

~~~
mitchty
Ah, yeah not being able to use itunes would explain things better. Also I
should also note that I only really run osx, so itunes for myself is mostly a
"does what it says on the tin" situation. I know windows users have other
experiences. As for renting of stuff, honestly with my appletv renting movies
is really my favorite way to enjoy movies. I rarely ever watch a movie twice
so it works nicely. I don't think you can rent music though, least i've never
seen any music under the rental situation.

As for the streaming I was trying to setup the "live http streaming" stuff
that apple sometimes uses for keynote streams. Basically a m3u playlist that
updates with a bunch of chunked mp4 files. But after an hour of no real
progress I decided to abandon the idea.

If the documents app can use sftp thats way better. I have a huge aversion
towards ftp in general and would rather not have it running on my fileserver.
Webdav would be useful as well.

As for rust, its really cool and I'm tempted to go whole hog on using it
instead of go for some of my rewrites. The trait system is really fun and
honestly the whole community is refreshingly fun. Which could just be related
to its size and newness but either way its a fun design.

~~~
gwu78
I use the word "rent" in a general sense; I could have just as well used the
word "licence".

I'm used to the old days when you bought music and it did not come with terms
attached. But times are changing as more people forget about the rights they
used to have, not to mention future generations who may never know what it is
like to "buy" music with no strings attached. See
[http://www.apple.com/legal/internet-
services/itunes/uk/terms...](http://www.apple.com/legal/internet-
services/itunes/uk/terms.html)

Note the headings like USAGE TERMS and words like "nontransferable"; this is
not your usual "purchase". Imagine seeing those terms on the packaging of a
CD.

The reason you see these terms is that you are not "buying" music - you are
licensing, or "renting" it. When you "buy" something, normally the seller does
tell you how you may or may not use it and require you to enter into a private
agreement governing the usage of what you just bought (regardless of the
legality of such usage). "Licensing" or "renting" is a different matter,
however - you must agree to terms.

A few years ago a story made headlines where a certain celebrity in the US
wanted to tranfser his enormous iTunes music collection to his kids, but his
lawyers advised him he might not be able to do that given Apple's license
terms. He responded by announcing to a journalist that he was considering
suing Apple.

As a consumer, I'm not a fan of the idea of restricting content to a
particular device or set of devices. I prefer my files (including music files)
to be portable. I have choice and I'm not married to Apple by any means.

------
ChuckMcM
I've got several 'magazines' in my newsstand app, Science News, Wall Street
Journal, NY Times, Scientific American, Economist, "Distro"[1], and
Smithsonian. For the last few days the WSJ has vanished and the tech support
guys aren't sure what is up with that.

So I use the Newstand every day. And in so doing it suffers from none of the
issues that the OP discusses.

That said, I've got all of my non-serious apps (games and puzzles), all shoved
to a single 'page' at end of my scrolling set of apps. My travel apps
collected on page 2, the 'built in' apps on page 1. But the manual arrangement
is not has handy as newstand. Unfortunately there isn't a user controlled
nesting strategy.

Perhaps the home screen should be tags (user created) rather than App icons.
Selecting a tag moving into a group of icons that have that tag. It would
probably work well for me if it existed.

~~~
travem
> Perhaps the home screen should be tags (user created) rather than App icons.
> Selecting a tag moving into a group of icons that have that tag. It would
> probably work well for me if it existed.

How would this differ from the ability to create folders for apps today?

~~~
ChuckMcM
An app could have multiple tags but it cannot (to my knowledge) be in multiple
folders.

~~~
bashinator
That makes a ton of sense. I would love for the Google Translate app to be
listed under both "reference" and "travel".

------
surfearth
For me, Newsstand is annoying because it takes extra clicks to get in and out
of apps, the latter of which is more frustrating. iOS7 made this frustration
worse because now you need to explicitly click the home button twice to exit
(once for the app and then again for Newsstand) whereas with <iOS7 you could
click the home button once to exit the app and then tap on the lower half of
the screen OR click the home button to exit Newsstand. I know this sounds
picky, but in practice it has been an annoyance.

That being said it does seem to be working betteron iOS7 and the NYTimes, WSJ
and New Yorker apps all have fresh content ready when I open them.

~~~
Pxtl
See, this is why every other OS lets users create shortcuts beyond the One
Icon To Rule Them All for a given app. In Android there's that drawer full of
widgets you can stick on the home screen, in WinPhone many apps let you "pin
to the home screen" on various icons within the app, and obviously desktop
OSes have supported that feature since time immemorial.

iOS stands alone with its demand that the home screen must be a canonical list
of the installed programs _and nothing else_.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
There’s an app for that™

Launch Center Pro: [http://contrast.co/launch-center-
pro/](http://contrast.co/launch-center-pro/)

------
AshFurrow
Interesting post. I just launched a Newsstand app
([http://35mm.io](http://35mm.io)) specifically so that I could leverage the
"free trial" period for subscription IAPs and recurring revenue. Even given
the list of reasons cited in the article, I'd still choose that path.

It'd be interesting to see this from an individual/small team's perspective
vs. that of a publisher.

~~~
markonen
Free trials are a must, but you may find that other mechanisms convert better
than the Apple-provided one. For example, I would consider offering a free
issue on first launch without making the user sign in with their Apple ID and
confirming a recurring subscription.

Recurring subscription revenue is possible outside the Newsstand section, too;
that was one of the points I was trying to make.

------
smackfu
I will say that iOS 7 does seem to have made the NYTimes Newstand app actually
work properly. Like it says there is new content, and I open it, and the new
content is actually there already. Which is the whole premise of Newstand. On
iOS 6, it would display an update spinner every time.

Edit: From reading the article, it seems like this is probably because NYTimes
is updated more than once per day, but Newsstand only allows one update per
day. So the Newsstand update mechanism was never very useful for this case.

~~~
untog
Yeah, that was the one benefit of Newsstand - and it didn't work properly for
rolling news organisations.

------
releod
This article is all wrong. I am a consumer, and the publisher should be
interested in what works for me. While one can argue the merits of Newsstand,
I've used it, and I've used standalone native apps as the OP suggest. I prefer
consolidation to mess. I prefer a consistent experience across all reading
material, much like the physical counterpart found in the magazine / newspaper
format.

------
jreed91
I think newsstand works quite well on the iPad. But on the iPhone it makes no
sense.

------
thehme
As a news reader, I agree with this article. I think when I first got my
iPhone years ago and the Newstand app was part of it, I might have clicked on
it to see what it was, but that was it. Since then, I have downloaded stand
alone apps to access the reading material I am interested in. If I needed to
get to the Newstand app, I would have to scroll a couple screens from the
front to finally find it. In fact, I recall that after upgrading to iOS7, my
apps were not ordered, but what was definitely in the last screen was this
opaque little icon with a small little plane and other text on it - newsstand.
I don't think I have clicked on it yet, but if I was an avid user, I'd be
upset it got kicked to the back.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
When Newsstand was introduced, there weren’t many quality magazines that had
Newsstand versions of their apps. That is to be expected and nowadays, all of
the magazines I want to read are available in Newsstand. Those magazines are
_also_ available outside Newsstand though and that may be the case for the
magazines you read as well. If you’re interested, you can look for the titles
in the Newsstand Store.

> If I needed to get to the Newstand app, I would have to scroll a couple
> screens from the front to finally find it.

Wouldn’t that be because you moved it there? Newsstand is on the first page of
my Springboard and it has always been there. iOS 7 didn’t change that.

------
ashray5
I fail to understand why the new opaque icon makes it "much worse" compared to
the icon in previous iOS versions.

------
qwerty_asdf
Why not both?

------
CamperBob2
_Unfortunately, this use of covers is purely skeuomorphic in nature..._

That's what kills me about iOS7 -- they declared a jihad against bitmaps that
left the Newsstand as a series of flat-shaded rectangles containing, wait for
it, bitmapped magazine covers. So we get a texture-mapped image of a
newspaper's front page, floating in an ugly partitioned gray space.

It never occurred to any of these rocket artists that skeuomorphism can refer
to more than just nonfunctional textures, but shapes as well.

It's as if Jobs really _was_ the only one at Apple with any aesthetic
sensibilities. The trolls were right all along.

