
Apple News hits 125M monthly active users - prostoalex
https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/30/apple-news-hits-125-million-monthly-active-users/
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wtmt
IMO, Apple News is still a hobby looking for a purpose, since it was launched
close to five years ago and is still available in only a few countries. Forget
about the Apple News+ subscription, even the app isn’t available in other
countries (you can get around this by setting the region of your device to one
of the supported ones). It doesn’t look like Apple devotes much effort to keep
it afloat or widen its reach.

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.

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OkGoDoIt
As far as I can tell setting the region doesn’t really work. Even on my USA
iPhone with USA region, when I travel internationally the Apple news app
refuses to load. Even the widget refuses to load. All based on my current
physical location. It’s infuriating.

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.

~~~
lil1t
I'm using USA region without actually being there and non-USA store account.
Something like a few months ago Apple News didn't load for me neither no
matter what country VPN was set to. But now that I tried it again, it actually
works just fine on iPadOS 13.4.1 correctly loading the USA stories based
solely on the region settings.

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Watabou
Conversely, the introduction of News+ and the overwhelming amount of News+
exclusive articles made me delete the app entirely.

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.

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blackrock
The annoying thing about Apple News is that it allows tabloids, sensational
crap, bloggers with a dollar, and anyone else that has a junky website, to
masquerade as actual, real, and relevant news.

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.

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philshem
\+ still _not_ available in most countries, including mine

> Apple News is only available in the U.S., UK, Canada, and Australia

[https://www.imore.com/how-get-apple-news-uk-australia-
canada...](https://www.imore.com/how-get-apple-news-uk-australia-canada-and-
more)

~~~
luckylion
Just missing New Zealand to be identical to Five Eyes.

Is it a language issue? Do they offer it for french language media in Canada?

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tinus_hn
They need to contract with a large number of unwilling partners. Makes sense
they are going for the big markets first.

~~~
luckylion
Yeah, but Australia isn't exactly a big market. From that angle, I'd expect
France and Germany to be on the list, not necessarily Canada and Australia.

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beart
The article doesn't state what an 'active user' is. It does clarify these are
not paying users. Is it just anyone who has opened the app?

~~~
culturestate
I don't think Apple has specified the way they measure _active users_ in their
SEC filings, but if they followed the same methodology as the analytics in App
Store Connect it would mean 125M people opened the News app for at least one
session of at least 2 seconds.

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.

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mnd999
It still doesn’t let you block particular news outlets entirely either, if
they make it into top stories they still show up. Given the behaviour of some
outlets, this makes Apple News a non-starter for me.

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siggen
I deleted the news app when it was flooded with News+ articles

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ninkendo
I made it a habit to block every channel that came up as News+, now it ends up
being a decent enough experience.

(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.)

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baggy_trough
I'd be amazed if anyone on the Apple News team enjoyed using the app to read
news.

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iav
I pay for Apple News just to get WSJ. It’s effectively half price.

~~~
ztjio
I have a similar get with it, but for New Yorker, Architectural Digest and a
smattering of random things that I probably wouldn't buy otherwise but am
happy to have access to incidentally.

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.

~~~
dkdk8283
I’m in the camp of people who won’t pay for content - it’s just not worth it
to me.

Journalism began to die with the repeal of the fairness doctrine.

~~~
ztjio
I don't know if what I am paying for really is what one would call journalism.
Maybe sometimes. But more often it's just better writing, more depth, more
thought. An alternative to reading a dense tome but with the same relative
degree of satisfaction.

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.

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olliej
I'm generally pro-apple but every time I accidentally click a link that loads
in the news app instead of my browser it irritates me. If anything its worse
than loading an amp page - at least that doesn't open an complete new app that
I don't use.

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thrwn_frthr_awy
Why not delete the app?

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yadco
I tried, I had to mount the disk. The next update brought it back again.

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lawrenceyan
Google News is better, but that kind of makes sense given Google's search
foundation.

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lowdose
Google News & Apple News are trying to become the new gatekeepers of
information by curating "verified" news sources and installing unadjustable
feeds.

Orwell said omission is the most powerful form lying.

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todaysAI
People don't want to research themselves. How can they think that a news-feed
thinks the way they do?

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doctoboggan
I am one of those users, I've read apple news for some time now, I guess they
were able to get it in front of me with those widgets.

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.

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amelius
Why doesn't Apple start a News Store, where journalists can offer their work
for a fee and Apple takes a 30% cut? /s

