While RSS feeds and readers are popular with the nerd crowd it would seem the Apple News app get’s a lot of use as the result of being a default app.
Like many digital publishers, The Daily Beast was struggling at the end of 2023. Facebook, long a primary driver of clicks to the publication, had turned away from news. Search traffic had become increasingly erratic, as Google adjusted its algorithm to combat a flood of AI-powered junk. The site’s paid subscription program had atrophied since Donald Trump left office.
Interesting story, I had no ideal Apple News was that popular. And I had forgotten it’s been around for close to nine years! As I recall I cancelled my free trial back then before it ended.
I reinstalled AN on my iPad a few weeks ago. It still has giant bright advertisements that don’t mix well with dark mode.
Yeah, the ads are a bummer. Also, when I hide a news source it still shows a blank spot for stories from that source. Yuck. Also I don’t subscribe to News+ but it intermingles all those stories with the others.
I love the visual magazine grid style but the lack of RSS and the other negatives are enough to keep me away. That said, it’s a great option for those that don’t want to bother with RSS.
My wife got News+ in a bundle with other Apple stuff, and I’m happy with it. It eliminates the intrusive ads and we get access to a lot of magazines and newspapers that are otherwise paywalled.
Be aware though that a few publications like the Washington Post still reserve some content for direct subscribers.
I started using it more when I learned about the “Restrict Stories” option for viewing your news. I was getting tired of seeing sources I didn’t care about, but with that option enable it only shows you the sources you choose. It’s been a game changer for me and it’s my go to for news, along with Reeder 5.
I’m glad you mentioned this! I had enabled it at some point a couple months ago and totally forgot that it solves the problem of the blank stories showing up from hidden publications.
Apple News is definitely more popular out among the general public than it is in nerd circles. However, I suspect the bigger factor here is how miserable the market for monetizing news content on the internet is these days.
I regularly read the New Yorker, The Walrus, Smithsonian, Canadian Geographic, and National Geographic in News+. Based on how much the separate magazine subscriptions alone would cost makes it a bargain.
It also allows me to save articles to Pocket which integrates with my Kobo reader for a pleasant reading experience with long articles.
A lot of these newspapers & magazine can also be accessed for free using your local library’s online resources via Libby and/or Pressreader.
Yeah, I’m so out of the habit of reading magazines that when I had the 3 month trial I didn’t take advantage. But I’d discovered that many of them were available in Libby. I’ve really come to love that app!
I also subscribe to the New York Times, The Economist, and Ground News (a news aggregator like Apple News but sorts stories by source across the political spectrum to get balance).
I successfully blocked the ads awhile back using NextDNS on my iPad but the way I’d set it up was also blocking other content so I stopped using it. I’ve tried again using the three domains you list and that seems to block just Apple News ads. Thanks!
OK. I have ads. Ads within the various news stories. I assume that is what we are talking about; I was looking for ads in the News app itself, outside of the articles.
The ads within the news articles are like any news story I read online - I guess they don’t even register with me anymore! Ha!
. But I’ll use my month of Apple News+ to read the articles