I currently use Feedbin and Fiery Feeds to parse the feed list I’ve curated. I read some articles there, but send others to pocket to read later.
I’m conscious that I have only a very narrow view due to the chosen feeds.
I know that I can follow certain low volume feeds to twitter e.g. XKCD, but I don’t want firehose accounts in my twitter feed.
How are people finding Apple News these days, does it make intelligent decisions over what to show you as you tell it what you like and don’t?
All I can say is that it’s miles better than Google News.
Yes, if I remember to ‘like’ individual articles. My recommendation is to follow lots of topics and channels so that Apple News can curate your list and then you can tweak it from there. Don’t be afraid to block channels too, if you know you never want any articles from them.
Not sure if this matters to you, but I find it painful to use the Apple News app as any article I click on has an ad every few paragraphs. I’m used to reading with Instapaper or the Books app, but I just can’t do it in Apple News because of the amount of ads.
Caveat: I only ever use News on an iOS device, and I think my comment ↑ is accurate; however, I just opened the app on my Mac and I see far fewer adds, if any, in the same news sources I see them on iOS devices. This is kind of unfortunate, as I’m disinclined to read on a Mac. So, YMMV depending on platform?
It’s a bit subjective, isn’t it? For getting a broad overview of world news I would rate Apple News as fair, but not as good as a resource like Portal:Current events - Wikipedia
It’s probably possible to train Apple News to appeal as narrowly as your current feeds with the exception of its today views and its special coverage. I think it struggles with serendipitous recommendations that intelligently contrast with trained topics and publications.
Edit: by the way, you can get WP Current Events as RSS here.
It has a scrolling smoothness issue in Reeder (submitted feedback) but it’s still readable (and might be fine in your client of choice.)
I don’t have Apple News +, and it’s pretty annoying that it keeps furnishing articles I can’t read without paying.
Apart from that the articles seem relatively relevant to what I am interesting, whilst also showing me the key news of the day which would be from a broad range of subjects that I’m not following, which is great.
Are there still ads if you subscribe to Apple News +?
Yeah - I have the apple one premier thing and still see a chunk of ads
Yeah, I also only have used Apple News through Apple One, so I suppose it’s Apple News +. I just opened an article now to confirm and every few paragraphs, there’s an ad. And it’s the same repeating ad, which I find is kind of extra annoying.
So do I. That and the inability to save anything to Instapaper, etc. is the reason I have deleted it from my IOS devices.
No, or you could subscribe to the Apple One Premier tier (which is the only one that includes Apple News+).
Apple News is garbage. However, the all you can eat Magazine issues are awesome.
Linux Format, MacFormat, Retro Gamer, PC Gamer are the best.
I like it well enough as a news aggregation service. As macsorcery said, having access to any number of good magazines in News+ is a nice feature.
If you’re a Verizon Wireless customer, one of their monthly bonus “freebies” is a 5-month subscription to Apple News+ The cost is $0 for 5 months, just remember to cancel before the $10/month begins in month six.
As mentioned above, News+ is great for reading some of your favorite magazines and newspapers, even if you don’t like the feed of news items.
I am a big fan of Apple News+ the service, but the app is still not great. It works well if you are okay living inside the ecosystem, but sharing out is still a pain.
The fact that I get a bunch of magazines that I love to read on top of access to a good list of local newspapers around the US/Canada is great for me.
I just don’t get some of the decisions. I am a fan of the New+ audio…… but that only works on the iPhone. i work on my iPad a lot, and the idea it does not have the same ability is just dumb.
Apple News+ is awesome, the ads are not
I use NextDNS to remove almost all advertising from Apple News. It works great.
I like Apple News but I wish it was available through a browser. Do not like the app.
yeah, thanks for all of your feedback. i’ve used it for a few says now and I do not like the app, the ads or the paywall for Apple News +. don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to pay for content, but not if I’m still getting spammed by ads.
so back to RSS.
Am I the only Apple News+ user who never sees any advertisements?
The quantity of ads got to me as well. That said, I’ve always enjoyed aspects of the design and presentation of Apple News. Particularly the grid layout with photos. That’s one thing about RSS readers that I decided I didn’t like, they all do the same 3 part layout with sidebar of source feeds, then the stories in the folders/feeds then the story on the right. I settled on Newsify because it’s the only RSS reader I found that would present in a photo/text grid similar to Apple News.
All that said, I tried out the ad blocking method outlined by @MereCivilian above and it seems to be working perfectly. No ads. It makes the News app experience so much better. Thanks for sharing that!
I really like the News app, particularly the visual design of the article grid as well as the presentation of individual articles and “publications”.
Two things still missing that can make it a bit tedious. The lack of organizational folders in the sidebar. Lack of customization in regards to the replay of articles I’ve already seen in the “Today” view. That said I do like using that as it’s a good mix of content. If I want to hop into a particular website/publication/topic area I can do that in the sidebar.