I’m back with Apple News+ after letting my subscription lapse after the initial free trial. They have a two-months-for-the-price-of-one offer right now. So my sister and I are trying it under the family plan.
I’m actually finding it quiet nice. I don’t really feel like watching streaming much these days. I enjoy reading news though. I also have a subscription to the NY Times and read a few other online papers, like The Guardian. My other news aggregators are Google News and Yahoo News.
But Apple News+ really seems to fill in the gaps with WSJ, Scientific American, Forbes, New Yorker, National Geographic, and more. And lots of local newspapers, who gain revenue from people reading via Apple News+, which hopefully helps keep local publications alive.
I guess it does seem worth it.
I wish I could get the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to join in like the Kansas City Star does.
One nice feature I noticed is if you select text from an article and paste it somewhere, it automatically pastes inside quotes, with a URL to the original article, and a note saying it’s an excerpt from that article. That’s a time saver for social sharing.
I tested a few of those share links behind an incognito window and was able to read the articles, but I assume paywalls are probably reached at some point.
One feature that I appreciate is that the Verge puts up most of its stories in News+. If I go to the Verge website, many (most) of the stories are behind a paywall there (unless you pay their monthly fee), but if I click the share menu in Safari, there is an “Open in News” choice that takes me directly to the full story in News+.
The Guardian’s independent, high-impact journalism is powered by its global readership. The Guardian has over 1 million recurring digital supporters from more than 180 countries around the world. It’s thanks to this generosity that we can provide quality, trustworthy reporting that’s open for everyone to read.
Maybe we disagree about the meaning of a paywall? Those “over 1 million recurring digital supporters” are paying for access. If you don’t pay, you only get a finite number of articles, I think.
FWIW, the Guardian app on iOS and iPadOS definitely has a 20 article paywall - I think it’s per month. I tested the website yesterday and seemed to be able to open a couple dozen articles with no restriction, though.
On a large screen device (tablet or computer), I usually prefer to read the web version of a publication rather than the app version. The main reason is that, starting with the home page, I create links to the articles I want to read, then read them in tabs. In Safari, I can easily create a bookmark for the tabs and save that to my favorites page (which is what I see when I open a Safari window). So, although I subscribe to several publications, I almost never read them in their associated app.
For publications that allow folks to read a limited number of articles without logging in, there is a trick to have that limit apply on a session basis rather than a temporal basis: you need to delete the website data for that publication before you reach that limit. This is most easily done by reading in incognito or private mode, or by using the browser setting that lets you clear website cookies and data. In Safari on a Mac, it’s found in Settings>Privacy>Manage Website Data; on an iPhone or iPad, it’s found in Settings>Apps>Safari>Advanced>Website Data. This is a pain for a publication that you often read; for those, subscribe or access via News+.
I did notice one UI downside to AppleNews. It seems inside articles there is no way of searching for text (e.g. “native American”) like you can on a web page. There is no search bar, and CMD+F doesn’t do anything.
I was a little skeptical of Apple News at first but when my family and I got access to it as part of our Apple One subscription, it quickly grew on me. It does a pretty great job of showing me the headlines I want to see and I find myself clicking on Apple News stories several times a day. At this point I’m a huge fan, and I find it a much healthier way of staying abreast of what’s going on than social media.
By the way, to share stories out of Apple News with people who don’t subscribe I’ve come to rely on this super handy shortcut. It gives you the source web URL for an Apple News article. You may need to modify it to take the action that you prefer, e.g., open it in your browser or save it to a read later app like GoodLinks.
I’m enjoying this “two-months-for-the-price-of-one offer” also, although I get most of my newsbits from email newsletters and friends posts on Facebook.
Yup, I was paying for News, Music for only hubby, and a small step up in cloud storage. Total was about $26/mo. I added another member to my family of 4 and now for $38 we all get those things plus 2tb cloud and Apple TV. Haven’t tried fitness or games at all.
If all you want to do is open the original article in Safari, you can do that from the News app’s Share Sheet. The shortcut should be useful for other actions.