[speak_plainly]

Apple News and News+ represent everything wrong with modern Apple: a ham-fisted approach to simplicity that ignores the end user. It is their most mediocre service, jarringly jamming cheap clickbait next to serious journalism in a layout that makes no sense.

The technical execution is just as lazy. While some magazines are tailored, many are just flat, low-res PDFs that look terrible on the high-end Retina screens Apple sells. Worst of all, Apple had the leverage to revolutionize a struggling industry; instead, they settled for a half-baked aggregator.

It’s a toxic mix of Apple tropes that simply weren't thought through. The ads are the cherry on the cake.

[ksec]

Ever since Apple moved to Services Strategy in 2014 it has been like this. Services were not there so they could provide a better experience for its "customers". I use the word "customer" here which is what Apple / Steve Jobs used to call their loyal fans, and not user. But to further growth their Revenue pie because they foresee iPhone one day will stagnant.

You now have Apple Fitness+, Apple TV, News, Music, Arcade. None of these are of any quality of what Apple used to be. It is really sad.

Oh and the most iconic thing? Apple was the one who tried to kill internet ads between 2017 - 2020.

[D13Fd]

Fitness+ is actually super high quality, really well integrated with Apple’s products, and fun to use. I love it. I would happily pay the monthly Apple fee just for fitness+. I hope they don’t change it.

If there is anything that represents a “services strategy” like the Apple of the Jobs era, it’s fitness+.

[Analemma_]

Fitness+ is okay-ish but it’s not getting any attention and I don’t think it deserves its $10/month price. Non-Apple fitness subscriptions at the same price are far better.

Just for starters, what if you have two people in the house who want to do a Fitness+ workout together? Too bad: even if they both pay for it, one gets the nice tracking and HUD and the other gets squat. This is an obvious and trivial feature, and it’s nowhere to be found. I could maybe see it getting cut for the launch checklist if people were behind schedule, but Fitness+ plus is more than five years old now, there is no excuse.

It’s total abandonware from a company trying to do the absolute minimum to get your recurring subscription.

[kemayo]

I dunno, I think that multiple people doing a workout together in the same at-home room is a bit of an edge case for this app. I have a not-tiny house, and I don't have a space where I could do that without having to move heavy furniture around first. People who live in apartments are really out of luck.

They do support syncing up the workouts of people who're each using their own device: https://support.apple.com/en-us/101979

[darkhorse222]

I think you would use SharePlay for that maybe

[philwelch]

So you have to buy twice as many Apple products, brilliant marketing strategy

[D13Fd]

> It’s total abandonware from a company trying to do the absolute minimum to get your recurring subscription.

What? Abandonware? They are constantly posting new workouts that are thought out and well produced. The Fitness+ app is very well maintained. It works great. It has cool features. Honestly I don't know what you are talking about, here.

I've worked out together with one to three other people several times. No one cared that their heart rate wasn't shown on the screen. It's really not an important feature and a very niche use case.

[StilesCrisis]

They tried to kill _competitors'_ ads. Everyone else gets "Ask Not to Track" while Apple gets "Personalized Ads." It's so glaring once you see it.

[direwolf20]

The ad industry can't destroy itself soon enough.

[goalieca]

The ad industry basically is the tech industry at this point.

[mavhc]

But how will I get free stuff and also not see ads with my adblocker if ads die?

[direwolf20]

I don't know. How will open source software exist without ads?

[pfdietz]

I'm dreading the day Amazon puts ads in e-books.

[aaarrm]

I often imagine a world where ads are illegal.

[intothemild]

I hate ad companies and ads as much as the next person. But this was one of the moments where I felt like people didn't see what I saw with services era apple. I pointed out that all apple is doing is locking down their phones even further. That they're not eliminating all ads on your phone... Nope they're eliminating their competition.

It's just nuts peoples hatred of ads clouds their vision of this.

[sinnsro]

Again, another great move sponsored by bean counter boy Tim.

[tonyedgecombe]

TV is pretty good even for my English sensibilities. Severance is some of the best television I’ve seen in a long time.

[rootusrootus]

And Slow Horses, which is perhaps my favorite show in years. I'm not a big TV watcher, and this show got me to subscribe (at least for a while) to Apple TV.

[alsetmusic]

Try Pluribus. We just finished S01. Also pretty good.

Calling AppleTV low quality doesn't fit. The rest, yeah. Pretty useless.

[manuelabeledo]

Commercials in TV+ are as bad as ads in News+, e.g. it seems I cannot open the app without getting blasted at with a Peacock commercial.

[MBCook]

What? I’ve never seen a single commercial on an Apple TV+ show.

[eek2121]

Something like 70% of the comments I've seen on this thread show that either:

1) The user has never owned an Apple Device in their life. 2) They are trolling super hard.

There are complaints to be had that I definitely agree with, however, I see a TON of fiction for every single legitimate complaint.

No, not an Apple employee, shareholder, etc. (I am broke and dependent on my wife because I am disabled lol)

[manuelabeledo]

I've been an Apple One subscriber for over three years now. For the past few months, as soon as you open the TV+ app, a Peacock ad starts playing really loud.

[izacus]

Are you not able to think of a simple concept of "maybe the ads are regional" and you need to immediately jump to dumb conspiracy theories?

[alsetmusic]

They've had a commercial (trailer) before every show / movie we've watched in the past week. We can skip them, but they are there.

[heavyset_go]

You haven't seen Apple product placement in their shows?

Servant was a walking ad for iPhones and Facetime lol

[manuelabeledo]

It's right when you open the TV+ app.

[lokar]

Weird, there are none when you use the appletv device

[smt88]

TV productions are a product, not a service. Apple TV is the service.

[shermantanktop]

Apple has a tv service and Apple also has exclusive content, which they brand with “Apple TV”…so it’s kind of both.

Same for the other big streaming services. Some of them (Netflix, Prime Video) are more involved in content production, up to and including having production facilities and an in house staff. But a lot of the “exclusive” branded content is made by semi-independent production companies.

[rootusrootus]

> Apple has a tv service and Apple also has exclusive content, which they brand with “Apple TV”…

And of course the device itself. I wish they would have distinct names.

[dlcarrier]

Which makes it even more tragic that the few good streaming shows produced recently are all on a network no one watches.

I am glad that they bought the rights to Brandon Sanderson's books, because I know Netflix wouldn't do them justice and Amazon prime would be far worse than that, but it also means that it will have a tenth of the available audience that a Netflix contract would have brought.

[tonyedgecombe]

If they were serving the mass market then they would be making trash like Netflix.

[dlcarrier]

I'm not sure how causality works on that one. Netflix made great stuff, back when streaming was still a small market, then they got big and started making trash.

It's not like they weren't trying to attract everyone when they were releasing content worth watching. Maybe it's because they didn't have any feedback yet on what works, so they couldn't even try to make safe bets, instead creating a little of everything, with most of it being bland, but a surprising portion being top-tier.

[chrisweekly]

Hmm, your comment resonates in principle [caring about quality production of worthwhile narratives], but your specific examples show how much YMMV when it comes to subjective preferences. I was so grateful that Amazon Prime somehow did justice to The Expanse [I highly recommend the novels, and feel the show was one of the best-ever translations of sci-fi to the screen] and could never get into the Wheel of Time book series [tho I guess that was Jordan, not Sanderson, shrug].

[majormajor]

Amazon didn't start The Expanse as a TV show, though. They bought it after Sci-Fi ran it then cancelled it. They didn't screw it up after that, but that's a very different sequence from creating it themselves.

Compare to their much-ballyhooed exercise in lighting money on fire that was their LOTR series.

[acessoproibido]

I will never forgive them buying the rights to Utopia (UK) - probably the greatest show ever made - and remaking it into absolute shit. Just thinking about it makes my blood boil. Fuck Amazon (even if The Expanse was pretty good)

[addicted]

"customer" is a much better term IMO. It indicates this is ultimately a transactional relationship where both sides have certain responsibilities. The customer the responsibility to provide the money, and the provider receiving the money has a responsibility to provide the customer with something, products or services, of value that makes their lives better.

"user" is a worse term. It suggests that the "user" is simply utilizing the provider's products/services, and therefore they can't really complain about whatever the provider chooses to do in return, because the "user" can simply stop using.

It's also not a coincidence, IMO, that drug addicts are also called "users" since "user" implies a one way dependent relationship and that's what all the tech companies have been trying to create.

[swores]

> "It's also not a coincidence, IMO, that drug addicts are also called "users" since "user" implies a one way dependent relationship and that's what all the tech companies have been trying to create."

You're drawing a connection that's not there. It's indeed not a coincidence, but just because both situations fit the definition of the word "user" (and "to use").

People use drugs, whether they're addicted or whether they're taking a one-off dose given to them by a doctor. They are a customer in that situation if they're buying the drug from somebody (illegal dealer, pharmacy), but they're a user whether they paid or not.

Likewise, someone is a customer if Apple's if they paid for, or are expected to pay in the future, a device or service. But they're a user regardless of whether they're using a phone they bought, or a service that's being provided for free.

People can use services provided by charities, they can use skis on a mountain... there's absolutely no negative connotation to its general definition, it just happens that some things people use are bad and some are good.

[genewitch]

"And don't say 'do it' because i don't 'do it', i ingest it, on orders from my neurophysiologist."

[mbreese]

I agree that “customer” is a better term. I’m not sure I agree with the rest of the rationale.

In my mind, “user” stated to take over when we started having web based services that were used by people, but they were the ones paying. For example, Google and Facebook. Both got paid through ads, so they advertisers were the customers. The “users” were just the eyeballs the advertisers wanted to reach. So, you had to make your service compelling enough for someone to use for long enough that they’d see enough ads to make it profitable to provide the service.

It’s more akin to talking about “viewers” or “viewership” when talking about more traditional media.

For Apple, they are generally looking to get paid by the ultimate consumer of the product. So to them, we are the customers.

[rootusrootus]

> In my mind, “user” stated to take over when we started having web based services that were used by people

Maybe I'm just old, but we've called ... users ... 'user' since Unix or before. Perhaps it is just because Unix was integral to my early computing experience that I see it that way.

[tpmoney]

User is definitely a term that long predates the modern SaaS world. And it’s an appropriate term in many cases because even today the customers of a computer hardware or software company are often not the same people using that hardware or software. I am the user of my work computer, but even as a software developer I am certainly not the “customer” of that purchase. My company has requirements as a customer that might be counter to my desires as a user. And likewise I have needs as a user that my company as a customer does not care about (except in so far as having those needs met allows me to do my job)

[ginko]

"user" feels quite descriptive and neutral to me. It's a person that uses the device they own or are given access to. That's it.

I'm the (super-)user of my Linux PC. I have total ownership and control over it.

Arguably "customer" makes the business relation to the provider of a service/device clearer.

The term I hate with a burning passion is "consumer".

[Melonai]

Definitely agree on your last point, "consumer" is by far the most passive of the terms, and wholly represents the current idea that companies can simply shovel out anything, because "consumers" will simply consume either way. Of course this isn't magic, a single person won't change just because you call them a user or a consumer, but it reflects your view of them, and will inform your actions towards them.

"customer" represents a two-sided relationship, and I do feel that "user" is kind of one-sided, but gives agency, a user will use a product for their own purposes, presumably to help them achieve some kind of goal. A "consumer" is completely passive, their main goal is to do what the company tells them to do. A customer can walk out of the relationship, a user might complain about problems they have with your product, but the consumer will simply continue consuming whatever you want them to consume.

The worst part though, they seem to be mostly correct in their assessment.

[kyriakos]

As someone who owns zero apple hardware, I feel like Apple TV (the service) is probably the most consistent producer of high quality TV shows.

[NookDavoos]

I agree. It seems they don't produce as many titles as other streaming platforms, but what comes out is rather good.

[jangxx]

I actually like Fitness+, it got me working out for the first time in my life.

[browningstreet]

Against Youtube Music and Spotify, Apple Music rates quite well, at least IMO.

[kasperset]

Apple Music is ok but it is not as good on MacOS as it is on iOS. It will skip some songs sometimes and the ui is not very consistent for the player bar.

[browningstreet]

Oh yes, indeed. On iOS I quite prefer it, but I also use it daily on Linux. But the linux web version is still much better than the terrible Windows client. That thing is plain terrible.

I think the Apple Music service is still good. There are little features that I rely on a lot, like the asterisk next to the prominent/popular songs on a given album.

[esskay]

Arcade is comically poor value. I can't tell if Apple doesn't care, or they're just so deluded due to their insular nature and crap attitude towards gaming that they genuinely think its a good service to offer mediocre mobile games for a premium.

[diegof79]

I agree that Arcade is poor.

However, I’ve been subscribed to it since its inception because it is the best way to have games that my kid can play without shady ads or engagement practices.

I know that is not going to last, as my kid is now a pre-teen and likes other types of games (like Hollow Knight) that are not available on Apple Arcade.

But the current state of the gaming industry is terrible, especially on mobile. Indy companies producing games like Dead Cells, Hollow Knight, and Stray are good, and there is the extremely rare case of Larian. But other than that, the market is full of dark-UX patterns to promote app purchases. Mobile apps are a minefield of gacha games that should be forbidden for kids.

[chocochunks]

Just forget that mobile gaming exists? I think one of the cheapo Linux retro handhelds offer a better portable gaming experience than 99% of mobile games, ads or no.

[boredChimp]

Any specific models you’ve used and can recommend?

[chocochunks]

I rather like the Anbernic RG35XXSP for the form factor. It is missing analog sticks, which does cut down on playable games a little but it's cute and tiny and is decently powerful for the price and has good community support. The rest of the RGYYXX line(where YY is the screen size) uses the same hardware but have different form factors so you can pick what you like best.

[akdev1l]

I like Apple Arcade because it has non-shittified versions of classic games

Like Angry Birds, the official version is fucked up to the gills with ads

[esskay]

Sure, but in another time you'd have paid ~$2.99 for the ad-free version one-time, and carried on using it. They intentionally deleted that version of the game, screwing over everyone who did so, then quietly launched the same game again, removing the ad-free one time purchase option.

[akdev1l]

I mean yeah, fuck Rovio or whatever

[crummy]

Agreed. "Free mobile game" almost certainly means "malicious gambling app" at this point.

[eek2121]

Taste is subjective. I get it. There are Triple A games on Arcade. Things like Civilization 7, for example. I don't know what the current standalone price is because we use Apple One Family, however, it used to cost $5/mo.

Apple one is a steal IMO. Apple TV, Fitness+, 2TB, Arcade, and other smaller perks like News+ make it an easy sell. Compared to something like Netflix? Netflix is $25/mo for their top tier streaming alone. Apple TV consistently has higher quality content. So does Apple Arcade and Apple Fitness...then you get 2TB of storage to back your crap up to.

Ask Google or Samsung what they are doing for the cost of an Apple One subscription.

Not a fanboy or anything. I'm basically critical of all tech companies, however, Apple is doing something that is working well for them.

[latexr]

> I don't know what the current standalone price is because we use Apple One Family, however, it used to cost $5/mo.

They raised it a while back to $7/month.

[mghackerlady]

Have you thought of getting your kid a nintendo console of some kind? A jailbroken 3DS seems like it'd be great for avoiding that kind of slop since the 3DSs app store died a few years ago

[SSLy]

note to others: any 3DS can be very easily jailbroken, doesn't require any soldering or sth. https://3ds.hacks.guide/

[pbronez]

I thought the same until my kids started playing iPad games. Apple Arcade is way better than the baseline of aggressive ads and micro transactions.

[hed]

Exactly. It's a way to get games that aren't going to immediately ask for other games to be bought or make you watch ridiculous ads to keep playing.

[bigyabai]

The App Store really ought to just be a better platform in the first place. Apple is the one that let it accumulate slop, and now they're profiting off it's reputation for gambleslop apps.

[dwaite]

If you can figure out a good way for Apple to eliminate the revenue model used for the most profitable games on the platform without getting slapped by regulators, I'm sure they would love to hear it.

[lotsofpulp]

Arcade is amazing for my kids, it’s the one thing that pushes the value of Apple One bundle high enough for me to pay it. I assume all games not in Arcade have gambling mechanics.

[mbreese]

The lack of microtransaction/loot box/forced ads/etc driven gameplay is why I keep it. If I can get versions of newer games without all of that cruft, I’m happy. I’m also happy that the game developer gets paid for it.

[dangus]

> You now have Apple Fitness+, Apple TV, News, Music, Arcade. None of these are of any quality of what Apple used to be. It is really sad.

News+ is the only one of these that has poor quality.

Apple Music is extremely good, and pays artists better than many other platforms like Spotify. Unlike Spotify it isn’t enshittifying the product with AI music, video, and podcast distractions. The software is good quality, native code, not a web wrapper. Plus, there’s a classical music focused version that’s entirely separate.

Fitness+ is a premier product in the space. Have you tried it? The workouts sync with your watch and it has top tier video production quality along with a ton of thought put into accessibility.

Arcade probably does need to have more games added and more attention paid to it, but it’s basically the only place to get mobile games that aren’t stuffed full of gambling mechanics, pay to win, and advertisements.

Apple TV+ is literally the new HBO. They produce some of the most critically acclaimed shows on the planet, and broke the record for number of Emmy nominations by a single studio last year. The software is actually good, which is only really true for TV+ and Netflix. The production values, bitrate, and technology integration (Dolby Atmos/Vision etc) is second to none. MLS coverage by Apple is also top tier, again, with other sports networks regularly broadcasting mediocre quality (bad colors, muddy details, poor on-screen graphics). They’re also getting F1 for US viewers which is almost certainly going to be an improvement over the status quo.

[ravetcofx]

> aren’t stuffed full of gambling mechanics and advertisements. Where can you get that from the Play Store?

The Play Store Pass? Which not only has games but utilities https://play.google.com/store/pass/getstarted

[saithir]

> Available offers > Get offers for top games with Play Pass > 50% zniżki na zakup w aplikacji > Do 37 zł zniżki co tydzień > Candy Crush Soda Saga

Yeah, I would say a big ad for a game that is literally THE textbook example of gambling mechanics and dark patterns, followed by 10 other ads for games of the similar genre, is exactly what the previous poster does NOT want from a service like that.

Oh and also from that page there's no telling at all what actual _games_ are included. The only slider on this page that lists anything is for different gambling slop "offers".

That's not even in the same category as Apple Arcade.

[chaostheory]

Fitness, Music, Apple TV, Arcade, and even News are all fine at their price point.

Apple News is the most affordable way to access paywalled mainstream news

TV has decent shows

Games has decent games without IAP

Music is decent without ads

Fitness has gotten me in shape at a fraction of the cost of Les Mills or Beach Body

[SkipperCat]

Agreed. I used to subscribe to the WSJ and WashPo and I cancelled both because I get both in Apple News. Plus I get the Atlantic, New Yorker, Wired and so many other magazines.

The user interface sucks. Sometimes I go to the actual websites to find articles and then search for them on Apple News. But for $13 USD a month, its a huge bargain and worth the crappy interface.

Another thing that kinda helped me was that Apple News doesn't give you access to the comments sections in these publications. Reading comments in the WSJ was just a huge rage-bait time suck and my life is probably better off not seeing that stuff.

[abustamam]

"The only people who call customers 'users' are drug dealers and software companies."

[dingaling]

'User' has been a term in computing for decades before the current Cloud Services fad ( hence uid ).

One uses a hammer, one uses a microwave, one uses a computer, one uses a word processor. Nothing negative towards the user, they're being productive with the product.

If anything it's derogatory in the other direction, towards the manufacturer, reducing the fruits of their labour to that of a simple tool.

[mghackerlady]

Apple Arcade is pretty good, I imagine it's good for parents that want to make sure their kids are playing actually decent games instead of whatever slop you find on the app store or roblox

[xwkd]

Over the past decade, there's been a lot of regulation forcing Apple to open up their "Apple only" integrated platforms.

It used to be the case that if Apple wanted to build a walled garden / cathedral, then in order to compete in the hardware marketplace they had to provide software that didn't suck. You knew that if you bought an Apple product, there was reasonable assurance that everything was tightly integrated. If it wasn't, you'd go buy a market alternative (Android, PC). In my mind, this means that they spent a lot of time and dev resources (i.e. money) on their Frameworks. I think it showed. Time was spent on design. They focused on opening up capabilities "the right way."

Now that's pointless. If the iPhone is just an Android phone with a different coat of paint, then dev resources are going to be shifted to a place where Apple can distinguish themselves in the market, where they have platforms that they can control: Services.

[dns_snek]

Can you support this unfalsifiable reasoning beyond blaming a convenient political scapegoat? Which paragraph of which article of which regulation requires them to deliver low-resolution PDFs in Apple News, for example? What about all the other issues?

Your argument essentially boils down to: If Apple doesn't get to do whatever they want without compromise, their execs get too discouraged and depressed to innovate. The obvious conclusion is that the only way we can enjoy the unrivaled genius of Apple is to give them a blank check to do whatever they want.

Every act of consumer protection and every form of pro-competitive regulation is twisted and exaggerated, no matter how insignificant it is to their bottom line or product functionality. The world is ending any time they don't get their way and when the world doesn't end, this decision becomes the scapegoat for all of their future faults, missteps, and bad performance. They can never do anything wrong and nothing is ever their fault, it's so so incredibly tiring to listen to this.

[kaashif]

Which regulation made Apple News have low res PDFs? Which regulation made the search boxes in Liquid Glass transparent and show text from the window behind?

The company as a whole has changed across the board.

[wk_end]

The beginning of Apple’s backslide far predates any (thus far fairly limp-wristed) attempts by regulators to pry open their iOS walled garden.

At least in North America - their biggest market I think? - the iPhone is still utterly locked down. Far more locked down than, say, their Macs were when OS X was at its best. Meanwhile macOS continues to get more locked down and yet still worse. Your theory just doesn’t match reality.

[iwontberude]

Every mobile device sold in North America is unlocked for carriers. That wasn’t the case back in the day. Also locking down macOS has been for security. It’s way ahead of other operating systems for sound and app security.

[Dylan16807]

Carrier locks have nothing to do with security or walled gardens. Two things using the word 'lock' is mostly coincidence.

And getting rid of carrier apps was a positive but it was moving from one walled garden to another.

And that happened a very long time ago. It provides zero defense against accusations of apple changing for the worse.

[iwontberude]

Yeah I think I was high and totally thinking backwards about this.

[afavour]

In fairness Apple did come up with a custom JSON format for articles:

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/applenewsformat

The problem is that people don't use it. I imagine it's a chicken/egg thing, the audience on News isn't big so it isn't worth the publishers time catering to an entirely new format, the News experience is crappy so the audience doesn't grow.

They could have insisted that everyone use their format but I suspect publishers would just refuse. It's not exactly in a publishers interest to help boost a middleman between their content and readers.

I'd be really interested to see what Apple's approach would be if they used more web technologies (since that's what publishers are using today anyway). Even just a webview with disabled JavaScript would get a ton of the way there in terms of performance. They have WebKit engineers in house that could probably tweak it even further.

[kyralis]

It's definitely that publishers don't want it.

This is actually the trajectory of both Apple News and iAd before it, which is what started out providing the ad service for Apple News. Apple would like to do a high quality solution, and then keeps relaxing their standards when there's not enough buy-in from the content providers. They were forced to allow the non-curated news formats to have sufficient content.

[derefr]

I wonder why they don't just prioritize the ~500 most popular of those content providers that are feeding them sludge articles, and write (AI-generate, even) logic to manually parse and transform said sludge into their format?

It'd be a big one-time lift; and of course there'd be annoying constant breakage to fix as sites update; but News.app could always fall back to rendering the original article URL if the News backend service's currently-deployed parser-transformer for a given site failed on the given article. It's make things no worse and often better than they are today.

[wnc3141]

I can't imagine it's a great deal for publishers. It's probably why NYT, Economist and other prestige publications aren't on it. (Save for Atlantic, New Yorker). I. Assuming they use the Spotify model ( paying commissions on articles per reader)?

[tsunamifury]

It’s almost like Google AMP was a good idea and solving this problem this community had a melt down over it.

[afavour]

The 10000ft perspective on AMP was correct, the lived reality was awful. And the technical implementation used can't be divorced from everything that surrounded it: Google's place in the industry with regard to search engines, ads, etc.

In this specific example there is a very big difference between producing a format for use in a first-party app vs trying to replace standards for content used across the web.

[derefr]

> And the technical implementation used can't be divorced from everything that surrounded it: Google's place in the industry with regard to search engines, ads, etc.

I mean... sure it could have? There could have been an independent "AMP Foundation" that forked the standard away from Google and owned the evolution of it from then on. Like how SPDY was forked away from Google ownership into HTTP2.

[Andrex]

AMP was a good technical solution for a short window of time, deliberately tanked by confusing/centralized stewardship.

They kept opening it more and more but by then it was too late.

[the_other]

No it wasn't. It was a tool to attempt to keep people on Google's surface area rather than freeing them to browse the web as the web was intended.

[robmccoll]

They also bought and killed texture, a fantastic cross-platform magazine subscription service, to somehow further Apple News. I subscribed to Texture on Android. I wouldn't give a dollar to Apple News even if I was in the Apple ecosystem.

[naravara]

Apple News unironically would have been better if they had just made an RSS reader with a way to subscription gate feeds and a rule that you have to do provide the full text of the article. They could have just put their energy into just polishing up a known and weathered and broadly adopted technology but nooooo, they needed something with platform lock-in so they could book more “services revenue.”

They didn’t need to do like half the work they did, and a lot of what they did do in order to make the news feeds prettier are seldom adopted because Apple doesn’t want to do the hard partnership work to drive and support it.

[giancarlostoro]

Contrast with Apple TV+ which has insanely high quality shows. I feel like they arent advertising it enough and investing in it enough. One of my favorite shows that my daughter watches is on Apple TV+ the other on Amazon (If You Give a Mouse a Cookie).

Apple is really messing up in my eyes they have so much potential they are throwing away.

[afavour]

A clear difference here is that Apple creates the TV+ shows and they don't create the News+ content. And I really don't think they want to get into the news content creation business.

[philistine]

They don't create the Apple TV shows either; they buy those. Pluribus is a Sony production.

[giancarlostoro]

Agree I am just comparing Apples efforts

[no_wizard]

News is ham-fisted as much by news organizations themselves as much as it is Apple. They don't want to sell through the News+ subscriptions, they want to tease a few articles and then upsell you to their subscription.

News organizations have really become quite aggressive about negotiating these things now, I think in large part because Meta (aka Facebook at the time) screwed them badly when it stopped revenue sharing.

This leads to a situation where a product that actually could at least be good and serviceable is a mess. They don't see News+ as being a positive to their businesses to bundle it into the subscription.

edit: I'm open to hearing others on this. I am only pointing out both Apple and the publishers are at fault for varying aspects of why Apple News+ ends up being a mediocre product

[mavhc]

Every news organisation thinks they're the one you want to read, they want you to be a loyal customer to them and not read other newspapers. Google News used to have "see 349 other articles on this story" which really showed how pointless news organisations were, constantly rewriting/licencing other people's content.

Any news aggregator platform is only used by news organisations under duress.

[Dylan16807]

That seems really short-sighted. A fair share of more than $100/year is a lot of money for news.

[projektfu]

Does Apple News still share Apple News links to articles instead of the canonical link? When I had an iPhone, I uninstalled/disabled Apple News because I don't like distractions but when people shared with me an Apple News link I couldn't open it, because it would go to the app store instead of a redirect for the article. Ironically, on Android, that wasn't a problem. I'd get the article.

[int_19h]

Yes, it still wraps them into https://apple.news links.

However when one such is opened in the browser, it - like any other app link - asks if you want to open it in the news app. And if you close that popup and click on "tap here", you get the link to the original article.

[SkipperCat]

When I click on links in Apple News, it stays in the Apple News app. That's the same on my phone, iPad and MacBook.

[projektfu]

And if you share an article to your favorite messenger?

[SkipperCat]

I only share articles between my wife and myself. The shared articles show up in our respective Apple News apps. Never really shared an article outside of the ecosystem. Sorry that's not more helpful.

[basch]

For Apple to really win this space I believe they would need to release a cross platform Publisher tool and complete in the AMP space. Some kind of magazine design / web design software that publishes articles to a standard format and applies a layout over the top. Then the News app becomes a renderer/aggregator that does things better than the standard web browser.

[nntwozz]

At what point did the old Apple cross the threshold to "modern" Apple?

I agree with your point I just find the distinction hard to pinpoint.

It's like the (incorrect) analogy of the boiled frog, I know it's a cliché but I really feel things started downhill in overall quality and wow factor with the advent of Tim Cook.

SJ had failures like Ping and MobileMe, but they seemed to pick up on the criticism back then and execute correctly quickly after.

Now because of the penny-pinching and success of Apple nobody makes a big deal out of anything, the momentum is so strong that stuff like liquid glass can come through unpolished/unfinished/unrefined.

It seems to me that Apple University failed its mission completely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_University

[naravara]

Old Apple had a productive tension between Jony Ive and Scott Forestall on which direction to go in with design, with Steve Jobs as a tie-breaker.

After Jobs passed away Tim Cook failed to manage that tension productively and was put in a position where he had to choose between Ive and Forestall. He chose Ive, which in itself was probably the right choice, but there was nobody with Forestall’s clout to temper Ive’s more wanky tendencies.

Much of the other stuff people complain about is kind of just the reality of being a company that sells to millions or tens of millions to being a company that sells to hundreds of millions or close to a billion customers. A lot of the charm and whimsy gets harder to sustain. I’ve long felt that Apple needs to just do a Toyota/Lexus sort of split and have a second nameplate for doing more avante garde, quirky, and lower volume hardware and software projects.

[tsunamifury]

To Ives credit he tried to do the brand split and focused on Apple Watch as the test bed first with “Edition” then “Hermes”

There just wasn’t the demand.

[naravara]

That seemed more like experimenting with interesting industrial design approaches and materials though. It’s not as much like, a very distinct side-hustle to design stuff that’s completely different.

They sort of do this with Beats as a parallel business to their own Apple speakers with products that aim at a totally different market. They need to start doing that with computers too. The entire Mac lineup is designed to be, like, a Honda Accord or Camry. But the Mac Pro is crap, they need a business-line that makes a computing equivalent of a pickup truck but they don’t want to commit.

[thejohnconway]

> At what point did the old Apple cross the threshold to "modern" Apple?

This hardly an original sentiment, but when Steve Jobs died. Jobs was not perfect, but he believed they were there to make great products, had good taste with obsessive attention to detail, and was pretty much omnipotent in the company. I'm sure there are people with many of these traits in Apple, but not all of them together.

Their first new hardware release was the Apple Watch, which is a confused product, with too many functions on launch, and a poorly thought out two button + scroll wheel + touch screen interface (I still don't really know which button does which). And don't get me started on that ridiculous solid gold version.

You can still see the old Apple in there (look at their hardware!), but it's fragmented and not all pulling in the same direction.

[insane_dreamer]

> Their first new hardware release was the Apple Watch, which is a confused product,

I think you just shot your own argument with that.

I remember when no one thought the Apple Watch would amount to much, and it's literally on everyone's wrist in the US. "Almost one in five US consumers — 17% — say they’ve used an Apple Watch in the past week." -- that's an insane amount of market penetration, when you consider it's all consumers. It's almost rare to see an "analog" watch anymore (I'm one of those). You still have Garmin/Suunto/etc and the luxury analog watches, but they're in a different categories. And Samsung/etc. are far behind.

I've never owned an Apple Watch (I have iPhone/Mac). I prefer the elegance of classical analog watches over having notifications on my wrist (no thanks!). but it's an outstanding product that has driven the sale of iPhones/Macs, etc.

[wnc3141]

To be fair, while Jobs was at the helm apple was a fraction of it's market cap and iPhone adoption was still rapidly rising around the globe.

[tsunamifury]

It’s funny when people don’t understand what they are saying like you.

The watch was not only eventually a mega hit, it was an Ive/jobs idea.

Literally everything you are saying is wrong.

[thejohnconway]

If you think literally everything I'm saying is wrong, you haven't done much of a job of explaining why.

I realise that the watch was probably under development for years before Jobs died. It was, however, released in a half baked state – do you remember what the the original use of the lozenge shaped button was, for example? Things being "hits" is not what's under discussion here, Apple has sold a lot of stuff in the Cook era, no doubt about that. Microsoft has had a lot of hits too, doesn't make their products Old-Apple-like!

I don't know how good Ive is without Jobs. His post-Jobs efforts have been pretty mixed. I'd argue Apple's hardware has improved since he left (although, admittedly through playing it safe, especially with the Mac).

Do you think Apple is in decline when it comes to the quality of their products? Because if you don't we're just talking past each-other.

[UqWBcuFx6NV4r]

The Apple Watch was launched as a confused product. Go watch the original Apple Watch launch announcement. Basically none of it landed with consumers. Apple significantly changed their focus within, what, a couple of years? Remember how you could buy a gold one for a truckload of money? Give me a break. Kudos to Apple for managing to change course in less than 5 years, for once, but let’s not pretend the. Apple Watch was a perfect idea passed down from the almighty. It did terribly.

[rchaud]

I'd say the inflexion point was in 2015. That's when Apple Music launched, sidelining the iTunes store where you could buy songs, in favor of a rental model like Spotify. That's also when they discontinued the Mac Server hardware and ceded the enterprise software market to Microsoft and Adobe.

Since then it's been on a nonstop drive to jam as many subscriptions services into the iOS ecosystem as possible.

[jorvi]

Steve Jobs was all about the customer experience, hence so many of his famous quotes. Two like the most are:

- Him saying "Microsoft has no style", not because I care about ribbing on Microsoft but because it indicated that Apple was a company that really cared about the aesthetics of both their hardware and software products

- His response to the question why there was no $600 MacBook to compete with Windows plastic craptops. He specifically said that to deliver a good UX to the users, he needed Macs at a certain price point to invest in the hardware and the OS. Shareholder value didn't even enter the equation.

He also hated market segmentation and was adamant that all iPhones within a generation had the same features, aside from the storage size. When the 6 Plus models got image stabilization he felt awkward about it.

As soon as Tim Cook took over, it became beancounter city. Market segmentation became massive. Year over year price hikes with minimal improvements. Services became the core strategy. And the last 5 years you are under a constant barrage of ads for iCloud, Apple Music, Apple News, Apple TV and even ads in your Wallet.

Oh, and I'm just remember how Jobs said that form should follow function. Which you can also see a clear decline in from when Jobs became less involved, with iOS 7 being a disaster. And ever since then Apple has being violating their own Human Interface Guidelines. If you download their 1997 version it's absurd how many of their own former guidelines they violate these days.

To be honest, I'm not sure if you can entirely blame Cook. Ever since the 2010s, it's felt like capitalism has reached an endstage culture, where it is no longer about an equilibrium between best product for lowest price vs minimum product for highest price, but instead just maximizing shareholder value at the cost of the customer, the workers, the business itself, the environment and what have you.

[eigen]

> Year over year price hikes with minimal improvements

did you have a specific example in mind? It seems that the price of the hardware generally stays the same from year to year.

for example, from iphone 3g to iphone 6s was $199. and iphone 12 through today's iphone 17 is $799. I think the change in the middle was due dropping carrier subsidies and going to full-screen with face id.

[jorvi]

2012-2018 was an insane run for MacBook Pro prices. Doubly so in Europe. Apple loves to adjust (read: gouge) prices when the Euro weakens against the dollar, but they never adjust down when the dollar weakens against the Euro.

[wnc3141]

This is a common trajectory for companies. The first CEO (founder) paves a vision, the second CEO grows the firm profitably, the third CEO is usually a wall street hire on a mandate to massage the stock price.

[munificent]

> At what point did the old Apple cross the threshold to "modern" Apple?

Probably showing my age here, but for me it was the introduction of the iPhone.

Yes, it was a wildly successful product. But it was a product primarily for consuming media (and I will grant taking photos). The iPhone marked Apple's transition from a computer company that focused on computers for creative people to a consumer electronics company.

Certainly a wise choice from a business perspective since there are a whole lot more people consuming things than making them.

But I do miss the old rainbow Apple days when I felt like they really cared about making hardware and software to empower creative people. I still use Macs, and I think they're still the best for creative work, but the company's not the same.

[kranke155]

Yes on the last count for Apple U.

The culture of excellence is just not there. Big company but not sure if it’s a live player atm. Lots of unrefined experiences.

People say it’s Tim Cook as if Apple had a bunch of CEOs. In its modern incarnation it was basically Jobs and Cook. But there were some major improvements under Cook and some major disappointments. Hardware seems to be doing well, software not so much.

[ksec]

>At what point did the old Apple cross the threshold to "modern" Apple?

The simple answer would be when SJ passed away. The long answer is there wasn't a turning point, but a long period of cultural shift, due to Tim Cook being CEO.

Tim Cook not immediately taking a CEO stand and left a power vacuum was a mistake. He said himself he thought everything would continue as normal, which obviously did not happen. Firing Scott Forstall was a mistake. Ive taking over software design was a mistake. Not listening to the advice of Katie Cotton and manage a new PR direction was a mistake. Following Phill Schiller advice of firing long time Marketing Firm for Apple was a mistake. Tim Cook not understanding his weakness which is his judgement of character was a big big mistakes, as it leads to Dixon CEO and Burberry CEO taking helms of Apple Retail, ultimately stoping if not reversed the momentum of Apple Retails improvement and expansion by 10 years. Giving Ive the power to play around with Retail Design because Apple Retail Store is somehow a "social place" was a big mistake. Prioritising Operational and Supply Chain Decisions over Design was a mistake after around iPhone 8 Plus. Too focused on sales metric and bottom line was a big mistake. Shifting to Services Revenue, which should have been AppleCare, iCloud or even iPhone Subscription model, instead they got Apple TV+, in my option is a mistake. They were too scared to hurt the relationship with Carriers. Eddy Cue taking over a lot of decisions? Apple going to Davos? Merging of different iOS and macOS team where it used to be teams per product but later became functions per team structure. Trusting China and didn't diversify their production when Trump was first time in Office. ( They said they will but they didn't. Literally every single media lied on behalf of Apple ). I mean the list goes on and on.

I really like someone on HN said about Apple. Ever since Steve Jobs passed away Apple has been left on auto pilot mode for most of its time.

[insane_dreamer]

I use it daily and it's decent. It's easy enough to just filter out all of the low-quality news sources (either block those channels or "suggest less"). I use it for sources I want to occasionally read articles from but wouldn't subscribe to: WSJ, New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Scientific American, or sources I do subscribe to but it's convenient to have them in one place (Atlantic, Wired, my local paper) instead of 5 different apps.

I mostly ignore the "For You" and go straight to browsing the sources I like, "saving" articles to read later, etc.

Never noticed there were lots of ads; I guess I'm used to just scrolling on by them automatically.

[el_benhameen]

I like using it to listen to narrated versions of New Yorker articles.

Except I can’t tell it “I like narrated versions of New Yorker articles”. I can search by publisher, or I can browse narrated stories that are selected “for you” (none of which are of interest to me), but I can’t just search for “narrated stories AND New Yorker”.

And when I do finally find one, if I don’t finish in one session, there is zero context from the previous session when I return to the app—it has forgotten that I ever started listening to the story. I then need to go through the process of finding it again and trying to remember where I left off.

Yet another Apple app designed by idealists and tested and refined by nobody who actually uses the app.

[kccqzy]

Remembering state is a giant oversight on many apps for content consumption, Apple News included. I sometimes read long articles on Apple News. I could be interrupted by a call or some messages. When I return to Apple News, it displays my half-finished article for a split second and returns to the home screen.

This is worse than using reading news on a browser. Browsers either don’t kill your tabs on its own (desktop browsers) or at least try to remember your scroll position. Even if it fails at doing that, it at least has a history feature. Apple News just makes your half-read articles disappear into the void.

[m463]

> a ham-fisted approach to simplicity that ignores the end user.

I think I agree. They have a broad selection of apps... that all end up being shallow.

Every once in a while there are decent things hidden though - I like apple translate. I also like adding "copy text from a graphical image" to the OS.

[mgh2]

Why can't they build their own ad network for control instead of partnering with 3rd parties?

[vel0city]

Apple does have their own ad network. This is their ad network.

https://ads.apple.com/

[PaulHoule]

I looked a lot into the "universal paywall" business model where one subscription buys you access to articles from a wide range of news outlets. It's close to impossible to execute because the most prestigious outlets (ahem... The New York Times) won't give you the time of the day, even if you are startup royalty. That Apple has accomplished anything in this space is remarkable.

[__natty__]

At first minimalistic ui was because of UX. Today apple design managers went to the UI side forgetting about end user.

[icapybara]

FYI it would be "Icing on the cake" or "cherry on top"

[vachina]

It's not a revenue generating service.

[JKCalhoun]

I ignore Apple News these days. I had high hopes when Apple bought the company that eventually became their News app. Alas…

Of course I hate that I can't block ads, but at the same time, I wonder if the unblockable ads are not, in fact, a help for that "struggling industry".

[givinguflac]

You can definitely block ads- try NextDNS.

[mikestew]

I’ve tried blocking the ads with a pi-hole, to no avail. I suspect the ads come from the same servers that the articles do. I can’t find obvious ad servers in the query logs. If anyone has a hint on blocking Apple News ads at DNS, I’d love to hear it.

[skygazer]

1Blocker, with their in-app tracker blocking turned on, will block Apple News ads on iOS/iPadOS and will also block ads in Google News and free to play games. I guess you can’t block tracking without also blocking the ads. It installs a local VPN profile that blocks connections to hosts typically blocked with dns based ad blockers. They’ve increasingly hidden the feature in the app, for some reason.

[maxkfranz]

How is it on battery life to run the VPN continuously?

[skygazer]

I haven’t noticed it consume any additional battery. It doesn’t actually connect to a vpn server, or reencrypt traffic. It’s just a hack to deny select connections. I often do end up turning it off after a few days, though, because some times I need tracking redirects to work, and I’m too lazy to always whitelist.

[int_19h]

I'm using AdGuard running in Home Assistant and I don't see any ads in Apple News.

Looking at what gets blocked when I open the News apps, try going for these domains:

news.iadsdk.apple.com

news-app-events.apple.com

news-sports-events.apple.com

news-events.apple.com

[lotsofpulp]

90% of the content in the News+ app is itself an ad.