29 ms·

Apple News hits 125M monthly active users

44 points by prostoalex 7y ago

beart 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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.
- helsinkiandrew 7y ago
  I and I imagine many iPhone users accidently open it atleast once a month.
- shrimpx 7y ago
  Betting it’s anyone who swipes left and sees the default news widget, assuming they haven’t deleted it.
siggen 7y ago
I deleted the news app when it was flooded with News+ articles
- ninkendo 7y ago
  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.)
olliej 7y ago
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.
- thrwn_frthr_awy 7y ago
  Why not delete the app?
  - yadco 7y ago
    I tried, I had to mount the disk. The next update brought it back again.
baggy_trough 7y ago
I'd be amazed if anyone on the Apple News team enjoyed using the app to read news.
iav 7y ago
I pay for Apple News just to get WSJ. It’s effectively half price.
- ztjio 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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 7y ago
      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.
  - ztjio 7y ago
    Interestingly, right after leaving this discussion behind I went to read the post about the scientist resigning from Google's quantum stuff or whatever. It was a Forbes link which is paywalled of course. It then hit me that Forbes might be part of News+ and yeah, it is, and I have access to the article. I'd like it if this happened more often. I don't like the advertising-only business model. But there has to be some practical middle ground. I'll never subscribe to Forbes directly. It's really too packed full of click bait and inflammatory content to justify it. But this article was an interesting interview and I'm glad I got to read it without resorting to sleazy tactics of undermining a copyright holder's legitimate control of their content. The UX of Apple News has plenty of room for improvement, but, the idea of an Apple Music/Spotify for quality periodical-type content is appealing to me.
philshem 7y ago
+ 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-and-more https://www.imore.com/how-get-apple-news-uk-australia-canada...
- luckylion 7y ago
  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?
  - tinus_hn 7y ago
    They need to contract with a large number of unwilling partners. Makes sense they are going for the big markets first.
    - luckylion 7y ago
      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.
- spiderfarmer 7y ago
  Is it also available on MacOS in those countries? Seems like there's so much more room to grow.
  - dmacedo 7y ago
    It's available on MacOS, and it's not easy to get rid of (much like iTunes approach).
doctoboggan 7y ago
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.
FriendlyNormie 7y ago
Fuck Apple News. First of all, none of us signed up for your autistic forced feed that just appears against our will, so go fuck yourselves. Secondly, every time we accidentally swipe to whatever cancerous screen has your gay as shit news, it refreshes after three seconds and replaces the links we just spent 3 seconds gaining interest in just as we’re about to tap them. How is it even possible to make that amateur hour coded in 5 minutes by a 12 year old level of a mistake in such a big company. Some people just need to be turned into a liquid.
wtmt 7y ago
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.
- ksec 7y ago
  >Apple News is still a hobby looking for a purpose Yes and they are still burning money into it. Apple Music, nearly 5 years after its launch and despite its home advantage is still lacking behind Spotify. Thinking of the same to Apple TV+. And likely the same to Apple Arcade. Apple Music has been making some inroads after Iovine is out. But Streaming business wasn't ever going to make much money anyway. Oh and I forgot, Apple Cash, Apple Wallet... and lots of other things Apple seemingly has forgotten about.
  - tinus_hn 7y ago
    Services are almost a quarter of Apples revenue. The numbers are what counts, not what you’re ‘thinking’ is ‘likely’.
    - ksec 7y ago
Watabou 7y ago
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.
mnd999 7y ago
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.
lawrenceyan 7y ago
Google News is better, but that kind of makes sense given Google's search foundation.
blackrock 7y ago
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.
todaysAI 7y ago
People don't want to research themselves. How can they think that a news-feed thinks the way they do?
amelius 7y ago
Why doesn't Apple start a News Store, where journalists can offer their work for a fee and Apple takes a 30% cut? /s
lowdose 7y ago
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.
FriendlyNormie 7y ago
I was drunk when I posted my other comment but I stand behind every word. It’s coded like a bored teen’s weekend project. It’s frightening to think of what the coding quality of Apple News implies about the quality of the code of iOS and macOS. There must be thousands of subtle yet significant problems cropping up that will never be discovered or fixed.

44 points by prostoalex 7y ago

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 7y ago
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.
helsinkiandrew 7y ago
I and I imagine many iPhone users accidently open it atleast once a month.
shrimpx 7y ago
Betting it’s anyone who swipes left and sees the default news widget, assuming they haven’t deleted it.

siggen 7y ago

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

ninkendo 7y ago
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.)

olliej 7y ago

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.

thrwn_frthr_awy 7y ago
Why not delete the app?
- yadco 7y ago
  I tried, I had to mount the disk. The next update brought it back again.

baggy_trough 7y ago

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

iav 7y ago

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

ztjio 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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.
- ztjio 7y ago
  Interestingly, right after leaving this discussion behind I went to read the post about the scientist resigning from Google's quantum stuff or whatever. It was a Forbes link which is paywalled of course. It then hit me that Forbes might be part of News+ and yeah, it is, and I have access to the article. I'd like it if this happened more often. I don't like the advertising-only business model. But there has to be some practical middle ground. I'll never subscribe to Forbes directly. It's really too packed full of click bait and inflammatory content to justify it. But this article was an interesting interview and I'm glad I got to read it without resorting to sleazy tactics of undermining a copyright holder's legitimate control of their content. The UX of Apple News has plenty of room for improvement, but, the idea of an Apple Music/Spotify for quality periodical-type content is appealing to me.

philshem 7y ago

+ 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-and-more https://www.imore.com/how-get-apple-news-uk-australia-canada...

luckylion 7y ago
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?
- tinus_hn 7y ago
  They need to contract with a large number of unwilling partners. Makes sense they are going for the big markets first.
  - luckylion 7y ago
    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.
spiderfarmer 7y ago
Is it also available on MacOS in those countries? Seems like there's so much more room to grow.
- dmacedo 7y ago
  It's available on MacOS, and it's not easy to get rid of (much like iTunes approach).

doctoboggan 7y ago

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.

FriendlyNormie 7y ago

Fuck Apple News. First of all, none of us signed up for your autistic forced feed that just appears against our will, so go fuck yourselves. Secondly, every time we accidentally swipe to whatever cancerous screen has your gay as shit news, it refreshes after three seconds and replaces the links we just spent 3 seconds gaining interest in just as we’re about to tap them. How is it even possible to make that amateur hour coded in 5 minutes by a 12 year old level of a mistake in such a big company. Some people just need to be turned into a liquid.

wtmt 7y ago

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.

ksec 7y ago
>Apple News is still a hobby looking for a purpose Yes and they are still burning money into it. Apple Music, nearly 5 years after its launch and despite its home advantage is still lacking behind Spotify. Thinking of the same to Apple TV+. And likely the same to Apple Arcade. Apple Music has been making some inroads after Iovine is out. But Streaming business wasn't ever going to make much money anyway. Oh and I forgot, Apple Cash, Apple Wallet... and lots of other things Apple seemingly has forgotten about.
- tinus_hn 7y ago
  Services are almost a quarter of Apples revenue. The numbers are what counts, not what you’re ‘thinking’ is ‘likely’.
  - ksec 7y ago

Watabou 7y ago

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.

mnd999 7y ago

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.

lawrenceyan 7y ago

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

blackrock 7y ago

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.

todaysAI 7y ago

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

amelius 7y ago

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

lowdose 7y ago

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.

FriendlyNormie 7y ago

I was drunk when I posted my other comment but I stand behind every word. It’s coded like a bored teen’s weekend project. It’s frightening to think of what the coding quality of Apple News implies about the quality of the code of iOS and macOS. There must be thousands of subtle yet significant problems cropping up that will never be discovered or fixed.