Apple News+: Is It Worth Your Money? By MacRumors

Almost two weeks ago, Apple revealed its latest subscription new service Apple News Plus, which is already built into the existing Apple news. App. The service will cost you $9.99, and you do get a one-month free trial, but is it really worth the $9.99 subscription? The big new thing here is magazines, so that seems like a good place to start, but before we even get into all of that, you first need to know how to actually access Apple News Plus on your device. So once you're inside the Apple news app at the bottom, you'll see the news Plus tab, it's pretty simple, on your iPhone and on a larger device like an iPad you'll find the news Plus section by tapping the sidebar icon. As far as actually using this portion of the app goes, it's kind of hit or miss I, really like the UI I, think it's very clean, and especially with magazines that are optimized to take advantage of the extra screen real estate and are designed to be interactive. That is key here.

For example, if we select a recent issue of Wired, you get this beautiful, full screen, interactive design with various media and other digital first features. You can even get quick access to the table of contents at the top so that you can skip around to the sections that you're interested in. You also can swipe through various articles quickly, and it's a pretty good experience overall now, if we compare that to tea, not so good and a not so popular magazine, it basically feels like I'm flipping through a PDF file of scanned pages from a physical magazine. The text is tiny, so you'll need to pinch to zoom and it sort of just takes away from the great experience that you get from optimized content. To be fair, this experience is significantly better on a larger screen like an iPad but using Apple News Plus on a Mac, even though it is a larger screen.

It's not the best experience lots of weird white spaces and magazines, especially in full screen, and again it's just not very good I'm not going to kill Apple too much for this. As most people probably don't want to read magazines ton on their Mac anyways, at least I know I, don't, but just something to keep in mind. If that's your primary way of using Apple News any magazine you open will automatically be added to the magazine section, even if you did not subscribe to it, which can be kind of frustrating. This is only temporary, as that magazine will pretty much disappear once you open up another magazine and if you want to subscribe to a magazine, you'll actually need to either search for that publication and then tap on the heart button or, if you're, already reading an issue simply tap the name of the publication at the top and then go ahead and tap the heart icon, tapping the heart again will unfollow, or you can block a magazine from being recommended at all. If you want it's not a really great way to subscribe and build up a collection magazine, and it's a little confusing whether you're actually following or subscribing to that magazine.

But if you want to download a magazine for offline use, you can- and you can tap on the download button underneath the magazine issue- do keep in mind that at least for now there really isn't any way to delete a download. Downloaded magazines will stay on your device for around 30 days, and then it will be deleted automatically. As far as the rest of the actual homepage for Apple news plus goes. It's littered with recent articles from popular magazines as opposed to a tailored home screen, with recommendations based on what you might like, not sure if this is something that will get better over time, but Apple made a big deal about how this would be a personal experience, and it just doesn't feel that personal right now. One quick side note if you are a texture user, you should know that texture will be shutting down on May 28th 2019 on all platforms.

Existing texture customers will need to sign up to Apple News plus and can take advantage of a one-month free trial to try the new service out overall I do feel like Apple News Plus was a bit rushed, or it's still unfinished. Given the weird UI issues and some of the bugs that I've experienced at launch it just doesn't feel like a product that I can tell people they have to go out and subscribe to. I, really, don't even think I can recommend it anyways if you're not really into magazines or purchase more than a few different magazines a month or are subscribed to magazines. Digitally this service would most likely not be worth it for you, I like to read magazines every once in a while, especially at home, but I use. Apple News for current events at breaking news.

I would love to see more sites with paywalls added to the service, as opposed to a large collection of magazines, some of which just seem kind of out of place with the design of the app so go ahead, and let me know if you've tried out the free trial and higher liking. It. So far, and if you plan to subscribe to Apple, News plus and paying that $9.99 monthly fee in the future, let me know in the comment section down below this has been Dan with Mac rumors. Thanks for watching, and I will see you in the next one. You.

Source : MacRumors