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Apple News+ in iOS 14 Opens Article Web Links in Apple News, Intercepting Traffic From Websites

Rogifan said:
I rarely use this app but I hate that there is no way to share the actual URL of the article. The only option is a link that opens in Apple News. Honestly Apple should give up on this. It’s clear people aren’t interested.
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To be fair, if you open the Apple news link on non Apple devices, it just redirects to the url of the article on the website.
 
This is not surprising in the least. News media companies themselves (left and right) have been in a dollar grab and have been becoming more biased to generate cash flow. News curation like Apple News and Google News amplifies this. It has created a backlash because it has worn folks out on the news and now this is an attempt to milk every last cent out of the plan.
I am looking forward to curation tools like these dying out. What I would like to see is actually tools that present a dissenting opinion curated through machine learning to give you something you will read even if it is from the other side of the aisle.
 
dwaite said:
Why on earth would publishers not like this feature? Rather than trying to monetize ads, the publisher gets to monetize the Apple News+ subscription. Is this not why they opted into News+?
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dwaite said:
Without this link feature: Users hit the media outlet anonymously with fractions-of-a-penny ads.

With this link feature: Users hit the media outlet through News+, which pays them based on the percentage of articles the user reads out of pot.
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Many of the publishers on Apple News+ are not simply ad-supported, they are outlets that normally make their content available via traditional subscribed paper-published format, or subscriber-only online access. The cost of subscribing to multiple publishers directly would be a lot higher than the cost of just Apple News+, that's the draw for consumers. The draw for publishers was supposed to be greater exposure and therefore, higher readership. But the publisher would MUCH rather have the customer subscribing direct with them. They would be making a lot more from the subscriber because they are now paying full rate. Apple News+ effectively lowers the percieved value in the content in consumers' eyes with their "pay one fee for ALL THIS" service. It's like cable TV. People try to take their cable bill and rationalize the cost of $XX/mo divided by Y channels, but not all channels are worth the same.

The content providers signed on for this under the ol' "make it up on volume" business plan that only works part of the time, and failed here, because Apple News+ sucks.
 
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This leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Apple seems to be hijacking and funnelling people's choice of service to their own services. I wouldn't mind it terribly if they were actually top class but Apple News, Apple TV+, and Apple Arcade are all subpar with poorer content. Apple Music might get a pass but its taken 5 years to get to a decent level.

Despite me being an avid user of Apple devices for nearly everything, I can't wait for an antitrust filing against Apple.
 
I hate the media. All lies or click bait and about 1000 adverts and trackers.

Apple News should be like Apple Music and they should have their own independent, unbiased news solution.

Just like Apple Music has hand picked DJ's for their radio station, they could do this with Apple News and journalists.
 
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Cosmosent said:
This is BIG, really BIG !

A direct relationship with the customer is "the Top Priority" of Media Outlets !

AAPL is now trying to get in the way of that !

I do NOT approve of this move by AAPL !

The potential for SIGNIFICANT backlash & bad press (for AAPL) is high !

They have clearly over-stepped their bounds here !!
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While I agree with the opinion here, it kind of reads like a stock scam. Why refer to Apple by their ticker symbol in this case?
 
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Will turn that off on day one. The Apple Music app asked me the other day to re-enable notifications not remembering that I turned them off because of the spam they were sending me. They never asked permission to send me notifications and then sent me a message about a new Taylor swift album last year even though I've never searched for or played her music before. I disabled notifications then they had the gusto to ask me to enable them to make the most of Apple Music.

I subscribe to every service apple sells except News+ and if I click a link in Google, I expect it to open that site not take me to an app I've never opened.
 
This is only okay if it kicks you to Apple News only if you have a subscription to that article. Otherwise it wastes time and I'm just going to turn it off.
 
SeaFox said:
The content providers signed on for this under the ol' "make it up on volume" business plan that only works part of the time, and failed here, because Apple News+ sucks.
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Think you’ve hit on a key point: the app itself is trash. If Apple has wrapped all the sources up in a ground breaking, slick, and easy to navigate app, they’d be onto a winner. They should have built something that people prefer to access news sources from. Instead it feels clunky. Hard to personalise (I’ve got about 50 ‘topics’ as I tried to add anything that would interest me, but this hasn’t worked as Apple has conflated tags/interests with news categories - only one dimension of grouping is allowed).
 
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Analog Kid said:
Apple Music doesn’t produce their own music, so I’d be surprised if Apple News produced their own news...

And you’re about to get hammered for the word pair “unbiased news”.🙈
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*Sigh* Apple Music has its own radio station where it hires DJ's that are thought to hold rounded views/tastes within the music industry. These DJ's have held successful careers in radio presenting in their own right and were hand picked from global radio stations by Apple.

There is nothing stopping Apple hiring their own journalists and writing/hosting their own Apple News content, either guest based or affiliated. Of course it would need to be unbiased, but that's for the public to decide (as they always do and take sides).

If only people on this forum had a little vision.
 
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Seems cyclical... Apple News+ is missing some key players, but I’m also not going to pay for a single subscription when I can subscribe to Apple News. So neither get my money.

I like the interface of Apple News and would prefer all my favorite sources like WaPo interface with it. There’s plenty of free content from them though, so no big loss.
 
Many ‌Apple News‌+ users have been asking for a way to open up web links in ‌Apple News‌+ to avoid paywalls on the web, so ‌Apple News‌+ subscribers that pay for the service are likely to be appreciative of the new feature.
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I was considering canceling my News+ subscription, but now I may wait until after this feature debuts to see how well it works. Opening articles in News+ is an option in iOS, but not on macOS, and even the iOS function doesn't work all the time. Given the limited discoverability of articles in the News app itself (there's basically no search, I assume by design), the News+ subscription is of limited value if you can't access News+ articles via standard URLs. At least with an Open in News option you can do a web search and then read the article with your News+ subscription.
 
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I don't see why anybody would be bothered by this, except from greedy news websites that want their readers to pay two times for the same content: first with the money from the News+ subscription and then with the money generated by the ads on their website.

For users, this is an amazing feature: clearly, if you subscribed to Apple News+, you don't want to see any ads or paywalls for the sites that are already included in the subscription.
 
This feature should be opt-in, with clear information around what it is doing. Apple aren't the only software company making garbage behaviour the default, but they should know better.
 
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