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

[confirmed]

I'm not a subscriber, it still was enabled for me.

Edit: removed comments as hot-gril confirmed this feature was not in fact enabled.

 

[Lowhangers]

What a horrid feature, especially for desktop.

The Apple News app is awful. They should have made the access to magazines front and centre, instead it's like a child's version of an rss reader only worse. It presents a poorly categorised dull mix of the same kind of news stories.

The curated stuff, when political, takes a very narrow political view too. It's quite preachy.

I got 6 months of apple news plus for free through my mobile provider, I tried really hard to like it. In the end I only use it to occasionally read a Times (UK) article, which are really hard to find as there's no proper search engine in the app.

Once the 6 months free expires, I'll be deleting the app across all my iDevices.

Subbing separately to news services, whatever mix you want, that interest you and you'll actually read seems like a better options.

Apple News+ is a solution looking for a problem.

I deleted the piece of crap a long time ago. You got it exactly right calling it a child’s version of an RSS reader, that is exactly how I felt about it. Terrible app and a stupid idea on Apple’s part.

 

[Sam_RU]

I'm not a subscriber, it still was enabled for me.

how?? It literally says under the option that enables/disables it in news settings that you need to be Apple News+ subscriber.

And it was just added to the latest IOS 14 and Macos big sur beta.

I can see why this would be convenient, but the way they did it is wacky. There's no obvious way to prevent it, and see below, I think it dupes users into paying for free content. Gave me a reason to fire up Firefox, just wanted to read my article.

You don’t need to fire another browser to read the article on web, all you need to do is uncheck that setting as shown at the picture above if you were apple news+ subscriber, if not then you don’t have to as this feature won’t work for non subs as mentioned.

Usually an article on Apple News+ is actually free at the source! https://www.rollingstone.com/politi...ssley-jamil-smith-black-lives-matter-1027705/ for example, I see this on News, and it says "News+". So if you open this in Safari, you get sent to News, where it asks you to pay?

Someone please test this I have the latest macOS installed on a separate drive and can't reboot rn.

Lastly you asked why apple is doing this as many articles included are free outside apple news+ anyway?

first of all articles are either accessible through paywall or free with ads all over it’s page like that link you shared, it has ads in it. So no it’s not free either-way and people who paid for an access to certain publisher’s articles through Apple news+ has the right to view it without ads and without hitting a paywall, Apple is just giving it’s customers a tool to view contents they already paid for. If someone isn’t a subscriber to Apple news then that feature won’t work and the link will load in safari like any other link.

 

[hot-gril]

In that case, I switch my position - this is an absolutely terrible move. I can only be hopeful it was a mistake in this beta. The more moves Apple makes like this, the more I start to consider alternatives.

I think I was wrong, actually. It was probably an "apple.news" link, which normally redirects to the actual site in other browsers, opening in the News app and paywalling me needlessly. That's pretty annoying but not nearly as bad as the regular site URL doing it.

 

[kesennnnn]

Not everyone who uses an Apple device uses (or wants to use) Apple News.

And those people can just disable the redirect to News function.

 

[sbrunner]

I talked to Apple support like two hours today, and there is no special Apple provided login for Wallstreet Journal or any other participant of News+. On the bright side, the trick with "sharing" from Safari iOS to News app for WSJ at least appears to work again. It does not work for the Times.

 

[Marbles1]

I talked to Apple support like two hours today, and there is no special Apple provided login for Wallstreet Journal or any other participant of News+. On the bright side, the trick with "sharing" from Safari iOS to News app for WSJ at least appears to work again. It does not work for the Times.

Thanks for investigating this!

 

[mwinterr]

This "open web links in news" option seems to have disappeared from both the Apple News setting in iOS 14 and macOS Big Sur. Anyone have any insight into why this happened? Is this option being deleted?

 

[man02195]

I cannot find the setting anymore, not on iOS14.3 beta and not on macOS Big Sur (and that’s the Big Sur with the little menu bar icons, pretty stupid ass name, should have been hard to read small Sur)

 

[ArPe]

It’s a neat idea to click on an article and then it loads without ads in a Reader app with a reader view. Then save the article there for later when you discover the journalists were lying or deluded or wrong about their articles.