Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Apple News+ Offering Three-Month Free Trial in U.S. and Canada This Weekend Only

chucker23n1 said:
It's interesting how wrong I would have predicted their 2019 services launches.

I would've expected something like:

Apple Arcade: C+
Apple Card: B+
Apple News+: A-
Apple TV+: B-

Instead, it's almost the reverse. Consensus appears to be something like:

Apple Arcade: A (seems generally well-loved!)
Apple Card: B+ (this one… basically matched the relatively low expectations)
Apple News+: B- (not doing great)
Apple TV+: A- (no smash hit, but reasonably satisfying)

Would you have bet that Apple would do a much better job launching a gaming(!) platform than a news one?
Click to expand...

TV+ reception has certainly been improved by it being given away for free. If Apple dared try to charge for it then we would see it as a significant failure.
 
  • Like
Reactions: entropys, freedomlinux, sos47 and 2 others
Does anyone know if I can cancel any time and enjoy the 3 months to the end, or if it immediately cancels like Apple Arcade and Apple TV + trials do?

Hmm I may have answered my own question since everything else cancels immediately..
 
dogslobber said:
Did any majors sign up? I seem to recall they only got WSJ but not NY Times.
Click to expand...

I did the free trial at launch, and cancelled before it was over. My main interest was the WSJ, but it turned out they only had a "curated" selection of articles. Really just a handfull from each day, although that was not immediately obvious because there were quite a lot of stories. But when you looked at the publication dates, you realized many of them were old.

They didn't have the NY Times, but had the Washington Post, and it had an interesting option to upgrade to full coverage with an in-app purchase (this was not available for the WSJ). I think the only other major newspaper available was the LA Times.

Anyway, the vast majority of coverage was magazines, and those appeared to be pretty complete. But that just didn't interest me, I was interested in newspapers. Also, the "breaking news" alerts from Apple News were not as good as when you actually subscribe to a newspaper.

After giving up on News+, I re-subscribed to the NY Times for $8/month which was a better value for me.
 
  • Like
Reactions: citysnaps and burgman
Should be $4.99. I’d pay that just to avoid the paywall. I typically use news a time killer. Not looking for anything serious at all.
Really hoping there is a bundle offering music, news, tv. $19.99
[automerge]1575070638[/automerge]
Apple could crush Spotify if they charged 4.99 for music for all single accounts. All Apple services $4.99 each. Build u huge base with great pricing. Use some of those billions stashed away.
 
  • Like
Reactions: gymratjudy
Sadly I don’t get this. 🙁
[automerge]1575071858[/automerge]
HappyDude20 said:
I’ve been using Apple News Plus for a while now and honestly it’s not that great.
The only real appeal is that I have access to dozens and dozens of magazines and newspapers, but navigating to what I want to read and discover is so annoying and not fun that I wouldn’t mind paying extra to have a real newspaper or magazine in my hand.
Click to expand...

This is my main gripe too. If the app is enjoyable I’d subscribe long time ago.
 
Last edited:
darkslide29 said:
Does anyone know if I can cancel any time and enjoy the 3 months to the end, or if it immediately cancels like Apple Arcade and Apple TV + trials do?

Hmm I may have answered my own question since everything else cancels immediately..
Click to expand...

just use Reminders to remind you to cancel at the end of the trial.
 
Is the 3-month trial available to those who've paid and cancelled? Going through the process, clicking on the 3-month trial button doesn't give feedback that I'm getting the 3 months, it seems like I'm just re-subscribing.
[automerge]1575072614[/automerge]
matrix07 said:
just use Reminders to remind you to cancel at the end of the trial.
Click to expand...
it automatically renews unless you cancel.
 
It’s basically magazines+. If more newspapers I might consider. Not to mention how horrible the app is.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Huck
The free app SmartNews is 100x better. The only news app you ever need, thousands of great sources to add and customize. Been using it for years.
 
satchmo said:
I’m sure I would love the many magazines during the 3 months free, but not to the point of paying $12.99/mo.

They need to bundle this with Music or AppleTV+ In order to make it feasible.
Click to expand...

$9.99/month + tax for me.

Barely worth it to me for the Wall Street Journal access. The News+ app could really, really use an overhaul.
 
I tried the one month free promo when News+ hit. It really looked promising but I didn’t use it other than the day I enrolled. It was canceled before the pay date kicked in. Bummer. I really like reading magazines and newspapers but this never quite felt right.
 
  • Like
Reactions: V_Man
Boyd01 said:
I did the free trial at launch, and cancelled before it was over. My main interest was the WSJ, but it turned out they only had a "curated" selection of articles. Really just a handfull from each day, although that was not immediately obvious because there were quite a lot of stories. But when you looked at the publication dates, you realized many of them were old.
Click to expand...

Yep, I like the WSJ very much but they were in on a complete bait and switch.
 
DevNull0 said:
Apple has horribly misunderstood what they bought when they bought out Texture. News+ is an idiotic name for a magazine service. You're 100% right about the news magazines in the service, but 95% of the magazines are special interest, hobby, niche things and many of them really are excellent because they're produced by enthusiasts in the niche fields. But almost nobody gets that, which is perfectly understandable when it's called News+ and half-ass glued onto Apple's news aggregator.

Magazines in the 21st century have nothing at all to do with news. Even if the news quality were excellent, which it most certainly isn't, a weekly magazine is still pushing week-old news that nobody cares to read anymore. Apple doesn't understand that and all Apple has done here is confuse people.
Click to expand...
So you think renaming the service to Magazines+ is going to solve their problem?
[automerge]1575076064[/automerge]
Khedron said:
TV+ reception has certainly been improved by it being given away for free. If Apple dared try to charge for it then we would see it as a significant failure.
Click to expand...
TV+ success is based upon awards they plan to win and hardware sales to subsidize money spent on production. TV+ is designed to be a loss leader for the next 5 years at least. News+ is run more like the App Store so Apple needs to show a real profit in order to pay the media organizations. It similar to app developers so they have to be transparent. They can hide the production costs of TV+ shows to make it a successful narrative the same way that Hollywood studios have been doing it for decades. Can’t do that when 3rd party media outlets are proving content for News+.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • Like
Reactions: AlexGraphicD
I don’t recall trying before, but can’t seem to get the 3 month to show, only 1 month

** update, I went ahead and clicked through and in the apple store confirmation page it showed the 3 months.. so it’s just that their webpages and such don’t seem to be updated.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: MacKid
It’s too expensive. $4.99 would be better. With so much content out there for free, it’s hard to justify paying for another subscription service.
 
gugy said:
It’s too expensive. $4.99 would be better. With so much content out there for free, it’s hard to justify paying for another subscription service.
Click to expand...
Here’s the problem with pricing that low. They are never going to get NYTIMES and WSJ onboard if apple is charging that little and those two are charging a multiple of that (without work arounds of course). I heard that just to get onboard NYTIMES wanted 4$ a month of the sub fee for apple news
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back