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Apple News+ Struggling to Get New Subscribers

I haven't paid for magazines at least 30 years yet I get many subs thrown at me for free. Why do people pay for yearly subs even at $5 puzzles me. I can't even get rid of them, tried to cancel many of them and they just keep coming: Wired, EW, Sports Ill. Some of them go straight to the trash, can't even give them away.
 
What puzzled me is how News went from 2 or 3 recommended articles to none. I kid you not, my News feed has been blank for almost 2 months. I figured they just discontinued it all together?
 
DevNull0 said:
Some random site using RSS to put out 100 character clickbait headlines for their semi-literate articles is not the same type of news as a decent news source with a good reputation. As long as you're content with the former which is nothing but a sensationalist byte to sell and ad-click, all I can say is good for you, enjoy your quality journalism.
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Name a default Apple News source that is decent with a good reputation. I launch it today and I see:
The Hill
LA Times
Washington Post
Fox
CNN
Buzzfeed
Etc.

It's all corporate political trash. Apple doubled-down on Fake News and gave them an outlet. There's 0 "quality journalism" there.

Apple "curating" what news I see is no better than Facebook or Twitter giving me "curated" feed. It's just their way to influence politics.

You pre-supposed I sub RSS feeds full of clickbait. Not a chance.
 
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I’ve actually deleted the news app because I got sick of it referring me to stories I had to subscribe to. I personally sick and tired off being asked every we’re I go on the net to subscribe I am over it
 
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I tried it out at launch. The service as it was then wasn’t worth $9.99. Content, or lack thereof, wasn’t an issue. My issue really had more to do how the app worked. I want both the ability to have the app suggest articles based on my likes, dislikes, the kind of content it sees that I’m reading versus the kind of content I don’t read, etc. and the ability to flag my favorite magazines and to be notified when a new edition of a magazine is released so I could read through it like I would with a traditional printed magazine that I subscribe to. The Apple News App did a great job of suggesting content I was interested in but I thought I didn’t see any easy way to flag magazines I liked such that I could go to an area in the app that showed just the magazines I was interested in and where I could be notified when a new issue was available. They only thing I found at the time was a list of all of the newspapers and magazines Apple offered through the service with no way to exclude newspapers and magazines I had no interest in reading so I could just see the stuff I wanted to see and I didn’t see an easy way to quickly determine or be notified when a new issue was released.

If Apple News+ can do the latter and either always could and I just didn’t know how or if they’ve refined the UI and you can now do the above please let me know. If I could see a simple screen of just the newspapers and magazines I want to read with some way to know what I’ve already read versus what I haven’t and some kind of way to either be notified of a new issue or to see the release date of the latest issue I’d sign back up.

Content wasn’t the problem. Managing the content was. With printed magazines and newspapers When a new issue is delivered I set it aside and read it when I have time and when I’m done I toss it out. I need a similar way to manage digital content or it’s not worth paying for in my view.
 
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fumi2014 said:
I reckon within a year, Arcade, News and Apple TV+ will all be bundled. If not, News will be gone by this time next year - or sooner.
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hopefully the oft-desired bundle is a mix n match setup. pick any three apple services!

i do not care about arcade or news, and i havent tried tv but am already sick of the growing supply of streaming services and their walled gardens of content. but i would consider icloud/music/tv as a bundle, why not.
 
OneMike said:
I bet. I forgot it was even a thing. Didn’t even do the trial
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I haven't - if you read news on Apple's News App, nag screens are starting to pop-up asking you to trial.
iMi said:
I personally don't see the value. In the day and age of information overload, where you can pretty much find everything you want, $10 a month is simply too high.
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There are more newspapers and magazines which offer critical analysis with better sources that require subscriptions. Washington Post or The Athletic come to mind. Unfortunately neither on Apple News+.
DocMultimedia said:
Info overload. Basic fact in the second by second updates via the web/social media. You have to be really serious about subjects to read magazines.
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^ This guy gets it
 
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Well, they want $14.99 CAD to get ad filled news ... Even Apple is starting to put ads in the news article listings - super lame ads like “Singles over 40 in your area!” .. This pushed me over and made me cancel my subscription .. I left feedback via apple.com/feedback - but if they expect people to pay a decent premiums or news / old school magazines, they need to clean it up a bit.
 
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Subscription that nobody asked for.

Wonder how their tv subscription will do.
 
foobarbaz said:
For Apple news to attract customers, they need to cover a large selection of news. To cover a large selection of news (without increasing the price) they need to attract lots of customers.

I feel like the only way to succeed is within the mythical Apple bundle.
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need to attract alot of customers> they cover large selection of news, > attract customers

huh lol
 
acorntoy said:
perhaps safari
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Safari became useless to me when they killed off the Window's version. Chrome is the only reasonable option to seamlessly move between all my devices. I could use 1 Password, but that just paying Pauly Shore to explain Tyler Perry (paying to use an annoying app to solve a shortcoming with an annoying app).
 
emulator said:
I haven't paid for magazines at least 30 years yet I get many subs thrown at me for free. Why do people pay for yearly subs even at $5 puzzles me. I can't even get rid of them, tried to cancel many of them and they just keep coming: Wired, EW, Sports Ill. Some of them go straight to the trash, can't even give them away.
Click to expand...

Ditto. The T-Mobile Tuesday-Vertisements suckered me into signing up for one. I swear they sent me 6 on the list. I used to donate them but places stopped accepting them.
 
In Australia, the service is pretty poor. A handful of semi-interesting magazines, but the paid "news" all comes from the dominant Murdoch press, and its tub-thumping, climate-change denying opinion pieces dressed up as news. If other news sources were added, and the range of magazines increased, I'd consider it.
 
I use News+. The best feature is reading so many magazines I would not normally read. One annoyance is pages not loading right-away over WiFi.

News is not integrated well into the iPhone experience. I have to open a separate app.

I would like to see on my lock screen the current magazine I am reading. 1 touch and it opens.

Also, many news sites have comment sections. It would be much better if a person could comment about an article right there in the app.
 
Looks like my predictions of this being Newstand v2 was spot on.

If this is going to gain any traction at all, start by forcing magazines to be published in the new interactive format only. These garbage static PDFs make the UX maddening. People do not want to read this way.
 
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There is a lot going on here that has not been addressed.

First the GOOD: Texture the original Apple News+ The mostly magazine content with some news is a very good deal.

-The price of the content remained the same $10 a month. The price is and was a steal if any of the content you like is available. Magazines at the news stand frequently cost around that amount for a single issue. Even subscriptions while much cheaper for an individual magazine digital or not is pricey once you beyond two magazines. People bemoaning physical also must have perfect eyesight. News and magazine print gets smaller and smaller. With Digital you can resize text or zoom in.

The Bad:
-Apple bought and killed the cross platformTexture 1 year later to create AppleNews+ There goal was to improve it. I would say that was a wash. They made it better and worse in the near term. The content comes in two formats. Digital and PDF. The former can be fluidly resized the latter can only be zoomed. Apple has not gotten nearly enough content changed over to truly digital.

-The death of cross platform is still the rub and the cause of the subscriber stagnation IMHO. Cutting out Android and Windows users is potentially reducing their audience by a large number. I would guess about 70 percent smaller audience.
-The App I can not defend its messy. It works better on IOS then Mac but its still mediocre at best.

Future: Apple should restore cross platform, promote/advertise to all potential users. Apple should keep fixing the Application.
 
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