Apple News+ Struggling to Get New Subscribers

[duervo]

Not at all surprised by this development. Considering the current state of this form of media, the cost where I am located was just too much @ $14.99/month. Drop it by $5 and I would have considered. Not for $14.99 though. I did the free trial month and that was it for me.

 

[dannyyankou]

Does this mean we could see a return of Texture? Apple bought them out and screwed it up. Apple news is so difficult to find the magazines I used to enjoy.

How is it difficult? They’re all laid out in alphabetical order.

 

[DaveN]

maybe cos its full of fake news

I didn’t realize Fox News had a print department.

 

[sharif44k]

Not really surprised. As soon as it launched with $9.99/mo price point with mostly magazines, I thought to myself this is very niche product. Yes some people will like it, but think about all the millennials and gen z customers who make up a large portion of Apple users. Is it truly marketable to us at this price point? Yeah we do pay a lot of money for subscriptions, but for many of us they do not involve reading. That’s just my opinion for the product. Obviously many others might feel differently.

 

[redgreenski]

Why would I clutter my iPhone screen with another app if I can just read news directly from Safari.

 

[ThisBougieLife]

To be perfectly honest, I don't much care about Apple's services. I know that's where they think the future is and they're really trying to push it as the new largest source of their revenue, but I'm underwhelmed by all of them thus far. iCloud Storage is the only one I subscribe to.

I'm already subscribed to the New Yorker, National Geographic, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Photoshop, Microsoft Office, and probably more that aren't coming to mind right now. I'm burned out on subscriptions and so, I imagine, are many people. I'm not going to pile on yet another that I don't picture myself utilizing to the full extent.

 

[AxiomaticRubric]

I still can't get over losing Texture. It was absolutely perfect, for me anyway. 😟

 

[Macaholic868]

How is it difficult? They’re all laid out in alphabetical order.

It’s very difficult when you’re not interested in the majority of the magazines they offer. I need a UI that allows me to select the magazines I’m interested in and excludes the magazines that I don’t care to read.

The app needs to track what newspapers and magazines I care about, filter out what I don’t, track what I’ve read and what I haven’t read, alert me when there’s a new issue and to exclude issues I’ve read some or all of and no longer wish to see.

With standard print subscriptions you receive the magazines and newspapers you want, you can set the issues aside, read them when you want and toss them out once you’re done with them.

Apple needs to reproduce this experience. I want to filter out magazines I don’t care about, filter out issues of magazines I’m done with, see when new issues are available and be informed when new magazines or newspapers are added as options so I can decide if I want to see them or not.

Listing all newspapers and magazines alphabetically is useless outside of using that initial list of everything they have to let the app know what I care about and what I don’t.

That’s the problem with News+. There is plenty of content but there is no way to filter out newspapers and magazines I don’t want to see.

 

[Konigi]

I love the Apple News app, use it almost every day. I just don't see yet the added value of the +. Okay, perhaps for one article per week, so not worth the price.

 

[ErikGrim]

I didn’t realize Fox News had a print department.

Can I introduce you to News Corp?

 

[AndiG]

If you sell bad hardware, people also buy no services from you. If you torture your customers with more and more restrictions, remove OpenGL, ignore Vulkan, scrap customers 32 Bit applications, customers don‘t buy services from you.
If the OS releases are buggy every year, people buy no services from you.

Hope Apple will‘ll crash and burn following this strategy.

 

[aksala]

Same here. Already paid for a year of Disney+, though. Sorry, Apple.

I don't think anyone in my household would give Apple TV Plus even a momentary glance. But as soon as Disney+ was available my wife was like shut up and take my money! I'll admit some of the shows on Apple TV Plus look interesting but not enough to join. Including Disney+ we have several paid for TV services and don't have the budget or time for more - Apple is too late to this game and does not have the impressive library like Disney+ to entice folks like us.

So far we are loving Disney+. Can't wait to watch the Mandalorian as well.

 

[upnorth85]

So Apple news is not selling so they want to bundle it with Apple TV? Sounds like comcast giving free Cable TV with internet service because Cable TV does not sell well. Interesting. That said, I took the free trial and cancelled it after a few days. Nothing of interest there. Apple is putting me off from even the free part of Apple news by inserting subscriber only news articles which when clicked say sorry.... There is no option in Apple news to only show free or subscribed news material.

 

[ldandp0]

With iPhone sales declining, Apple set out to get as many people on as many subscriptions as possible. The products themselves were an afterthought.

 

[Mayostudent]

I’ll stick to real magazines. Thank you very much. Reading on an electronic device sucks.

 

[FairlyKors]

Who reads newspapers and magazines any more? And the dwindling number of people that do are more likely to read the physical version than something on their iDevices.

The same people that read books, I think. Even before the internet it was true that 10% of the population did/does 90% of the reading. (It may not be precisely 90/10, but the point is valid.)

I think “free” news is bad because it’s full of the worst kinds of bias, it takes much longer to read and navigate through, it’s annoying to read and navigate through, and generally the quality is really subpar. It’s a terrible use of your time if you consider news to be worth anything and you work a job to make money.

It is scary that so many people would rather consume the fast food equivalent of news than pay a few bucks to spend their time with the best journalism and reporting our civilization offers.

I don’t blame people 100%. Sort of how I don’t think people are 100% at fault for the negative effects that come from a society that markets and pushes so much fast food. Individually, we all must take responsibility, but it’s helpful to try to look out for others—like the old and the young. Just look at what old people are consuming for news! The Fox News (and CNN, etc.) demographic skews quite old, and they people can be dangerous. Just look at what has happened to our current political reality.

You can’t touch the quality found in magazines and books that require payment to view. Apple News should provide a better gateway to this high quality (healthy) information. It’s a damn shame that Apple isn’t doing more to help keep society educated. That they simply sit on this *massive* opportunity speaks loudly for their priorities. 🤷‍♂️

 

[sakurarain]

Compared with the others content service, the News+ is not worth the price.
Lowering the price to $4.99 might gain more subscribers, imo😝😝

 

[alexhardaker]

Not surprised. I predict TV+ will have the same challenges. As of now, I do not plan to renew my free 1 year trial.

Nah, the 4 main shows - TMS, See, Dickinson, FAM - are great

 

[DoctorTech]

I think a lot of people are ok getting their news from social media and late night tv.

I really hate to agree with your comment (it makes me sad) but I think you nailed it.

 

[kerf0001]

First up it is called News+, not Magazines+. Second, the news content is woeful. Stories often lag behind what's showing on the paper's website, with different weighting and priority. This is because publishers have to package up their articles in a specific Apple format and submit to Apple. I am target market for this, and subscribed to try it, but have unsubscribed, as I think it is a mess. Automate the news content Apple, so I can see breaking news, and I may resubscribe. But right now, as others have said, its all about the magazines, and I don't read magazines anymore, I read websites.

 

[Fiachers]

maybe cos its full of fake news

 

[lec0rsaire]

Not surprising. People don’t want to pay to read information they can get elsewhere and even the WSJ is limited on Apple News. You only have to open Google News to get several sources for nearly every development.

Publishers were too slow to adapt. They should’ve never gotten people used to free content. They should’ve had paywalls from the beginning to maintain their revenue.

It’s very difficult to get people to pay for stuff after getting it for free for nearly two decades. People may pay for one or two papers and magazines they really like but that’s it. Others get access from their university or job.

 

[Blakjack]

How can news subscription service compete with a free google search?!?!🤔 it just doesn’t make sense.

 

[Solomani]

Bundling into an "Apple Prime" package is the only future for Apple News+. Otherwise it will die like eWorld and Pippin. Few people are going to pay $9.99 a month for a news subscription when they can just as easily get their news from internet gossip and rumor sites. Like this one.

 

[cyb3rdud3]

It’s very difficult when you’re not interested in the majority of the magazines they offer. I need a UI that allows me to select the magazines I’m interested in and excludes the magazines that I don’t care to read.

The app needs to track what newspapers and magazines I care about, filter out what I don’t, track what I’ve read and what I haven’t read, alert me when there’s a new issue and to exclude issues I’ve read some or all of and no longer wish to see.

With standard print subscriptions you receive the magazines and newspapers you want, you can set the issues aside, read them when you want and toss them out once you’re done with them.

Apple needs to reproduce this experience. I want to filter out magazines I don’t care about, filter out issues of magazines I’m done with, see when new issues are available and be informed when new magazines or newspapers are added as options so I can decide if I want to see them or not.

Listing all newspapers and magazines alphabetically is useless outside of using that initial list of everything they have to let the app know what I care about and what I don’t.

That’s the problem with News+. There is plenty of content but there is no way to filter out newspapers and magazines I don’t want to see.

Odd.

It filters it just fine for me. I only see the magazines and papers that I've 'subscribed' to and not the others. They even indicate when there is a new issue and bring it to the top of my list.

To me there are two key problems with this service;
1. I totally forgot it was there, only signed up 2 weeks ago myself.
2. They allow content creators on it that who just publish whole page images and that is a terrible experience. I looked at those magazines once and will never again.

But I like it a lot when it is properly formatted for the format. Love how it works offline, like yesterday on my commute which is mainly through mobile deadzones it gave me a lot of reading.