iPad Is Apple News + worth it?

[AVBeatMan]

As title suggest, is Apple News + worth it? £9.99 here in the UK and $9.99 in the US.

Does anyone subscribe to this? If so how do you like it? I’m considering trying it out and see if I like it or not. Just wondered if anyone has any opinion on AN+?

Also, any other news source recommendations around the same price (or cheaper)?

 

[TiggrToo]

As title suggest, is Apple News + worth it? £9.99 here in the UK and $9.99 in the US.

Does anyone subscribe to this? If so how do you like it? I’m considering trying it out and see if I like it or not. Just wondered if anyone has any opinion on AN+?

Also, any other news source recommendations around the same price (or cheaper)?

Had it for 3 months. Gave up. Really found very little value in there to justify $10 a month.

 

[LeeW]

I have it, really depends on how useful it is to you. Before AN+ my wife and I had subs to publications that cost more and all were now available on AN+, so it was a no-brainer, get AN+ still access the same things we read before and a good bit more and its working out at the same money.

 

[tranceking26]

It all depends what you will use it for.

 

[StarShot]

I signed up for Apple News + immediately and find it very valuable OR maybe a huge waste of my time. I log on almost every day and find it very easy to spend an hour or two digesting varies content. Today I received a notice that my Atlantic magazine subscription is coming up for renewal. I passed on it because Atlantic is one of the magazines offered by News +. Yes, I prefer reading a magazine in paper format just like I prefer newspaper with real ink, but for 10 bucks a month, it's hard not to justify reading the same content online. Note, we pay $15 a month for our Seattle paper online primarily because of my wife even though we moved 200 miles away. And yes, I still subscribe to the WSJ even though parts of it are available with Apple Plus as well.

IMO, it's a terrific bargain at 10 bucks a month unless you prefer to get your news from CNN, MSNBC, Fox, Facebook, etc. One of these days I think the monthly price of 10 bucks will increase.

 

[Bubble99]

It all depends what you will use it for.

It is cheaper than paying for every web site access. As many news site now will not allow you to read with out paying monthly fee.

The cost adds up with every web site. With Apple news it is much cheaper.

 

[ozaz]

As title suggest, is Apple News + worth it? £9.99 here in the UK and $9.99 in the US.

In the UK if you're interested in regularly reading news from The Times I think it's worth it. The Times is the only UK paper available via News+.

Whilst you more content subscribing direct to The Times that would cost between £15 and £26 per month for non-print options. With Apple News+ you get most articles published online for £10/month and then in addition there's access to various magazines as well as content from a couple of US papers.

If not interested in The Times then it's just a case of going through other publications and seeing if there's enough publications you would read.

By the way, if you happen to use EE as your mobile phone network provider you can get 6 months Apple News+ for free.

 

[Apple_Robert]

I would sign up for it if Apple allowed us to remove their curated feeds we didn’t want to see, as well as the ability to add our own.

In my opinion, most of the Apple News app curated feeds are openly biased sources that lean progressively left, instead of being centered. I have no desire to pay for forced feeds that are not objective.

 

[ozaz]

I would sign up for it if Apple allowed us to remove their curated feeds we didn’t want to see, as well as the ability to add our own.

In my opinion, most of the Apple News app curated feeds are openly biased sources that lean progressively left, instead of being centered. I have no desire to pay for forced feeds that are not objective.

I personally never even look at the curated feeds. I just follow the News+ publications I’m interested in and go straight to them via the channels list.

 

[Bubble99]

I personally never even look at the curated feeds. I just follow the News+ publications I’m interested in and go straight to them via the channels list.

I think they have most of them like CNN, FOX news and LA times and New York times.

 

[Marbles1]

Just finished a 6 month free trial of apple news+ with UK mobile network EE. I won't be paying for it. There's no value there. Other than the times, the other magazines and newspapers are available for free with pressreader and my local library card login.

I think it's a matter of time until Apple quietly ends Apple news.

 

[That70sGAdawg]

All I know is that I was smothered with DNC convention news last week in Apple News. yet this week, I dont see anything about the RNC convention . Do we have a fairness issue here, more proof of one sided BIAS! Sick of it. Keep it up, you are loosing more votes everyday. People are finally aware.

 

[someoneoutthere]

All I know is that I was smothered with DNC convention news last week in Apple News. yet this week, I dont see anything about the RNC convention . Do we have a fairness issue here, more proof of one sided BIAS! Sick of it. Keep it up, you are loosing more votes everyday. People are finally aware.

Oh please. A basic search revealed multiple results, and I could scroll for minutes.
Here is a screenshot for you:

Cheers!

 

[AZhappyjack]

As title suggest, is Apple News + worth it? £9.99 here in the UK and $9.99 in the US.

Does anyone subscribe to this? If so how do you like it? I’m considering trying it out and see if I like it or not. Just wondered if anyone has any opinion on AN+?

Also, any other news source recommendations around the same price (or cheaper)?

I have it because I scored a 3-month freebie through BestBuy... and it's ok, but IMO, not worth $10/month. The slant of much of the news is way left of where I am on the spectrum. The magazines are OK, but not on par with the Texture app which Apple bought and killed off in favor of this mess. Texture had a good variety of magazines with content and an interface that was fluid... multiple clickable links to move through the magazines... Apple replaced that with basically images of the magazine pages ... no clickable links, no clickable TOC, etc...

I would say that it is worth every penny that I am shelling out for this mess ($0.)... but not much more. When my 3 month sub is up (October), I am out.

 

[Kat17man]

I would say that it is worth every penny that I am shelling out for this mess ($0.)... but not much more. When my 3 month sub is up (October), I am out.

33 cents a day? For all the magazines, newspapers, etc. I'm not driving to my local library to save 33 cents. At the current price level, I suspect News will be around for a long time to come.

 

[AZhappyjack]

33 cents a day? For all the magazines, newspapers, etc. I'm not driving to my local library to save 33 cents. At the current price level, I suspect News will be around for a long time to come.

Knock yourself out... not interested in paying for it personally...

 

[levander]

I thought News+ only had limited access to the magazines and newspapers it offers? If you want access to the full publication, you have to subscribe directly to the publication.

Is that not true?

 

[AZhappyjack]

I thought News+ only had limited access to the magazines and newspapers it offers? If you want access to the full publication, you have to subscribe directly to the publication.

Is that not true?

For the magazines, the full content is there... but they are basically screenshots of each page... not a particularly useful format for reading... find something in the table of contents and scroll, scroll, scroll to page 70 to read the article, then scroll scroll, scroll back to the ToC to find another article, or just scroll through the entire array of mag screenshots .... I read mostly tech/Mac-centric mags, etc.

Can't speak for the newspapers, as they are way to far left for this reader. I don't bother. There are plenty of other places to get balanced news information...

 

[ozaz]

For the magazines, the full content is there... but they are basically screenshots of each page... not a particularly useful format for reading... find something in the table of contents and scroll, scroll, scroll to page 70 to read the article, then scroll scroll, scroll back to the ToC to find another article, or just scroll through the entire array of mag screenshots .... I read mostly tech/Mac-centric mags, etc.

They aren’t all like that. Scientific American is an example of a major magazine which has ToC links and is formatted for reading on screen.

I thought News+ only had limited access to the magazines and newspapers it offers? If you want access to the full publication, you have to subscribe directly to the publication.

Is that not true?

For Newspapers it may depend on the Newspaper. The only one I regularly read and can comment on is The Times (UK). In News+ you don’t get all the content but you do get a lot. My guess would be around 90%. Personally my gripe wouldn’t be the amount of content it would be the way articles are laid out and presented which is much worse in News+ than in The Times app and The Times website. Also, lack of ability to engage in reader comments/discussions on articles is an annoyance.

A full digital subscription to The Times is £26/month, so I think £10/month via News+ for accces to most of the content (albeit poorly laid out) combined with a bunch of magazines from other publishers is pretty good value.

 

[levander]

They aren’t all like that. Scientific American is an example of a major magazine which has ToC links and is formatted for reading on screen.

it sounds like better formatting is available to the magazine publishers, but many aren’t using it yet. How long it takes for them to adopt better digital formatting, there’s no way of knowing. There’s still lots of books I’d like to read on my Kindle, but you email the publisher asking why it’s not available, and they’ll complain about being inundaated with all the work trying to convert old oks to ebooks.

But these books are old content. Newer books are almost always available as an ebook.

For Newspapers it may depend on the Newspaper. The only one I regularly read and can comment on is The Times (UK). In News+ you don’t get all the content but you do get a lot. My guess would be around 90%.

My guess is the last 10% is due to licensing or copyright. They probably don’t have the rights to everything they publish on their website to also publish on Apple News. Like if they have existing contracts with columnists. And the columnist isn’t giving permission because he wants more money or something.

 

[ozaz]

My guess is the last 10% is due to licensing or copyright

I think it's more likely just a choice of the paper (together with decision to put minimal effort into formatting content specifically for News+). Apple likely pays them a pittance so they'll want to keep reasons for people to subscribe directly instead of via News+

 

[jbachandouris]

Even with free trials, I barely used it. If you want, and will read, magazines, then maybe it's worth it.

 

[Brenster]

Worth it for BBC Music Magazine, Time & The Atlantic here, cheaper than subscribing to each individually. I’ve wound up blocking certain publications from appearing in my feed - I really don’t need gossip about WAGs, manufactured outrage over TV quiz show contestants from The Sun, The Mirror etc on my phone.

The app is far from perfect, and the PDF based periodicals are useless on all but an iPad. If you put the time into curating what you do and do not want to appear in your feed, would regularly pick up at least a couple of the magazine/periodicals and either don’t mind panning around or using an iPad for the PDFs/unformatted for smaller screens, it’s worth it.

From a purely news based perspective, you might well be better off with a digital subscription to a daily newspaper. I have seperate digital subscription to The Times & The Guardian and even though both allow some of their content on News+, there is no comparison in terms of how comprehensive the quantity and depth of content in the two direct digital subscriptions to the same titles content on News+.

if you’re on EE here in UK, you can get a free 6 month trial of News+ https://ee.co.uk/entertainment-on-ee/apple-news-plus The trial is managed by Apple and can be cancelled as per any other iOS/iTunes based subscription in Settings > your Apple ID > Subscriptions.

 

[AVBeatMan]

Worth it for BBC Music Magazine, Time & The Atlantic here, cheaper than subscribing to each individually. I’ve wound up blocking certain publications from appearing in my feed - I really don’t need gossip about WAGs, manufactured outrage over TV quiz show contestants from The Sun, The Mirror etc on my phone.

The app is far from perfect, and the PDF based periodicals are useless on all but an iPad. If you put the time into curating what you do and do not want to appear in your feed, would regularly pick up at least a couple of the magazine/periodicals and either don’t mind panning around or using an iPad for the PDFs/unformatted for smaller screens, it’s worth it.

From a purely news based perspective, you might well be better off with a digital subscription to a daily newspaper. I have seperate digital subscription to The Times & The Guardian and even though both allow some of their content on News+, there is no comparison in terms of how comprehensive the quantity and depth of content in the two direct digital subscriptions to the same titles content on News+.

if you’re on EE here in UK, you can get a free 6 month trial of News+ https://ee.co.uk/entertainment-on-ee/apple-news-plus The trial is managed by Apple and can be cancelled as per any other iOS/iTunes based subscription in Settings > your Apple ID > Subscriptions.

I had a digital subscription for The Times until recently (currently have an offer for the hard copy). I was just wondering if you have to pay for the Guardian? If so, do you mind me asking how much it is?

 

[sparksd]

I personally never even look at the curated feeds. I just follow the News+ publications I’m interested in and go straight to them via the channels list.

Same here - I just view the material I'm interested in. It's not as if you're forced to go through their feeds.