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PSA: Make Sure to Cancel Apple News+ If You Signed Up for a Free Trial After Apple's March 25 Event and Don't Want to be Charged

walstib said:
I canceled the other day.

If the Wall Street Journal content had been easier to access to see everything, I might have kept subscribing....
and nowhere enough newspapers.
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Maybe you expected too much for 10 bucks. I subscripe to the WSJ and it's OVER $30 a month. I can't think of a reason the WSJ would give you access to their site for a couple of cents a month as part of the 10 buck charge. Same with newspapers. I'm a frequent reader of the Drudge Report and a few of their pieces are directly linked the WSJ and the New York times as well. I suspect the NY Times is not a player on News+ because of the small chunk they would get from the News+ as well. I also subscribe to the NY Times and I think it's about $15 monthly.

Wondering why so many think this is free stuff. And yes, I did take a quick look at News+ mainly for their magazines but wasn't impressed with reading magazines via say an iPad UNLESS I were boarding a flight and wanted something to read.
 
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Malarkey said:
I'm keeping the service, for sure. It needs a few interface tweaks, but access to the brilliant publications of Future Publishing make it a STEAL. Total nerd heaven. The amount of detail they cram into every issue is astonishing. It must take a small army to put out every issue of their magazines (Retro Gamer, Classic Rock, Future Music, PC Gamer, 3D World etc.). I was subscribing separately to many of them through iTunes... Plus the New Yorker, National Geographic, etc.
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I'm keeping it as well. I'm accessing about a dozen magazines I like. In Canada, the access to newspapers is quite good. I'm also skimming through what comes through Apple News from the U.S. via Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post. Even though NYT isn't formally signed up, a lot of its content is showing up.
Overall, a bargain.
 
ipedro said:
I really dislike this expression because so many people apply it without it actually being valid.

Of course there’s a problem. Multiple actually.

1. News isn’t free. There are people researching, writing, laying out, designing. There are people creating that content and they have to get paid.

2. There are too many subscriptions for one person to support and choosing is frustrating so people end up not subscribing to anything.

Apple News solves both of those problems. A single subscription gets you access to everything so that you don’t have to choose and Apple pays the content creators according to what you read.

This was in fact a problem in search of a solution, and it found it.
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Texture solved those two problems very elegantly. Apple bought them out and has contributed nothing of value to those problems. Apple's contribution is taking away the ability to read the magazines you like as magazines and instead given you the horrible mess where you can't easily just read what you want, you read what Apple tell you it thinks you want. As far as I can tell, I can't even go back and choose a second choice from a previous selection.

From the publisher's point of view it must be a nightmare. Instead of seeing the magazine as a cohesive product, it's a collection of loose articles ripped out of context.
 
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GSRennie said:
I'm keeping it as well. I'm accessing about a dozen magazines I like. In Canada, the access to newspapers is quite good. I'm also skimming through what comes through Apple News from the U.S. via Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post. Even though NYT isn't formally signed up, a lot of its content is showing up.
Overall, a bargain.
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I don't get it as well. 10 bucks is 33 cents a day! Or about 3 lattes at Starbucks.
 
DevNull0 said:
As a former Texture customer, it's just sad Apple killed that wonderful service and gave us this abomination. I hope they well some day have a service where you can just read the damn magazines in peace like you could with Texture, but I'm doubtful.
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There's a service called Readly which is almost identical to the Magazines portion of Apple News+. I never used Texture but it seems directly comparable. It's viewable in a web browser or cross-platform mobile app, which is more flexible than the Apple offering. They didn't have any custom formats though. AT&T was giving away 6 month memberships to its customers a while back.

For me, this is the kind of thing that's fun for an afternoon or two, but difficult to justify for a monthly subscription.
 
Flojomojo said:
There's a service called Readly which is almost identical to the Magazines portion of Apple News+. I never used Texture but it seems directly comparable. It's viewable in a web browser or cross-platform mobile app, which is more flexible than the Apple offering. They didn't have any custom formats though. AT&T was giving away 6 month memberships to its customers a while back.

For me, this is the kind of thing that's fun for an afternoon or two, but difficult to justify for a monthly subscription.
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Thank you for the tip. I'd never heard of them. It looks interesting. The search is very clunky but it seems to have a good selection and it allows downloading for offline reading which is important to me. I will definitely look more into them now. At $11 US it's quite a bit more than the $10 CDN I've been paying for texture, but not so much that price is a deal breaker.
 
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ir_fuel said:
Seems they put the team that was in charge of the first version of Apple Music on the interface design of this thing.
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The interface looks NOTHING like Apple music did in the beginning , but it does however seem to have the same usability and navigation issues Apple Music had in the beginning. Hopefully the dont take 2 years to fix this stuff this time.
 
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calzon65 said:
It's going to fail.
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People said the same of Apple music and now its more popular than Spotify in the US.

However I will agree that billing this as a "magazine " service seems a bit silly.

My guess is the overarching point that Apple may drive home is that there is a LOT LOT LOT of garbage news out there in many forms. Having the editorial of magazines rather than overly opinionated 16 year old bloggers is probably a breath of fresh air to some people. So for that theres a possibility it could succeed. Everything goes at light speed today. Sometimes theres a comfort in just reading a book or a magazine.
 
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Flojomojo said:
The way Apple implemented the subscription trial was needlessly confusing. Why did they make it different from EVERY OTHER subscription in the store? With those, you could cancel immediately but use the service until your trial or paid period ended, and it would automatically close itself. With Apple News+, if you cancel, they remove your access, WTF? Are they TRYING to make it fail?

I like magazines, kinda ... but the PDF viewer is unusable on the iPhone and the organization is wonky, as discussed. I might re-up for it later, especially if they consider offering it on other platforms (ha!) but it would be very very interesting to see some stats about this service.
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No. If they don't think they can get subscribers through laziness to cancel, they are giving you nothing for free.
 
Rogifan said:
Apple News+ is way to new to declare the problem has been solved. Especially when major publishes like the Washington Post and New York Times said no thanks.

Anyway if I was Apple I wouldn’t be too happy seeing articles like this out there (I saw one over at The Verge too). If this service was so great would people be publishing articles telling you how to cancel it?
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Because sites write these things all the time. The same articles were written when Apple Music (now bigger than spotify in the US) first launched and peoples 3 month trials were coming to an end. Some of it is reminders, some of it click bait.

MUCH worse articles are written about Apple daily. This kind of stuff goes into the "slow news day" bucket as far as negative stuff is concerned.
 
I cancelled this past weekend just to make sure I didn't forget. I was hoping for more daily news, particularly from the WSJ, but it was very frustrating to find that content. I like some of the magazines but really didn't read enough articles to justify the $10/month fee.

One thing I don't like about the News app is how links to articles only available to News+ subscribers appear in the general News section. They even have a special icon on them indicating they are for subscribers only. Why? There's a dedicated News+ tab in the app, shouldn't the subscription content be listed there instead?
 
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DevNull0 said:
As a former Texture customer, it's just sad Apple killed that wonderful service and gave us this abomination. I hope they well some day have a service where you can just read the damn magazines in peace like you could with Texture, but I'm doubtful.
Click to expand...

DevNull0 said:
From the publisher's point of view it must be a nightmare. Instead of seeing the magazine as a cohesive product, it's a collection of loose articles ripped out of context.
Click to expand...

What are you talking about??

You can tap on any magazine issue and read any magazine cover to cover like the publisher intended (they design each magazine, including the order of the articles and graphical style).

Apple News just added an additional article curation in the app but each magazine is kept intact.

I don’t know whether you even bothered to subscribe to News+ because what you’re describing is the free version.
 
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MikeSmoke said:
I was gung ho on day one but I have not used it since. I just canceled before the bills start. I can’t say it is a bad deal. I just didn’t use it. I was surprised.
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Agreed. I felt the same way. I was eager to sign up on day one but found the interface clunky and wish they had more newspaper content. I’ll keep my eye on it though. If they overhaul the UI and add another high profile newspaper I’ll reconsider.
 
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thanks for the warning but I don't have nothing to worry about because I didn't signed for any trial
why would I?
:D
 
Benjamin Frost said:
I can read unlimited magazines and newspapers from around the world, including backdated issues, for free, on my iPad, iPhone and Mac, courtesy of my local library. All issues can be downloaded for off-line reading. As this is the case for all UK residents, it is hard to see Apple News+ as being competitive.
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Similar situation in most USA locations. I get all the magazines I normally read from my library along with ebooks and audiobooks. Only downside to the books is having to wait for popular books. Can’t see paying for something I already get for free, except for my taxes.
 
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Overhyped, underdelivered and downright unnecessary failed service.

Wish Apple would focus on iPhones, iPads and Macs rather than making TV series and selling old news magazines for subscription money like some door-to-door peddler.
 
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calstanford said:
Overhyped, underdelivered and downright unnecessary failed service.

Wish Apple would focus on iPhones, iPads and Macs rather than making TV series and selling old news magazines for subscription money like some door-to-door peddler.
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Do you also retroactively wish that Apple would just focus on Macs rather than on OSX, iLife, iWork, the iTunes Music Store, iMessage, the Photos app, iCloud, Apple Music? We could have just installed Windows and used other third party apps, right?

Apple isn’t just about the hardware they make or the operating systems that run on it. Apple has always created the things we could use that hardware for. Today, we use our devices a lot for consuming video content. I’m excited for what Apple can produce, specially so given that they’ve been able to compile the best names in the business behind the effort.

If I recall correctly, you were one of those complaining about Apple Music and how Spotify already existed and would always be better. Guess what: Apple is persistent despite their critics. Apple Music is now the top streaming music service in the US and growing faster than Spotify internationally.

AppleNews+ is an incredible value at less than the price of those of us who already pay for content. The UI can use a few tweaks and I’m willing to give Apple the chance to improve on what they’ve created.
 
ipedro said:
Do you also retroactively wish that Apple would just focus on Macs rather than on OSX, iLife, iWork, the iTunes Music Store, iMessage, the Photos app, iCloud, Apple Music? We could have just installed Windows and used other third party apps, right?

Apple isn’t just about the hardware they make or the operating systems that run on it. Apple has always created the things we could use that hardware for. Today, we use our devices a lot for consuming video content. I’m excited for what Apple can produce, specially so given that they’ve been able to compile the best names in the business behind the effort.

If I recall correctly, you were one of those complaining about Apple Music and how Spotify already existed and would always be better. Guess what: Apple is persistent despite their critics. Apple Music is now the top streaming music service in the US and growing faster than Spotify internationally.

AppleNews+ is an incredible value at less than the price of those of us who already pay for content. The UI can use a few tweaks and I’m willing to give Apple the chance to improve on what they’ve created.
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I have Chinese Apple Music subscription, meaning it is cheap. 100RMB which is about 20CAD. Only reason I subscribe to Apple Music in China, is because other music provider implemented two-blocking.

Even with Chinese version of Apple Music, the Music content compare with other music providers are really really lacking. So many songs that you could not find within Apple Music.

In Canada, I use Spotify only. Not caring about Apple Music in Canada. Never fan of Apple Music, either UI wise or the songs. Spotify is much better.
 
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