Some Publishers Unhappy With Apple News+ Launch and Lack of Help From Apple

[Cosmosent]

I'm laughing @ you Cook, NOT with you !

The Grass is NOT always Greener elsewhere !

AAPL should have stayed focused on the iPhone !

And specifically, producing the best solution possible @ ~$650 USD.

 

[Funglebuddy]

I subscribed for two days and then promptly unsubscribed. They are competing with free news services, cheap magazine subscriptions, and other content in the space. So 9.99 is the cost of a yearly magazine subscription. I would need to read 12 magazines to really get value out of the service.

I did the same....really not a fan of apple news since some of it is decidedly biased...however i will mention that along with better support for news + there should be a way to remove sources from your feed and have better control over the application.

 

[burgman]

there you have it, the new apple under tim cook, but we are trolls and haters, i remember apple used to be real good at costumer support but just like everything else in apple, even that has declined, but of course that doesn’t have to do nothing with apple leadership, right. so not only the service sucks but also the support, welcome to the new apple, we only care about taking your money, after that you are in your own

things will have to go bad and from bad to worse untill we finally get rid of tim so then things can go back to be good once again

oh yes also cool because mr cook is not cool at all

the men simply kills the asmosphere with his precense

And SJ blew rainbow bubbles from his flute? Apple is as predatory as any large company.
Always has been. You might educate yourself on Apple’s beginnings and how Apple has been cutthroat throughout its history, just like Google and Microsoft. .

 

[mlrproducts]

DELETE

 

[Grepus]

From a customer point of view, I'm not impressed.

First, their subscription doesn't work the same way others do, for instance Apple Music. When I signed up for the 30 day trial, I went and cancelled it right away, expecting it to still be good for the 30 day period, and not auto-renew at the end. Instead, it cancelled immediately. There was no further offer of a trial, only to sign up.

I signed up with another family member's account, and got the trial again because of family sharing.

So far, I can't find back issues, at least for the magazines I like. The interface is confusing and inconsistent. I seem to have to go back to a magazine's table of contents to get to other parts of a magazine. But not always. I just don't understand how it works.

It needs to be like a book purchased in iBooks. The subscription (i.e. trial) should work the same as other Apple trials. I think it should be separate from News. Maybe a standalone iMagazine app. Back issues for everything.

Having said all that, I will not pay. Perhaps if the magazines had the ads removed, but I will not pay for content of any kind that is so heavy with ads. The ads should be paying for me to view. I don't care that "real" magazines are like that. This is the Internet. If you charge me for content on the Internet, remove the ads.

It's also a bit pricey. I'm not going to have a monthly Apple subscription for TV, another for Music, another for magazines, and another for some iCloud disk space -- all on top of the thousands I have paid for their devices.

I believe that it is this News+ thing that has made me realize that Apple has gone too far. I have now signed up for Spotify. It works on all my devices (e.g. no Apple Music on Alexa in Canada). Google Drive for my storage - I can share files or folders to people, the free allotment is bigger, and the prices much more reasonable if expanding. And I have NOT bought an iPhone XS or XR. The prices are just too much now.

If I need a magazine, I'll figure something out.

 

[Greenlee]

so are these "unhappy" publishers going to drop their magazines/newspapers from Apple News+ or what???

 

[robjulo]

What a mess.
[doublepost=1555362069][/doublepost]Wow, that is how you are spinning this?

you've obviously never picked up a Magazine at any newsstand, they are no different, a cluttered mess, filled with ads, and a font point size that even people that don't need glasses might need readers to see

 

[Rogifan]

What a shock...not.

 

[Naraxus]

Playing favorites....

With Timmy as CEO we all know what that means.

 

[ilikewhey]

so are these "unhappy" publishers going to drop their magazines/newspapers from Apple News+ or what???

doubt it, they need apple's broad market penetration rather than sticking it on their own.

i can't comment on the + but the regular news has been alright, i still prefer google news to some degree but if i have to live with just apple news its not such a bad thing.

 

[btrach144]

I can’t see Apple News+ having a future. It’ll go the way of Ping.

 

[Apple_Robert]

If Apple makes some much needed changes quickly, they can minimize the negative impact they have faced thus far.

From a customer viewpoint, it appears (to me) that Apple rushed the grand release of this new service, when they really didn't need to rush at the last minute. I don't see the news service surviving for very long.

Odd quirks and electronic hiccups are to be expected. However, it doesn't bode well (for Apple) when some new signees are already disgruntled.

 

[roar08]

News+ is a solution w/out a problem. It's hard to see it growing to a point where it makes sense for Apple to keep it alive. Wouldn't surprise me one bit if it were scrapped or underwent a major pivot within 18-24 months.

 

[jonnyb098]

Apple can't do services. Each time they do something they fail. This will be another ping

Apple Music just overtook spotify subscribers in the US and it only took 3 years of being in existence. How is that a failure?

 

[Mascots]

Honestly, sounds like the backend of most of Apple's backend systems – not much better over here for App Developers.

 

[trifid]

Apple should have banned PDF-format mags. The experience on iPhone is atrocious; it was easy for me to decide to cancel after I saw that.

 

[ntlman]

...Apple has not provided Apple-designed article or content templates to publishers and has "largely outsourced" templates to vendors, which has resulted in bugs and other issues, along with much more work for publishers."

That sums up just about everything that has gone wrong with Apple lately. They have the arrogance to try and claim to have improved the magazine reading experience, but leave the most important work off to some unknown 3rd party vendor because they're too cheap to do it themselves.

This explains their rationale behind removing functional ports from the MBs. Pat yourself on the back for a thin design... and then undercut your own design aesthetic by making users purchase ugly dongles because you're too cheap to include ports.

 

[truthertech]

Apple can't do services. Each time they do something they fail. This will be another ping

Wrong grasshopper. Apple now is one of the top service providers in the entire world, if not the top, and just keeps setting new records every quarter. Ping? LOL. When your only example is a minor effort to add social media to iTunes from a decade ago, you should pause before you hit send.

Apple services have been so successful, that just their services revenue is greater than all of Facebook. Apple News took only about 3 years to overtake everyone else and is now the largest news service in the entire world with about 100 million active users. Apple Music went from nothing to now #2 in the entire world and has just overtaken Spotify in North America in paid users. The App store has blown away every one else and is a cash cow. iTunes went from nothing to the largest seller of music in the entire world, another cash cow.

Yes, Apple "can't do services."

It remains to be seen if there are enough people left to pay for news and curation for Apple News+ to be a success, but the pattern has been Apple Services = Winning!

 

[s15119]

Normal growing pains for a new service.

 

[slomojoe]

unless i am missing something i was forced to subscribe to news+ simply to read and article in the free version since they wouldn’t remove the ad for news+ that was blocking it

i have my calendar marked to cancel the day before it renews

my library has rb-digital which has a huge selection of the same magazines, not quite as polished (not that i’m saying apple’s is polished, it is not and needs a huge amount of work) but they look pretty much the same

frankly having to decide which one of dozens and dozens of magazines i want to read every month is exhausting

too much information apple

 

[truthertech]

Honestly, sounds like the backend of most of Apple's backend systems – not much better over here for App Developers.

Yes, the poor App developers whose hands Apple has put in well over a HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS. They are so abused

 

[Shirasaki]

Apple playing favorites...shocking.

Hardly a shocking thing for me. Money talks. Big money talks a lot.

Haters and other nonsense aside, Apple has a good thing going with News+, but the team they assigned to handle the launch did a pretty bad job. Searching for articles is hard, and trying to open e.g. a WSJ article from the web on Apple News+ is more difficult than it needs to be.

Apple should spend more money to hire more (and better) people to manage Apple News+.

At some point, more money or resources in general does not translate to better service or quality products.
Also, do you really think bean counter would hire more people to “improve the quality” that such improvements won’t pay for itself for a long time?

And SJ blew rainbow bubbles from his flute? Apple is as predatory as any large company.
Always has been. You might educate yourself on Apple’s beginnings and how Apple has been cutthroat throughout its history, just like Google and Microsoft. .

Past is past. Present is present. Glory in the past is not the justification of forgiving a horrible and messed up present.

Yes, Apple "can't do services."

Apple Services = Winning!

Yes. This is the world we are living right now. F the quality and embrace the money and short term return. No sustainability required. Just pass go and move on. Who cares about future generations?

 

[jst_testing]

Was on trial, and cancelled after a week. Reminds of the time SJ launched "The Daily" iPad-exclusive news portal and we all know how that turned out...

I really really hope they iron out this unified formatting issue and play nice with the smaller publications though.

 

[AppleMad98004]

Poorly executed.... If Apple TV + sucks Apple may just lose the services business big time. Except maybe music.

 

[goobot]

It’s quite obvious Apple doesn’t know how to create products for the user anymore. The company is slowly becoming a shell of its former self. I wonder what it will look like 10 years from now.