Apple News+ app is pretty buggy

[Smoothie]

I first signed up for the trial subscription of News+ on my iPhone, but I had a problem using it on my iMac. The iMac app kept asking me to sign up for the trial, but when I did it would tell me -- correctly -- that I already had a subscription. It was an endless loop. On a whim, I fixed this by rebooting my iMac which had been updated to 10.14.4 the day before.

Now that I can access the extra content in the Mac app, it doesn't allow me to save any News+ magazine as a favorite. The icon for it is there, but it doesn't react to any input. I was on the phone with Apple support about this, and they didn't have an answer. The first person I spoke with asked me to uninstall and reinstall the app, but you can't do that because it's part of the OS. The second person I spoke with wanted me to reinstall the OS, but I wasn't going to do that when everything else works properly.

Also, the back button works in some portions of the app but not in others.

When I went to the Apple feedback page to report the issues, the News app wasn't even listed. I'll give Apple a chance to clean up the app, but I'm going to cancel the trial subscription if they don't.

 

[culb0743]

I had this issue as well, but after some time (several hours) my devices sorted themselves out, with the News app recognizing the subscription and making the News+ content accessible. Family members are also notified that I've subscribed via Family Sharing. Personally, I'm disappointed that after the update that enables News+, the Apple News app now triggers the discrete graphics card on the MBP. It seems like a waste of resources to simply browse through magazines. Viewing some 'Made for iBooks' products in the Apple Books app seems to be no more graphics-intensive than the News+ content, but the Books app doesn't crank up the heater the way News+ does. Definitely hoping this is just a bug.