Apple News+ Subscription Now Includes 'The Athletic' Sports Coverage

[msackey]

Same. Not paying $13 for Apple News.

The format of many magazines is awful. Basically just PDF’s of the printed magazine. Impossible to read on a small device. Maybe read 6 issues in the 2 years I had News+.

Subscriptions are going to be down by 30% so the net payout to publishers isn’t going to go up a bit.

One of my gripes about Apple News+, even when the price was at $9.99, were the HUGE ads. I understand they need ads but many of the images are HUGE interspersed between paragraphs of an article. It made the whole experience very unprofessional, reminding me of reading listicles or one of those click-bait articles that you don't know is of that kind until you read further.

The other thing that also surprised me was that when they say you have access to x, y, z magazine/journal, sometimes that just means a LIMITED number of articles, depending on what that publisher wants to make available. For example, there are certain articles that a local news organization has on News+, but when you go to their own website, they have more articles that are behind a paywall and not accessible in News+.

 

[JulianL]

Same! Whoever is in charge of these price changes is completely out of touch with reality.

Agreed. I also cancelled after the price increase. I wouldn’t be surprised if, once things have settled out and people thinking “this is crazy” have all got round to cancelling, Apple actually see overall News+ monthly subscription revenue drop after this huge price hike. I now use Google News as my news aggregator and while I preferred Apple News for a number of reasons I don’t prefer it to the extent £12.99 per month vs free.

 

[Arsenikdote]

It's got my attention. But I would probably just subscribe for The Athletic content. In which case, it would just be cheaper to subscribe to The Athletic directly. Unless I am missing something great with Apple News+.

I think the bonus is for people who have the bundle. It is continuing to add value to the larger cost subscription. Since we utilize several of the services in the bundle, it is quite a bit cheaper for us to use the Apple Bundle than to use different subscriptions independently. For me, this was great because I can now ready more articles and it increases the value I get from paying Apple $38!!! a month. Sheesh. Still worth it compared to if we didn't but it just is crazy how everything these days is going to a subscription.

So, this is like cable TV. I have to pay more so they can add sports content when I don't have any interest in it. You can google many of the News+ articles and read them elsewhere. I canceled with the price increase.

Yeah, I mean they are making choices based on mathematical percentages. You are likely not fitting with the majority, just like maybe with cable TV. While I can understand it sucks to be in that position, it also makes sense that mainstream services don't fit non-mainstream use cases, right?

 

[nburwell]

The Athletic used to be great for local sports team coverage. That ended when NYT purchased it. A good amount of the local writers I followed were either laid off or left the company. It’s now a shell of itself, which is unfortunate.

 

[Simmias]

I hate what Apple News has become. Trust in the media is at an all-time low for good reasons, and it’s created a huge societal problem. Apple could be part of the solution by empowering independent journalists to publish and profit from their platform. Almost like Substack. Offer fresh independent sources and let the dying mainstream sources that everyone hates fade away like the dinosaurs they are. Instead Apple has doubled down and amplified awful corporate media orgs while attempting to charge an arm and a leg for content people are abandoning in droves. I used to enjoy the Apple News app as an aggregator, but News+ seems to exist solely to prop up legacy media instead of forging a desperately needed new path.

 

[CarAnalogy]

More like streaming, which started out small with the channels you wanted, and then expanded to including "DIY 3 - Just tiny homes" and "ESPN 6 - Competitive knitting" that no one wants.

It’s all starting to meld together. YouTube emulated tv which then emulated YouTube. It’s just the business model that’s different. But in the end they’re all just ad delivery platforms.

 

[DogHouseDub]

One of my gripes about Apple News+, even when the price was at $9.99, were the HUGE ads.

Agreed. I sent a message asking if there was a dollar amount I could pay to remove all advertising.

 

[pappl]

When will Apple News be available in most EU countries?

 

[3xBoom]

Killed my One subscription the other day keeping iCloud 2 TB only. The Athletic's $1 subscription is a great substitute for most of my gradually declining interest in non-tech news...

 

[adrian.casas]

It's interesting to see that apple hasn't bothered to make New+ available to more countries. Meaning something we have read before that the lack of interest from publisher might be an issue.

 

[svish]

Good to see additions. But still waiting for News+ to be available in my country.

 

[koelsh]

Opened the News app today for the first time in a while just to read a single article... Got this full page demand ad/announcement that they've added new stuff.

I'm really fed up with apps that have to announce every little thing via a full screen takeover demanding we consider subscribing to or buying more stuff.

Would be nice if macOS would let us uninstall the news app like we can on iOS.